NOA Now Fall 2026 Issue
We're back with fresh ideas for the season, packed full of autumn inspiration and conversations that matter—enjoy the Fall Issue of NOA Now.
Welcome to the Summer Edition of NOA Now!
We are delighted to introduce ourselves as the new editorial team for NOA Now — Cynthia Stokes and Courtney Kalbacker.
We are excited about the upcoming year and look forward to building on the wonderful work that has already been established. Our goal for future issues is to create content that informs, inspires, and connects the opera community. We hope to highlight best practices from colleagues across the field, feature interviews with leaders in opera and opera education, and take in-depth looks at many of the important issues we face in the classroom, rehearsal room, and our local and regional communities.
Most importantly, we hope NOA Now continues to reflect the creativity, dedication, and collaborative spirit of our membership.
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We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Ann Marie Daehn, who has been incredibly generous and helpful throughout this transition process. We are also deeply grateful to Jourdan Laine Howell, NOA Now Graphics & Layout Editor, and the NOA Now Team for their support, guidance, and enthusiasm. A special thank you to our contributors: Michael Ching, Kristen Clough, The Opera Journal Editors, J. Bradley Baker, Joshua May, and Sorrel B. McCarthy​.
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If you have ideas for articles, topics you would like to see explored, or an interest in joining the NOA Now committee, we would love to hear from you. Please feel free to reach out to us at any time.
And now, dear readers, we hope you enjoy this selection of articles — we have certainly enjoyed curating them to your interests!
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Towards National Standards for Opera Training in Higher Education
During the last NOA board meeting, a new initiative was proposed by our President, Christopher Pfund, and Executive Director, Kirk Severtson: “Create a multi-year task force to identify and recommend new formalized best practices, curricular reforms, and structural models for the next quarter of the 21st century.”
As many of us realize, the NOA is uniquely positioned to lead our sector but unlike other performance-based training (choral, orchestral and especially theatrical) where national bodies have created and published guidelines, opera programs often rely on highly variable institutional traditions or invent the wheel with every new change in leadership. This can often leave students and faculty in vulnerable positions where having guidelines for national standards could be quite helpful and supportive.
After much positive discussion at the board meeting (and a few follow-up emails), I was asked to chair this multi-year task force. I am quite eager to step up to the plate, so to speak, after publishing numerous and opinionated blogs on the subject over the past two decades. But it’s clear that this will be a very large initiative that will take a solid team of people from not just within the NOA, but also outside researchers and experts from as many varied performance fields as possible. We are hopeful that by taking a serious deep-dive into what should be the future for opera training, we will be able to produce authoritative, adaptable, field-wide standards. It is our hopt that these models would support and elevate programs ranging from small liberal arts colleges to major conservatories and universities; ultimately benefiting students, faculty, production and administrative staff, and our audiences.
So many new and exciting areas have sprung up in the last decade that have changed and influenced our training, and yet our curricula haven’t changed much over the years. As I said at last year’s panel in Boston, we’re moving into the second quarter of this century continuing to teach a curriculum created back in the second half of the last century. The demands and needs of the professional sector need to be assessed so that we can create young artists more ready for this much-changed world of opera. Today’s opera industry is performing new repertoire by living creators at unbelievable rates, bringing musical theatre into their season programming, and making new demands on their artists. Artists must be multiple threats: singers adept at acting while also being social media content creators and entrepreneurs starting their own arts organizations and performance opportunities.
A place to start? We need to create national standards for safe, supportive, and ethical rehearsal environments. Adapting the Chicago Theatre Standards for Academia could be a way to begin. This would provide many helpful solutions to opera training’s unique complexities: the need for long rehearsal periods, double casting, vocal technique and maturity considerations, vocal, gender and identity inclusivity, and academic power structures.
An NOA adaptation of the CTSA might include:
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Protocols for psychological safety in studios and staging rehearsals
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Distinctions between pedagogical authority vs directing authority
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Procedures for reporting concerns in academic hierarchies
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Guidance for managing classroom vs production boundaries
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Consent in rehearsal stagings and choreography situations, including
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pedagogical touch
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Bystander intervention training for students, faculty, and staff
Other areas we’d like to look at helping create guidelines for:
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Staged Intimacy in Academic Rehearsals
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Vocal, Gender, and Identity Inclusivity
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Neurodivergent-inclusive rehearsal practices
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Student-facing standards and communication of expectations
We must also examine our wild and crazy Organizational Models. We have to admit that most of our programs function locally and, frankly, uniquely to whoever is the team leader and what kind of team they might have in place. This creates such a wide range of possible models. Wouldn’t it be nice to know how others create their operas? This will take some data-building via research online, interviews, and surveys. Hopefully, we will be able to offer model templates that could be flexible and adaptable no matter the size of program. One of the dark secrets in opera training is the hours put in by faculty that are either completely uncredited, or credited in almost laughable ways. Depending on the size and scope of a production, the hours put in can easily top 100 or more. Yet in too many places, directing an opera in the academic world might only mean being credited with a handful of load hours.
I’m personally very interested in looking at curricular offerings, particularly in the many Masters of Music in Opera degrees out there. We haven’t updated recommendations in decades, so it is time. Students receiving a masters degree in opera or voice performance need to have business and entrepreneurship classes, they need movement and body lessons, they need to have more acting skills in their toolbox, and they need to understand poetry (more than they need to know Schenkerian analysis – just my humble opinion!)
What then might be the next steps? First, we are getting organized with a committee that will be as inclusive as possible, with voices from within and outside of the NOA. This fall we will spend time scheduling and convening online meetings where we can start to discuss the scope of what could be discussed. Because of the breadth and the nature of being in academia, I’m sure that during the fall it will take time for this first stage. However, we do plan on creating an online survey that we hope everyone will take the time to fill out. We also will create multiple online convening Zoom meetings so that as many voices as possible can be heard. Look for more information about these in your inboxes come September!
Finally, we plan on giving an initial presentation and report at this January’s conference in Minneapolis. We hope to hear, see, and speak to all of you in the coming year. Send us your ideas, hopes, dreams, and opinions so we can begin to take it all in, and hopefully in a few years, have actual, viable ideas that can be implemented across the NOA member programs. If you want to share privately, become involved, or have other issues you’d like us to focus on, please email me!
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Curiosity, imagination, and dedication to learning are key for an exciting new voice in opera directing.
Interview with Mark Anthony Vallejo, 2026 JoElyn Wakefield-Wright Stage Director Fellowship Recipient
I was honored to speak recently with Mark Anthony Vallejo, the 2026 recipient of the NOA JoElyn Wakefield-Wright Stage Director Fellowship. During our conversation, Mr. Vallejo shared his thoughts on directing, storytelling, and the unlikely path that brought him to opera.
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On Receiving the Fellowship
When asked how he plans to use the fellowship, Vallejo emphasized both his gratitude and his commitment to continued learning.
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Mark Anthony: I’m really grateful to the Association. I’m really excited for it. I graduated in 2020 at UCLA with my MFA and then the world shut down and I couldn’t get anything. And I’ve been climbing uphill, but I’m really grateful that I got the opportunity.
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He explained that the fellowship will support his work at Opera San José where he is Artist-in Residence Stage Director for the 2026-2027 season, his second year in this position, and help deepen his understanding of opera as an art form.
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Mark Anthony: I never trained as a singer, and so I’m just studying the art form. And so in order for me to tell my singers how to move, I need to learn how to do that. So it’s constant research about what sells on stage and how best to deliver emotion.
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Recalling a rehearsal with a soprano singing Santuzza, he described being overwhelmed by the authenticity and emotional immediacy of the performance.
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Mark Anthony: I was just blown away…[Moments like these] They’re powerful…really exciting for me as a human. I get to watch art in a different way, and I’m just so engulfed in passion.
Upcoming Work at Opera San José
Vallejo’s upcoming season at OSJ includes assistant direction for Don Giovanni, Fiddler on the Roof, Doctor Atomic, and Carmen. He is particularly excited about reconnecting with director Alec Schrader, and stage manager and board member Jennifer Hsu who he credits with continued advocacy of his career.
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Mark Anthony: Because Alec comes from performing on stage, so he knows what’s the best looks, what the best objectives for the singers, and he’s so physical, and he’s so comedic.
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He expressed how excited he is to experience the legendary mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves in the role of Carmen in OSJ’s final show of the season.
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Mark Anthony: I love Carmen too. That’s something I want to direct myself. I have so many ideas for Carmen.
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Discovering Opera During the Pandemic
Coming to opera via his strong background in theatre, Vallejo’s introduction to the genre came during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. He came across the Metropolitan Opera’s online streaming and found himself captivated by the powerful components of storytelling.
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Mark Anthony: I was just blown away about the composition, the music, the storytelling. I said, where has this been all my life?!
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He spent weeks watching productions, taking copious notes, and analyzing staging choices and visual compositions.
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Mark Anthony: And so, I was watching for two weeks straight opera on my computer, and by the second week, my mom was like, I don't know what's going on but it just sounds so passionate. And I'm like, but look, he killed her!...it was just so much fun. I watched Ring Cycle–it took me a week to watch but I had to keep going!
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Soon after, his former UCLA professor and mentor Marike Splint forwarded him an assistant director opportunity with a Kansas-based opera company, Music on Site, Inc., run by Artistic Director Jen Stephenson and Executive and Music Director Bradley Baker. Despite Vallejo’s limited operatic background, he applied and was accepted to work on their production of Carmen directed by Paul Houghtaling.
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Mark Anthony: I got in, and I learned a lot hands on there, and the first show I worked on there was Carmen.
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He [Houghtaling] was so good at telling a story, and even that was one of the things I was blown away was, how are you going to direct 3 principals in like 9 days? And it was so cool the way he did it, and I thought that was just so for me. It was innovative.
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I was there for about 10 days, working on Carmen, and we had 3 sets of casts, and so we had 3 different shows. I was everybody, I was AD, props, the person working the deck, I would work on supertitles…I didn’t know what supertitles were back then!
That experience launched a rapid progression through the opera world. For two consecutive years Vallejo was a finalist for the Metropolitan Opera Stage Director Fellowship and was later invited by Met stage director Paula Suozzi to observe rehearsals of Carmen at the Met.
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Mark Anthony: She [Suozzi] took me to the executive stage directors rooms. It was so cool being at the Lincoln Center. I walked through the artists entrance. I mean, it felt… it felt… it felt amazing. I never knew I was gonna walk through there, and she showed me around… she just put me in a corner. You just watch and learn and observe. And that’s it. She started asking me to come on stage and with some of the actors.
Even though he did not receive the fellowship, the experience proved to be transformative, and the relationship he built led directly to his opportunities with Opera San José.
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Mark Anthony: So I didn't get the fellowship, but Paula reached out to Opera San José and they invited me for one gig to work on La Bohème under director Michelle Ainna Cuizon. And now I’m back! And so I will be starting my second residency with Opera San José.
The Role of Dance and Movement
Movement lies at the heart of Vallejo’s artistic process, aided by his training in hip-hop, lyrical dance, tap, West-African dance, salsa, Suzuki training, and Viewpoints training, and is a former member of the Los Angeles based dance theatre company now called Contra-Tiempo: Activist Dance Theatre.
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Mark Anthony: I continue doing this physical training because I saw another side of how to activate the technique as an actor.
He credits his dance training with allowing him to effectively stage large groups.
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Mark Anthony: In order for me to talk with a group of chorus or an ensemble, I need to quickly move them, and I need to shape them. That helps with my composition.
He sees movement as an essential storytelling tool.
Mark Anthony: And so, instead of just using our box, I wanted to use the whole body. I think that was just more poetic for me.
Influences and Visual Style
Vallejo spoke about how his visual aesthetic has been shaped by several major influences, including the late director Robert Wilson.
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Mark Anthony: I just love his use of visual imagery…how he uses light as architecture…was really integral to how I approach visual theatre.
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A 2019 summer study in France introduced him to a wide range of experimental theatre practices, expanding his ideas of what performance could be.
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Mark Anthony: It blew my mind…how they approach art, how they approach realism, how they approach poetry, set pieces and destruction, and different languages within the piece.
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Vallejo also expressed his fascination with the works of Greek director Dmitris Papaioannou. Discussing Papaioannou’s work, he describes scenes that unfold less through narrative than through striking physical images akin to paintings.
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Mark Anthony: People have their own ideas of what’s happening onstage. They start to develop their own narrative.
Developing a Personal Style
Today, Vallejo feels he has begun to develop a distinctive approach to storytelling.
Mark Anthony: There’s always going to be slow-motion, and there’s always going to be something physical that my singers are gonna do that may seem a little odd.
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For Mark Anthony Vallejo, directing is ultimately about creating poetry through movement, imagery, light, and human relationships. Citing his influences and mentors, he says:
Mark Anthony: I think these artists definitely open a door for me to say theatre can be what I learned or what I grew up thinking. But theatre can also be this, or art can be directed this way. And that gave me permission to [say] ok, I’m just gonna paint with all the colors instead of three or four.
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Bonus Lightning-Round
Favorite director? Robert Wilson
Favorite musical? Hadestown
Favorite opera? Carmen
Dream opera to direct? "I want to direct the Ring Cycle and I want to direct Carmen so bad."
Production that changed your life? The Great Tamer
A book every director should read? The Director's Craft by Katie Mitchell
Rehearsal ritual? "I always check in with my singers and our actors."
Coffee or tea? "Tea, please. Yes. Green tea."
If not directing? "I'd be a F1 driver. Or two, I'd be a Jabbawockeez dancer, or I would love to play the piano and/or sing."
One word to describe your directing style? Possibilities.
My conversation with Mark Anthony Vallejo revealed that this artist's curiosity, imagination, and dedication to learning are rapidly establishing him as an exciting new voice in opera directing. Thank you, and congratulations again to Mr. Vallejo.
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Best Practices for Opera
New Opera, New Audiences, New Ways of Working
Have you ever noticed that when a new opera season is announced—on a company’s website, in a brochure, or in a season announcement—the composer is sometimes the only author whose name appears?
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This may seem unremarkable. After all, opera has a long tradition of identifying a work primarily by its composer. But what happens when a contemporary playwright writes the libretto—the words, characters, scenes and dramatic structure of the opera? Shouldn’t the playwright be named as well?
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The answer would seem obvious. Yet the librettist’s name is still frequently absent, or given far less prominence than the composer’s.
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This is an especially curious practice at a time when the landscape of opera is changing rapidly. Over the past twenty years, American opera companies have commissioned and produced an extraordinary number of new works. Playwrights, poets, novelists, lyricists and composers from outside the traditional opera world have entered the field, bringing new approaches to storytelling, language, dramatic structure and music.
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These changes did not go unnoticed by the Dramatists Guild, the largest professional organization in the United States representing playwrights, lyricists and theater composers. And yet, when dramatists began entering the world of opera with greater frequency, they found a world of inconsistency and confusion—but more about that in a moment.
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First, it is worth asking why so many dramatists are drawn to opera in the first place.
The Dramatists are Coming.
In musical theater, the playwright who creates the dramatic structure and dialogue of a musical is generally called the book writer. The term may be unfamiliar to opera audiences, but the job is closely related to that of the librettist: creating the story, characters, scenes and dramatic architecture that give the music a theatrical world in which to live.
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In a musical, those writing responsibilities may be divided between a book writer, who creates the dialogue and dramatic scenes, and a lyricist, who writes the words that are sung. In opera, those functions are generally encompassed by the librettist.
For generations, playwrights have been drawn to musical theater because music can do things that spoken drama cannot. A song can compress time, expose a character’s inner life, shift a scene into another emotional register or transform the way an audience experiences a story.
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But the contemporary commercial musical-theater landscape presents its own challenges. The cost of producing a Broadway musical has risen dramatically, making the financial stakes of a new production enormous. Producers understandably look for properties with a built-in audience: familiar films, television shows, novels and other recognizable titles that can be transformed into musicals. The results can be inspired, but the economics can also make it increasingly difficult to take risks on unfamiliar or formally adventurous musical theater.
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That hasn’t diminished playwrights’ desire to explore musical forms. If anything, it has given some writers another reason to look beyond the commercial musical-theater marketplace.
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And opera has something important to offer them.
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Contemporary opera has shown itself remarkably willing to tackle subjects that are politically controversial, socially challenging or simply difficult to package for the broadest possible commercial audience. Today’s opera stages stories about politics, war, race, sexuality, history, religion and the complexities of contemporary life—often with a freedom that can be difficult to find in commercial musical theater.
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For dramatists, that freedom can be enormously attractive. Opera offers the opportunity to explore ambitious subjects without first asking whether the title has a built-in audience.
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And playwrights have noticed. Increasingly, they are crossing the boundary between spoken theater and opera, bringing with them the instincts of dramatists and discovering what can happen when those instincts meet music. The growing presence of dramatists in opera is not an intrusion into an established art form. It is part of a larger movement of artists crossing boundaries between forms—bringing theatrical experience into opera and discovering what can happen when the conventions of one art form meet those of another.
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That cross-pollination is one of the most exciting things happening in new opera today.
It also raises a question: if dramatists are increasingly helping to create contemporary opera, why aren’t they always being presented to audiences as its creators?
When Tradition Meets New Opera
Opera companies have inherited ways of presenting their seasons and their repertory over many decades. Those conventions made sense in a world dominated by established works and familiar composers. But when companies are presenting new operas created by living composers and dramatists, some of those conventions may no longer serve the work—or the audience—as well as they once did.
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Consider the way contemporary operas are sometimes presented to the public. A company may commission a well-known playwright to create the libretto, perhaps even a writer whose name is more familiar to the general public than that of the composer. Yet when the opera is announced, the playwright’s name may be absent or minimized.
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Why?
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Part of the answer is simply tradition. Opera has historically been identified primarily through its composer. But new opera is not old opera.
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The circumstances under which a contemporary opera is created can be very different from those surrounding a work by Verdi, Puccini or Bizet. A contemporary opera may begin with a playwright and composer developing an idea together. The librettist may construct scenes, characters and dramatic arcs specifically for the composer. The composer, in turn, shapes the drama through music. The two may revise their work together throughout the development and rehearsal process.
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This is collaboration.
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Opera is, of course, a musical art form—but it is also theater. It is written, staged, acted, designed and performed through the collaboration of many artists. At the center of that collaboration are the composer and the dramatist, whose work together creates the opera.
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Why, then, shouldn’t the public be told who the collaborators are?
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Think about My Fair Lady. We would never describe it simply as “a Loewe musical,” leaving Alan Jay Lerner out of the picture. Lerner wrote both the book and lyrics, while Frederick Loewe wrote the music. Their contributions are different, but inseparable from the identity of the work.
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Opera can embrace the same understanding.
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Giving the dramatist proper credit is not simply a matter of courtesy. It reinforces for audiences what new opera actually is: a theatrical art form in which music and drama work together.
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Why Credit Matters Beyond the Program
This may sound like a relatively small issue. It isn’t. The way an opera company identifies its creators can influence the way the work itself is understood. If the composer is presented as the sole author, audiences may naturally assume that the opera is primarily a musical event. If the playwright is identified as a co-creator, audiences are reminded that they are also coming to experience a new work of theater.
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That can matter enormously when a company is trying to attract someone who has never before considered attending an opera.
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The name of a playwright may be the very thing that catches that person’s attention.
But the issue goes beyond publicity. New operas almost always require revision. A scene that seemed perfect on the page may not work once it is sung and staged. A singer may need a line adjusted for vocal reasons. A dramatic moment may need clarification. A transition may need to be shortened or expanded. The person who wrote the words and helped construct the drama should be part of that conversation.
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When the dramatist is treated as a secondary figure, that can affect not only billing but also the extent to which the writer is included in rehearsals and invited to participate in the evolution of the work.
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There is a ripple effect, too. When opera companies consistently give greater visibility to composers than librettists, journalists may follow the same model in their reviews and articles. The convention reinforces itself. Changing the convention can help change the perception.
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A Committee for a New Century of Opera
These were among the issues that led to the formation of the Dramatists Guild Opera Committee.
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In 2016, Michael Korie and Mark Campbell formed the committee to address the issues librettists and composers were encountering in this burgeoning field. Among its concerns were proper credit, parity in commission fees and greater artistic control.
The committee has since grown to more than 60 librettists and composers, including many of the country’s leading artists. Korie and Deborah Brevoort now serve as its co-chairs.
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The committee’s purpose, however, is not to create an adversarial relationship between writers and opera companies.
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Quite the opposite.
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The goal is to help establish a common understanding between the artists who create new operas and the companies that commission, produce and present them. That led to the creation of Best Practices for Opera which is available for review on the Dramatists Guild website.
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Image: Best Practices for Opera, found on the Dramatists Guild of America website.
Why Best Practices?
Until relatively recently, many opera companies in the United States and abroad had limited experience building a new opera from the ground up. The established repertory came with a history, established performance traditions and well-understood conventions. A new opera has none of those things. Everyone is discovering the work together.
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At the same time, companies have increasingly joined forces to share the substantial costs of developing and producing new operas. These co-commissioning and co-producing arrangements can make ambitious projects possible, but they can also create additional layers of contractual complexity.
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As a result, composers and librettists often encountered a maze of different contracts, with different companies holding different ideas about what rights creators should retain, how creators should be compensated and credited, and what role they should play in the future life of their work. There was no broadly accepted standard for what constituted fair and sustainable practice.
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Best Practices for Opera was created to help fill that gap.
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Listening to the Whole Opera Community
The document was not written by artists in isolation. Over a two-year period, the Opera Committee conducted roundtable discussions with the many sectors of the opera community involved in creating new work, including artistic directors, company managers, publishers, agents, lawyers, composers and librettists. The committee sought their advice and drew upon their broad range of experience.
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A separate study examined opera commission contracts submitted anonymously by composers and librettists.
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The resulting document reflects an unprecedented level of dialogue between the people who create new operas and the people who commission and produce them.
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It addresses issues including the commissioning process and contracts, commission fees, co-commissioners and co-producers, delivery of the completed work, ownership, publishing, world premieres, authorial rights, royalties and score-rental fees, billing and marketing/publicity, digital rights, and commissioners’ rights concerning future productions.
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The document also incorporates the Dramatists Guild’s Model Billing Provision for Opera, developed separately by the Opera Committee and Guild staff. It provides guidance on crediting composers and librettists, authorial collaboration and approval of billing.
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Best Practices, Not Rules
The title is important: Best Practices, not Rules.
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The document is not intended to dictate how opera companies must operate, nor to impose a single model on every new opera.
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Rather, it offers a framework for composers, librettists and opera companies to understand one another’s expectations and develop equitable and sustainable ways of working.
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The goal is straightforward: better working relationships can lead to better operas.
That benefits everyone involved. It benefits composers and librettists by giving them greater clarity about their rights and responsibilities. It benefits opera companies by establishing clearer expectations when they commission and produce new work. And it benefits audiences, who ultimately experience the results onstage.
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A New Conversation About New Opera
Since its release, Best Practices for Opera has been distributed not only to companies and artists but also to educational institutions, conservatories, music schools and opera organizations overseas seeking guidance in the development of new work.
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The document was released at the National Opera Association’s Boston conference and subsequently presented at Opera America’s Memphis conference. We appreciated the opportunity to discuss it with the NOA membership and have been encouraged by the interest it has generated.
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But a document cannot change an art form by itself.
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Change happens when people begin to rethink the assumptions that have shaped their practices.
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Opera is changing. Its audiences are changing. The artists who create it are changing. The ways in which operas are commissioned, developed, produced and presented are changing.
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Our practices need to change, too.
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That can begin with something as simple as recognizing everyone who creates the work.
The composer matters.
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So does the dramatist.
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And when both are acknowledged, audiences are reminded of something fundamental about opera: it is not simply music being performed on a stage.
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It is theater.
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It is storytelling.
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It is music and drama working together to create something that neither could create alone.
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That is not a rejection of opera’s traditions.
It is a way of making sure those traditions have a future.
Do the Job You Have: The Art of Presence in an Ambitious Profession
In the world of opera, ambition is a constant companion. From the moment a young singer steps into a voice studio or into a rehearsal room, they are surrounded by talk of career paths, competitions, managers, young artist programs, “PFO” letters and dreams of major houses. These aspirations are healthy and necessary in a profession that requires extraordinary drive, determination and resilience. Yet too often, the desire for what comes next eclipses the opportunity of what is happening right now. The result is a dangerous habit: singers begin to chase the next gig rather than commit wholeheartedly to the one directly in front of them.
The truth is simple: your best career strategy is to do the job you have—and do it exceptionally well.
Opera is a collaborative art form built on trust. When a director, conductor, or company hires a singer, they are investing in the singer’s artistry, but also in their reliability, work ethic, and presence. The fastest way to build a reputation in this business is not by constantly seeking your next high-profile role, but by becoming the artist who elevates every rehearsal room they enter.
Doing the job you have well means showing up prepared—not just knowing your music, but understanding your character, your relationships, and your place within the larger storytelling. It means listening deeply in rehearsal, taking adjustments with grace, and being generous to colleagues. It means coming to rehearsals even when your commute takes longer than the whole of your role without complaint. It means thinking ahead and not scheduling events that cannot be canceled during likely rehearsal periods. It means singing beautifully, yes, but also being someone people want to work with again and again. The industry is smaller than it seems, word travels quickly. A singer who brings excellence and professionalism to one project often finds the next gig arriving organically as a result.
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When young singers focus too intently on the next step, they risk missing the richness of the present moment. Each role, each rehearsal, each coaching session offers lessons that will not appear again in precisely the same way. These moments—often small, sometimes challenging—shape the artist far more than a single headline role or prestigious program ever could. They build craft. They build stamina. They build resilience. They build relationships.
And ironically, chasing the next gig can undermine the very career a singer is trying to build. Anxiety about the future often leads to distraction, inconsistency, and shallow work. Colleagues and directors can sense when a singer is not truly present, and opportunities may quietly slip away. Directors and presenters remember when artists constantly ask to be released from crucial rehearsals because they are confident in their abilities but neglect to see the bigger picture—they don’t appear onstage alone and the actions of one affect many. Meanwhile, the artists who commit fully to the present project grow steadily, confidently, and visibly—and are remembered for the right reasons.
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This profession is a marathon, not a sprint, and careers are built step by step—sometimes in the spotlight, but often behind the scenes in rehearsal rooms where no one is posting clips or writing reviews. Careers happen when singers take risks in the rehearsal room and learn from the other artists around them. The singers who thrive are those who learn to put their full artistry into every chance they have, no matter the size of the role or the prestige of the company.
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Focusing on the job you have is not about lowering your sights. On the contrary: it is the most reliable path to the future you want. The next gig, the next breakthrough, the next milestone—they come when you make yourself indispensable in the moment you are in.
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So, to every young singer:
Take a breath. Plant your feet. Be here.
Let the role you’re working on today be your whole artistic world. Throw yourself into the music, the process, the relationships, and the story you’ve been entrusted to tell.
Do the job you have and do it brilliantly.
The future has a way of finding the artists who do.
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Take Our 2-Question Pulse Poll
Across academia, conversations about artistic freedom, curricular content, and institutional oversight have grown louder—and opera and voice programs are not immune. This issue, we want to hear directly from NOA members working in higher ed: where is pressure on academic and artistic expression coming from, and how is it shaping your day-to-day work? Your responses will be aggregated and shared in a future issue.
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Question 1: For those currently working in academia, how much is pressure on artistic or academic expression (repertoire choices, syllabi, public statements) shaping your day-to-day decisions?
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A. Not at all — I haven’t experienced this
B. A little — I’m aware of it, but it hasn’t changed how I work
C. Noticeably — it’s actively shaping decisions I make
D. Significantly — it’s making me reconsider my future in the field
Question 2: (Answer if you selected B, C, or D above) Where is this pressure primarily coming from? (Select all that apply)
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A. Administrative/institutional review (e.g., approval processes for programming or course content)
B. Political or ideological pressure (from students, colleagues, or leadership)
C. Donor, board, or funding-related pressure
D. Other​​​​
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Acting for Singers: A multipart series exploring the Michael Chekhov Technique
This session introduces students to The Four Brothers, one of the foundational principles of the Michael Chekhov Technique. Through a series of ensemble-based exercises, students cultivate a feeling of beauty (or joy), form, ease, and entirety—qualities that Chekhov believed support truthful and expressive performance.
Using the ball toss exercise, actors develop concentration, presence, and nonverbal communication by maintaining full-bodied engagement, throwing with ease, and connecting through sustained eye contact. Each exchange is treated as an artistic frame with a clear beginning, middle, and end, reinforcing the importance of intention and ensemble awareness. The exercise also emphasizes that the actor's target is the partner's feeling center rather than the head, fostering authentic connection.
Building on these principles, the ensemble progresses to"Boeuf-da!", a more advanced exercise that integrates the Four Brothers while developing a shared sense of physical tempo, rhythm, and group responsiveness. Together, these activities strengthen the two cornerstones of the Michael Chekhov Technique—concentration and imagination—with particular emphasis on concentration in this session.
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Sightlines: the most interesting things on stage are what you cannot see
A conversation with opera director David Herendeen on going blind in plain sight—and what decades of hiding taught him about the craft
I studied with David twenty years ago, when I was a graduate student at Oklahoma City University and he was directing the productions that, as far as I was concerned, ruined me for anywhere else—the standard was that high. What I did not know then, and what almost no one around him knew, was that he was severely visually disabled, often functionally blind depending on the light—his vision was always changing and quickly melting away. Herendeen has retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable, genetic degeneration of the retina. It cannot be corrected by surgery or glasses. It began revealing itself in his teens—misjudged fly balls in the outfield, trees and roots he never saw coming during cross-country meets, moonlit walks that were really just careful shuffles. He was diagnosed at sixteen, and diagnosis, he says, came almost as a relief. He finally understood why he was having all those problems. What followed was not necessarily relief, but rather decades of developing a parallel skill: directing attention away from his own disability as carefully as he directed a stage.
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He agreed to this conversation because of the trust built over twenty years and because he believed there might be something in it worth passing along—to directors, to students, to anyone managing their own “unique ‘sightline’,” as he calls it. What follows is drawn from a long, generous email he sent ahead of our talk, and from the conversation itself, condensed for clarity.
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Passing
Kalbacker: You wrote about how you “passed” for years—that you caused people to attribute what they noticed to a small blind spot or clumsiness, or just filled in the gaps themselves. That must have been exhausting to maintain.
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Herendeen: “It was. Directors depend on the audience seeing what they want to see. I was constantly directing the people around me—my ‘audience’—toward the impression I wanted them to get, rather than the reality of my blindness.” The concealment had its own challenges. “I told people I had a blind spot in my left eye that took away my depth perception. That’s what I said for years, and it was kind of, sort of the truth. And now my biggest fear on stage was the unexpected. Like somebody tossing something to me on stage, assuming I would see it.” He’d ask fellow performers not to improvise by tossing him props—“I just tell my fellow actors, don’t throw things to me.” Even now, the full disclosure is an absolute relief, but it brings with it a certain amount of comedy, because I present myself as a sighted person. “People don’t believe I’m blind. They say, here’s the menu—I say, I don’t need it, I’m blind. They say, no you’re not, you’re making eye contact. I say, I am, I promise.” The trick, he told me, is “I know where the eyes are, about four inches above the mouth. Anybody could do it.” He describes the disease as steadily progressing, but the level of functional blindness was always shifting and depended entirely on the light environment. Sometimes entirely blind. Many times a glimpse of something to work with. He drew a parallel to students concealing other parts of themselves—their sexual preference, or neurodivergence, or chronic illness, or economic hardship. “We all have our headwinds. I was no different.”
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Building the World in His Head
Kalbacker: Walk me through how you actually build a full visual world in your head with your design team – how does that work?
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Herendeen: Patience comes first. “I have to give myself time. For me to do something new takes real effort.” He described the process of exploring a new libretto or script by using a magnifying, color-inverting reading device called a Ruby, which lets him read “three or four letters at a time,” plus the app Speechify, which reads text aloud in a synthetic voice. “That gives me the dialogue, the lyrics, the story arc. It doesn’t take long to get a real grasp of each scene—the protagonist, the antagonist.” He calls his shorthand “drivers and passengers,” laid over the beginning, middle, and end of the story arc. From there, he says, it’s the same instinct every director uses. “It’s Jungian—archetypes and environment. If it’s a dark and stormy night, I know the visual language they will respond to. I want them to feel the language of the environment.” The design process itself, he says, has been reshaped by his blindness in a way he considers a genuine gift rather than a workaround, and makes me a better teacher by offering a different experience to the student. Designers can’t simply hold up a picture and let him nod. They have to describe—this fabric, this silhouette, this color—and the discipline of describing forces a kind of precision and conviction that showing does not. He told me about a recent production where a student lighting designer’s small suggestion—silhouetting each of the opera gala’s three female leads before they step into light—became a structural through-line for the whole evening. It came through descriptive conversation. The only channel available.
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Kalbacker: How much do you rely on your sense of hearing, compared to a sighted director?
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Herendeen: Less than people assume, he reported, “I don’t have spidey sense. I don’t do anything more than what any good director or voice teacher already does.” “The archetypal sound can only come from a body shaping itself in a certain way. A cry of woe looks the way it sounds. You can’t fake it.” He listens for breath the way a voice teacher does. “You can hear by a student’s breath that it’s not going to be right” or if a vocal crack is about to happen. He describes the underlying principle simply: “Movement decorates space. Sound decorates time. They have to mesh—that’s what I look for. I look for that mesh, probably starting with the sound before the optics—especially in the more nuanced coaching in intimate scenes.”
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The Craft, in General
Kalbacker: You’ve described a major challenge every director faces—how to capture the attention of today’s audience within the constraints of contemporary theatrical realities. How do you specifically go about this?
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Herendeen: He believes that constraints sharpen the work. “Too many choices can be overwhelming. Clever beats cash.” He thinks clarity and precision—in language and in staged movement alike—is what lets an audience feel guided rather than lectured. He has a theory about audiences: they want to be good audiences. They want to catch what you’re offering them and feel smart for catching it. A director’s job, blind or sighted, is to keep rewarding that instinct. “I try to do something operatically equivalent to a cinematic explosion or a car chase or a slip on a banana peel moment just to re-engage them every ten minutes.” The audience—the consumer—is “living in an era of high stimulus, high calorie, high sugar, low nutrition, and we have to make our stage nutrition taste good,” or risk losing them to a world of tastier competitors. That competitor, in his mind, is film—its quick cuts, its Dolby scale, its tendency to gorge the senses that he, Herendeen, is incapable of absorbing anyway. “I think that it’s more of an energy transference than really effective. It stimulates more than communicates.” His answer isn’t to chase the effects of blockbuster films. It’s to go smaller: intimate houses, unamplified voices, an audience close enough to see the mechanism of a performer making sound and creating emotion in real time. He thinks that the intimacy and the acoustic—the vibe and presence and sense of real people—is where opera actually beats film, and where it might rebuild its audience in this century.
Image: Oklahoma City University production of Sweeney Todd 2024. Pictured: Jackson Barnes as Sweeney Todd. Photo Credit: Michael Anderson
Image: Oklahoma City University production of Street Scene. Pictured; Mary Beth Nelson Zaros as Anna and ErynLeCroy as Rose. Photo Credit: Michael Anderson
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Image: Kalbacker and Herendeen in 2007 at Oklahoma City University while working on a production of Pasatieri’s Hotel Casablanca; Photo Credit: M. Kalbacker
Kalbacker: You’ve said your whole approach comes down to two words—“joy and grit, in that order.” Why does the order matter?
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Herendeen: He explains that the world is already hard for our young students, and he’d rather start his students from what they have than what they lack. “Count the blessings first”—a place to sleep, people who care about you, the chance to make art for a living. “Then you’ll need grit”—and to learn how to brace for what’s difficult. He calls himself a happy warrior. He bumps into things, he says—sometimes literally—and keeps going anyway. “I hit my shins, but I can’t be anything but an optimist. It has worked for me…The scars on my shins are a map. A history of my theater life that I wouldn’t trade for anything.”
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Kalbacker: Is there something you’d want a young opera director—sighted or not—to take from your story about hiding versus revealing a limitation?
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Herendeen: “If you’ve done the work, trust yourself. Though it’s the same music, it will be your La Bohème.” He warns against certainty without preparation, but also against paralysis: “Everybody has doubts. If you don’t, I’d worry too. But doubt keeps us humble. Stay humble, stay joyous, stay tough. Slow it down. Every problem has a solution.” He hopes, he told me, that readers come away thinking his process is no big deal—merely a version of the challenges that any director has.
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Certainly, he is right that we are all bearing our own daily challenges. What’s different is how long he has carried his alone, and how much of his skill as a director—the patience, the listening, the trust he asks of collaborators, the clarity he asks of language—turns out to have been built directly on top of it. “We’re all directors—of a stage, of a room, of the stories other people tell about us,” he told me. “We direct the audience’s attention.” He simply has had more practice than most.