Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera

A.R.T.: Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera. Artistic Director of the Armitage Gone! Dance Company based in New York, and renowned for pushing the boundaries to create contemporary works that blend dance, music, and art. Armitage has choreographed for major dance companies throughout Europe and the U.S. and has directed opera for leading European houses. She was director of the Florence Ballet (1996–2000), the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Dance (2001), and was resident choreographer for the Ballet de Lorraine (2000–2005). She is known for her collaborations with important contemporary artists, such as Jeff Koons, Brice Marden, filmmaker James Ivory, and pop icons Madonna and Michael Jackson. She has also created choreography for a William Wegman dog and choreographed the Cirque du Soleil production AmaLuna in 2012, directed by Diane Paulus. Armitage received a Tony nomination for her Broadway choreography of Hair (2009), also directed by Diane Paulus, after making her Broadway debut with Passing Strange (2008), also filmed by Spike Lee. She received the French honor Commandeur dans L’ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She danced with Balanchine’s Geneva Ballet (1973–1975) and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1976–1981).

Award-winning costume designer whose credits extend from Broadway to avant-garde theater. His Broadway credits include West Side Story directed by Arthur Laurents, Dividing the Estate, The Farnsworth Invention by Aaron Sorkin, Old Aquaintances, 700 Sundays with Billy Crystal, The Rocky Horror Show (2001 Tony Award nomination, Hewes Award), The Who’s Tommy (1993 Tony and Olivier Award nominations), Damn Yankees and A Few Good Men. He has also designed at Santa Fe Opera (A Dream Play), New York City Opera (Don Giovanni) and San Francisco Opera (Cosi Fan Tutti). He has designed for almost every major theater company in America including The Donkey Show at A.R.T and recently won a second Hewes Award for The Orphan Home Cycle at Signature Theatre in New York. Currently he is designing Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s King Henry Part 2.

Don Holder is celebrated for his innovative lighting design in projects and productions ranging from opera to experimental theater to Broadway. Based in New York, he is on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, California) where he is Head of Lighting Design. His opera credits include Grendel (L.A. Opera and Lincoln Center Festival, NY), The Magic Flute (NYC Metropolitan Opera), Salome (Kirov Opera), Moby Dick (world premiere: Dallas Opera) and The End of The Affair (Houston Grand Opera). A selection of his acclaimed Broadway productions includes South Pacific (2008 Tony Award, Henry Hewes Award); Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark (Fall 2010); Promises, Promises; Come Fly Away; Oleanna; The Lion King (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle awards); Ragtime, Movin’ Out, Les Liasons Dangereuses, Gem of The Ocean, A Streetcar Named Desire, Juan Darien (all Tony nominated); Cyrano de Bergerac; Radio Golf; The Little Dog Laughed; Thoroughly Modern Millie; and The Boy From Oz. Holder has also designed at resident theaters across the United States. He is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

Chris Full has worked on many West End musicals and productions across Europe such as City of Angels, Five Guys Named Moe, Les Misérables, Cats and Chess; West End and touring productions of Mamma Mia!, We Will Rock You, Return to the Forbidden Planet, She Loves Me, Fame, Voyeurz, Copacabana, Song and Dance, Grease, Oliver!, Fosse and Soul Train. He has also worked on many arena events and has won awards for live television broadcasts. In the West End, Full has designed, amongst other shows, Ragtime (award-nominated), The Gondoliers, Nixon’s Nixon, Grand Hotel, Sweeney Todd (acclaimed on Broadway) and Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Recently, he designed the Evita UK tour and the latest West End production of Guys and Dolls for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award. He is currently working on Walking with Dinosaurs and The Sonics Space Ship at Tate London.

Peter Torpey is a doctoral candidate and research assistant in the Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab. Drawing from his background in film and video, theater, computer science and music, Torpey’s research interests include creating interactive systems for expressive media, arts and performance.

Matt Checkowski is a filmmaker and designer. His work has been widely seen and highly acclaimed, including the dream sequences for Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, the branding of the inaugural launch of ESPN "Monday Night Football," a documentary on the making of the Rock Band video game, and his feature film directorial debut for Summit Entertainment, Lies & Alibis, starring Steve Coogan and Rebecca Romijn, with Selma Blair, James Brolin, Sam Elliott, John Leguizamo, James Marsden, Debi Mazar and Henry Rollins. As the founder and creative director of The Department of the 4th Dimension, Checkowski and his multidisciplinary team develop content that connects dynamic brands with digital audiences.

Ben Bloomberg is an undergraduate computer science major at MIT who specializes in advanced surround sound and spatialization systems for live entertainment. He has been captivated by audio and live sound since the age of 9 and has had the incredible opportunity to work all over the world during his three years at MIT.

A.R.T.: Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera (Associate Director). Opera: Productions at Chicago Opera Theater, Boston Lyric Opera, Guerilla Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera Omaha, Gotham Chamber Opera. Training programs include Glimmerglass Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Wolf Trap Opera. Education: B.A., Yale University. M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Columbia University. Eggert is currently Head of Opera at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

James Maddalena first gained international recognition for the title role of John Adams’ Nixon in China, a role he reprised for his Metropolitan Opera debut last month. Since then, he has appeared with many of the world’s leading opera companies and orchestras including San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Glyndebourne, the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. He is a frequent collaborator with director Peter Sellars in Mozart operas and works by Haydn, Handel and Adams. Known for his work in contemporary music, he has premiered works of John Harbison (Four Psalms, Chicago Symphony), Stewart Wallace (Harvey Milk, Houston Grand Opera; Bonesetter’s Daughter, San Francisco Opera), Paul Moravec (The Letter, Santa Fe Opera), Louis Spratlan (Life Is A Dream, Santa Fe Opera), Elliot Goldenthal (Fire Water Paper, Pacific Symphony) and Mark Adamo (Little Women, Houston Grand Opera). James Maddalena has recorded for Decca/London, BMG, Classical Catalyst, Nonesuch, Teldec, Sony Classical, Harmonia Mundi and EMI. He is on the Grammy Award-winning recording of Nixon In China (Nonesuch) and the Emmy Award-winning PBS telecast, now on DVD.

Hailed by the New York Times as "delightful and vocally strong and versatile," Emily Albrink is a soprano whose young career already sports collaborations with artists such as James Levine, Robert Spano, Jake Heggie and Dawn Upshaw. She begins the season with her Kentucky Opera debut as Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore, returns to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, conducted by Marin Alsop, and makes her Alice Tully Hall debut singing Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. Albrink is a 2010 alumna of the Doming-Cafritz Young Artist Program at the Washington National Opera where performances included Frasquita in Carmen, Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos, and both Barbarina and Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro. Noted past performances include Nuria in Ainadamar with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall, soprano soloist in Brahms’ Requiem in Beijing and Shanghai, China, and Despina in Cosi fan Tutte, conducted by Levine.

Sara Heaton had her professional debut as Despina in Così fan tutte (Boston Baroque Orchestra). With Opera Boston, she gave "a lovely vocal performance" as the "sexy" and "alluring" gypsy Esmeralda in The Bartered Bride. She was recently seen as a Woodsprite in Rusalka (Boston Lyric Opera) and as Adele in Die Fledermaus (Opera Providence). In the competition circuit, she has been a regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera competition, a finalist in the Giulio Gari Competition, and a semi-finalist in the Competizione dell’opera in Germany. She is also a recipient of the Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation. This summer she will join the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Singer Program.

Tenor Hal Cazalet trained at the Guildhall School of Music, London and Juilliard Opera Centre, where he won the Shoshanna Foundation Award. Roles in world premiere operas include Nicholas in Death and the Powers at the Monte Carlo Opera, Gerard in Philip Glass’ Les Enfants Terribles (BAM Opera House) and Charles in The Music Programme (Royal Opera House 2). In concert, he made his Lincoln Center debut performing Tristan Keuris’ L’Infinito and has performed with the New York Festival of Song at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall and at London’s Wigmore Hall. He also performed at the Kennedy Center as Mr. Angel in The Impresario with the NSO under Christopher Hogwood. Other credits include Cascada in The Merry Widow (English National Opera) and Albert in Albert Herring (Glyndebourne Touring Opera). Future engagements include the role of Prunier in La Rondine for Opera Holland Park and Richard Dauntless in Ruddigore (Opera North).

Douglas Dodson, an "unusually sparkling countertenor" (Kansas City Star), is originally from Spearfish, South Dakota. A performer of early as well as modern music, Dodson has been featured as a soloist in concert and chamber works by Adès, Bernstein and Britten, as well as the concert repertoire of baroque composers including Bach, Buxtehude, Carissimi, Handel, Pergolesi, Telemann and Vivaldi. His operatic credits include roles in well-known pieces by Handel (Giulio Cesare and Semele) and Purcell (Dido and Aeneas), as well as more obscure works by Monteverdi (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria), Purcell (fully staged productions of his semi-operas Dioclesian and The Fairy Queen) and Johann Georg Conradi (the second modern production of his 1691 singspiel Die schöne und getreue Ariadne). Recent performances include the 1731 version of Handel’s Rinaldo with Opera Vivente in Baltimore, Maryland.

Baritone David Kravitz has been widely praised for the "power, character" and "resonance and fluency" of his singing (Boston Globe; Opera News), his "brilliantly natural" acting and "perfect comic timing" (Boston Globe; St. Louis Post-Dispatch), his "eloquent" and "superb" diction (Boston Phoenix; Boston Herald), and his "drop-dead musicianship" (Boston Globe) on both the operatic and the concert stages. In the 2010–11 season, Mr. Kravitz sings the Businessman in Intermezzo for his debut at New York City Opera, and appears as the United Nations Delegate in the world premiere of Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers at Opéra de Monte-Carlo, with subsequent performances of the work that season at Chicago Opera Theater and in Boston in a production by the American Repertory Theater. He also returns to Opera Boston as the Provost Marshall and Gold Merchant in Hindemith’s rarely performed Cardillac, sings Handel’s Messiah for his debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, covers Matthias Goerne in Britten’s War Requiem led by Seiji Ozawa and appears as Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress with Emmanuel Music. He closes the season as Taddeo in L’italiana in Algeri with Boston Midsummer Opera.

Bob Hsiung’s unconventional career path started out with his designing miniature robots for industrial inspection applications. He later moved to Taiwan where he worked as a freelance writer and graphic designer before leading a team to design interactive multimedia educational products for children. Prior to joining the Death and the Powers team, Hsiung was living and working in the remote mountains of Lesotho as the technical lead for an organization building HIV/MDRTB clinics.

Michael Miller is a recent MIT graduate exploring the convergence of music composition, sound and computer science. Alongside recent commissions for film scores, he is also a software engineer commercially developing next-generation equipment for audio professionals.

Elena Jessop is a doctoral student in the Opera of the Future research group at the MIT Media Lab, where she is currently researching new technologies for performance capture and expressive gestural interaction. She did her undergraduate studies at Amherst College, where she was a double major in Computer Science and Theater & Dance, and has experience with a wide range of performing arts including stage and costume design, choreography and choral conducting.

A.R.T.: ExtraOrdinary, Waitress, Finding Neverland, Pippin, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, Prometheus Bound, Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera, Children of Herakles. Broadway/National Tour: Finding Neverland, Pippin, The Gershwins��� Porgy and Bess, HAIR, The Full Monty, I Am My Own Wife. Other projects with Diane Paulus include: Capeman; Turnadot: The Rumble For The Ring; Collaborator of Bill Irwin for 28 years, one of the creators of the Tony Award-winning Fool Moon, Largely New York, The Regard of Flight.

A.R.T.: ExtraOrdinary, Pippin, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera, Children of Herakles. Broadway: The Play That Goes Wrong, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Color Purple, Wolf Hall Parts 1 & 2, Pippin, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, HAIR, The Wedding Singer, I Am My Own Wife, The Little Foxes, The Rehearsal, Summer and Smoke, Getting Away with Murder. Regional: Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera, Monaco and Chicago.

A.R.T.: Sleep No More, Let Me Down Easy. New York: Sleep No More, productions with Lincoln Center, Atlantic Theater Company. International: Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera. Regional: Huntington Theatre Company, Boston Ballet, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Hangar Theater. B.F.A. in Stage Management from Boston University College of Fine Arts.

Now in her third season with Chicago Opera Theater, Dana Stremming is thrilled to be a part of the American premiere of Death and the Powers. Previously, she has worked at The San Francisco Opera, Opera Omaha, The Santa Fe Opera, as well as in various musical theater productions in both stage management and properties. Stremming is a 2007 graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists. She would like to thank all involved in Death and the Powers, especially Jerry Tietz and Bradley Vernatter for the opportunity. She would also like to send love and thanks to her ever-supportive parents and boyfriend, Nickolas.