Category: Opera

Houston Grand Opera has elected Astley Blair, a veteran board member, community leader, and arts advocate, as the new Chairperson of its Board of Directors, effective this month.

Blair will serve a two-year term through August 1, 2027, at a time when HGO “continues to strategically expand both its world-class artistic offerings and its global presence under the leadership of General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor,” as stated in a press release.

“With Astley Blair assuming leadership of the HGO Board, I see no limit to what we can achieve,” said Dastoor.

“Astley brings with him a wealth of global business expertise gained during a dynamic career in the financial and energy sectors, and an entrepreneurial spirit that makes him the perfect choice to help lead HGO through a time of thrilling possibility,” she said.

Blair is the Chief Financial Officer of Marine Well Containment Company. Previously, he held senior management positions at Chevron, serving as the company’s Vice President and General Manager of Finance and Business Services, as well as at Texaco.

An HGO board member since 2004, Blair chaired its Audit Committee and has served on the Audiences, Philanthropy, and Management Evaluation and Development committees. In 2021, he co-chaired the committee that selected and recruited Dastoor to lead HGO. Since last year, he has also been part of the Strategic Advisory Group, founded in partnership with the Boston Consulting Group to advance HGO’s strategic planning efforts over the next decade.  

“For decades, HGO has pushed the boundaries of what is possible, and now, with a clear vision of what the future of American opera can be, this is our time,” said Blair. “It’s an honor to serve this board and help lead this storied institution into the future.” 

As Board Chair, Blair succeeds Claire Liu, who served a special three-year term and received OPERA America’s National Opera Trustee Recognition Award in 2024.

“I plan to continue my work in service of this fantastic organization, and I look forward to watching the company advance its mission with Astley Blair, one of its most devoted champions, as its next Chairperson of the Board,” said Liu.

Blair’s additional work in the community includes currently serving on the boards of the Houston Airport System Development Corporation and the American Leadership Forum. He was the former Chairman of the Center for Houston’s Future and a former Board Member of the Greater Houston Partnership, and has been involved with the Houston Food Bank, the United Way, and initiatives to support STEM education.

Houston Grand Opera has announced plans to release recordings on its own, newly created label, in partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra’s label LSO Live.

According to a press release, “HGO sought out a partnership with the LSO to fulfill the company’s ambitious vision of sharing its work with audiences around the world.” HGO says that this collaboration, LSO Live’s first-ever with a U.S. opera company, represents a significant opportunity to advance operas by American composers on a broader international scene.

“For decades, HGO has led the way in building the American repertoire through new commissions from the country’s finest composers,” said Khori Dastoor, HGO General Director and CEO, in a statement.

“We founded the new Houston Grand Opera label because we want more people to experience these incredible artworks, performed by the brilliant artists and musicians who grace our stage each season. With its award-winning label and rich legacy of inspiring global audiences, the London Symphony Orchestra is the ideal partner to help bring Houston’s operatic innovation to the world,” Dastoor said.

Set for an August 2025 release, Intelligence, by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, will be the first album in the new collaboration between Houston Grand Opera and LSO Live— featuring soprano Janai Brugger, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, baritone Michael Mayes, and the HGO Orchestra conducted by Kwamé Ryan.

Intelligence, which was commissioned by HGO and which made its World Premiere in 2023, is inspired by the true story of Mary Jane Bowser, an enslaved woman who became a spy for the Union during the American Civil War, and Elizabeth Van Lew, a member of the Confederate family who enslaved Bowser and who ran the spy ring.

Other forthcoming albums include:

• Breaking the Waves, by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, captured during HGO’s spring 2025 regional premiere

• El Milagro del Recuerdo, the HGO-commissioned mariachi opera by composer Javier Martínez and librettist Leonard Foglia, recorded during its 2019 world premiere

• Florencia en el Amazonas, by composer Daniel Catán and librettist Marcela Fuentes-Berain, commissioned by HGO in 1996 and inspired by the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, in a recording from the company’s 2019 revival starring soprano Ana María Martínez

“We are incredibly excited to partner with Houston Grand Opera on their new record label,” said Becky Lees, LSO Live Director, in a statement.

“LSO Live is committed to supporting arts organizations around the world in delivering high-quality content to music enthusiasts internationally, and this partnership aligns perfectly with our mission,” Lees said. “We look forward to working closely with HGO to preserve and celebrate the rich tradition of opera for future generations.” 

Intelligence and Breaking the Waves will be released in both physical and digital formats. Florencia en el Amazonas and El Milagro del Recuerdo will be available via streaming and download platforms, including Apple Music Classical, Amazon, and Spotify. 

Nicole Kenley-Miller says that she’s most excited about the portrayal of the character Mabel, played by Julie Hoeltzel, in this summer’s production of Pirates of Penzance by the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston.

“In other productions I have seen, she tends to be played as a cutesy, coquettish ingénue that is waiting around for a man to come and save her,” she said. “But that is simply not supported by the librettist’s text.”

In Pirates of Penzance, considered one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s funniest and most popular operettas, Mabel is the love interest of protagonist Frederic, who must serve out an apprenticeship to pirates until his 21^st birthday—that is, until 21 of his Leap Year birthdays have passed, which extends his sentence by decades.

“Gilbert paints her as a fiery young woman who knows what she wants and who is not afraid to speak up and get it,” said Kenley-Miller. “From the beginning of my conception for the piece, I knew that Mabel was going to be the key to a new interpretation.”

This summer, Kenley-Miller becomes the second woman to direct the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston in its 70-year history. Founded in 1952, the award-winning, Emmy-nominated company is considered to be the oldest continuously operating opera company in Houston.

A veteran director of opera and musical theater on stage and in film, Kenley-Miller received her DMA from the University of Houston and is Assistant Professor and Opera Stage Director at The University of Oklahoma. She is also the founder of Intersection Arts, an organization which explores the convergence of the arts and current social and cultural issues.

As stage director of Pirates of Penzance, which runs July 22-23 and July 29-30 at the Hobby Center, she succeeds British director and actor, Alistair Donkin, who served the company for 40 years as a beloved featured performer and choreographer, as well as stage director from 1985 until his retirement last summer.

Kenley-Miller’s appointment is part of a new chapter at the company, which also welcomes other changes this summer: renowned conductor Eiki Isomura, who leads Houston’s Opera in the Heights, takes the helm as Music Director; bass-baritone Joseph Rawley serves as Artistic Director, a new position responsible for conveying the company’s vision to the Board and providing long-term artistic continuity; and longtime company baritone Dennis Arrowsmith stars for the first time as Major-General Stanley, an iconic role previously sung by Donkin.

At a time when women remain underrepresented in American opera leadership positions—on average representing fewer than 30% of stage directors working in a season, according to an internal review by Opera America—this summer’s production of Pirates is also noteworthy for its female-driven production team. Led by Kenley-Miller, they include Jodi Bobrovsky (Set Designer), Riana Canetti-Rios (Lighting Designer), Shaun Heath and Mary Webber (Costume Designers), Lauren Pastorek (Choreographer), Debs Ramser (Stage Manager), Cathy Comeaux (Wig Stylist), Susie DeBlieck (Makeup Designer), Carolena Lara (Assistant Director Intern), and Sarah Roberts (Production Intern).

From portraying Mabel in a much stronger way than usual to dressing the character in late-Victorian hiking suits, Kenley-Miller says she hopes that the audience will see that the production aims to present the women of Pirates in a new light.

Houston Arts Journal reached out to Nicole Kenley-Miller for the following interview about her vision as a stage director and her production team’s interpretation of Pirates:

Houston Arts Journal: Throughout your career, you’ve “worked fluidly between the opera and music theatre genres,” as your bio says. How did your love of the performing arts begin?

Nicole Kenley-Miller: I grew up singing in school and church choirs. When I started my undergraduate degree, I was just planning to sing as a hobby while pursuing a pre-med degree. Even though I had never seen an opera, I decided to audition for the production my freshman year, and they cast me as Florence Pike in Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring. The opera bug bit me, and I changed my major to Vocal Performance.

I went on to study at Eastman School of Music and then had a long career singing and teaching voice in the Houston area where I gradually became more interested in stage direction, because it offered more scope for the imagination. I started directing shows around Houston and ultimately got a doctorate in Opera and Directing at University of Houston. Each show I direct is a new world I get to step into and learn about. While I still sing, directing is now my main focus, and I have never looked back.

HAJ: Do you remember the first production you ever directed? What was that experience like? I’d love to hear a bit of the story behind that, in the spirit of getting to know you.

NKM: The first few productions I directed were for Lone Star College–Cy-Fair. I remember a production of Camelot we did there, which included an original set and costumes–a fairly significant amount of resource for a director who is just starting out. Usually at that point in one’s career, you have to make do with some black theatrical cubes and costumes from the actors’ closets. But I actually had the opportunity to collaborate on a design with their in-house set designer and a costume designer, who was the mother of one of the cast members. The conception and design of a show is a part of the process that I have come to love so much, because it allows me to create a world and imagine ways to tell these beloved stories through different lenses.

HAJ: You’re taking over as director of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston after 40 years of Alistair Donkin at the helm. What do you personally enjoy—or want people to know—about Gilbert and Sullivan’s work?

NKM: It has been such an honor to be the first director to open a new chapter for the Gilbert and Sullivan Society after Alistair’s long legacy with the company. I worked with Alistair Donkin and Robert Linder as a G&S chorister and understudy of Katisha in The Mikado when I was fresh out of undergraduate school in 1997, and I will always be grateful to them for their encouragement of me in the early stages of my career.

Gilbert & Sullivan is such great repertoire for young singers to get their start. It offers very accessible music and dialogue that draws on so many of the fundamental concepts of comedy that have been passed down over time. If a singer can do this kind of broad comedy, which is so dependent on good timing and understanding of how to use one’s body, they can pretty much do anything else on stage.

Many people don’t realize that Gilbert & Sullivan is a historical touchstone for much of our modern-day music theatre, and it has been a major influence on so many artists who write and perform on Broadway stages and in film today—Lin Manuel-Miranda, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Kelsey Grammer, to name a few.

HAJ: You happen to be only the 2^nd woman to direct Houston’s Gilbert and Sullivan Society. The company tells me that previously Carolyn Franklin directed The Gondoliers in 1978. Because I know that you’re interested in the intersection of social/cultural issues and art, I wanted to ask how you view your opportunity to direct this production as a female director?  What aspects of Gilbert and Sullivan’s work do you wish to bring out, which might have been overlooked—or could be reinterpreted?

NKM: It is such an honor to be the second woman to direct for the Society. As a woman in the male-dominated industry of stage directing, the particular lens I bring to every show cannot help but be influenced by my perspective as a woman. I have created and directed several pieces that are explicitly about a woman’s perspective, such as my recent work The Women Have Something to Say that opened off-Broadway in New York back in May.

While it’s not always possible to be as direct with these themes in more traditional operas, I find that I am constantly trying to reevaluate the female characters in a show by going back to the original text that the librettist wrote. With so many of these canonical works, the composers and librettists originally wrote the female characters in strong and dynamic ways, which have often been watered down or smoothed out by directors over decades of performance practice. I often find this with Mozart heroines, and it is equally an issue with historical interpretations of the women in Gilbert and Sullivan. I hope the audience will see that we are presenting the women’s roles in Pirates in a new light.

There is also an opportunity with G&S to bring out the original intent of their works, which was to poke fun at the very aristocratic class that had the means to attend their performances. Their works were originally a satirical commentary on the socio-economic inequities that existed in their day. Over time, this intent has been lost, so we’re trying to punch up those themes in this production of Pirates as well.

HAJ: Can you tell us about your take on Pirates—and, in particular, your “fresh spin” on the character Mabel?

NKM: I’m most excited about the portrayal of Mabel. In other productions I have seen, she tends to be played as a cutesy, coquettish ingénue that is waiting around for a man to come and save her. But that is simply not supported by the librettist’s text. Gilbert paints her as a fiery young woman who knows what she wants and who is not afraid to speak up and get it. From the beginning of my conception for the piece, I knew that Mabel was going to be the key to a new interpretation.

To amplify her character, I decided to update the piece from its usual 1870s setting to 1893, so that we could capitalize on the historical synchronicity of the burgeoning women’s suffrage movement in Britain. Moving to the late 19^th century also allowed us to explore different costumes for the women. When we first meet them, they are hiking over the Cornish seaside cliffs, so this later setting allowed us to put them in late-Victorian hiking or cycling suits, and opened the door for Mabel to be in, [gasp], pants!

HAJ: This production seems to have a female-led creative team—not only yourself as a director, but a total of 11 women involved with producing this show (9 creative team artists and 2 interns). You shared with me that this is a “high percentage vs. the usual in the industry.”  Can you give a little context to how this compares to the industry based on your personal experience of gender equity?

NKM: I am very proud of the large representation of women on our design and production team. While women are often behind the scenes in so many areas of opera and theatre, particularly in costume design, stage management, and dance, there are certain roles in the theatre which still have a glass ceiling for women—particularly the areas of stage direction, set design, and lighting design. Though I am happy to say that this is gradually changing in the opera industry, there is still work to be done, so I am proud to have this team of women playing such a central role in Pirates.

HAJ: As a follow up, what do you see as the significance or impact of having a female-driven production?

NKM: For me, the significance of a greater presence of women in leadership in opera is not about quotas and numbers, but rather in expanding and enriching the way we tell these stories. When women or any underrepresented group tell a story, we cannot help but bring our experience to the table. Because I’m a woman, I am automatically going to bring a more organic understanding of the female characters to the forefront in my interpretation. And that vision then allows the design and production team to follow suit within their specialties of sets, costumes, choreography, etc. Ultimately, I believe the art form will benefit by expanding the way we tell these stories so that they can speak to a wider range of audiences and attract a new generations of opera lovers.

HAJ: Lastly, this year’s Pirates also features new sets designed by Jodi Bobrovsky and new costumes by Shaun Heath and Mary Webber. Can you give us a sense of what they look like and how they complement your vision of this production?

NKM: I am so excited about the new designs that Jodi Bobrovsky, Shaun Heath, and Mary Webber have brought to the table. They are colorful and full of life. The costumes are always a central way in which we communicate the period of the piece. Shaun and Mary’s designs have allowed us to capture the late Victorian look that the setting calls for, but in an anachronistic color palette for this time period that reflects the exaggerated nature of Gilbert and Sullivan’s outrageous plots and comedy. And Jodi’s colorful set design inspired by British travel posters of the Cornish coast provides a vibrant backdrop to all the hilarity that will ensue in front of it.

It should be mentioned that we have new exciting choreography as well, created by Lauren Pastorek. There is so much movement in this production, and there will never be a dull moment. All of these women have been so integral to casting a new vision for this piece, and I have so much admiration for their expertise and long histories in the Houston opera and theatre scene.

A site-specific production that focuses on the lives of those without housing in Houston, Another City will mark Houston Grand Opera’s 74^th World Premiere when it debuts on March 9, 10, and 11 at the downtown campus of Ecclesia Houston.

Based on research, interviews, and volunteer experiences at homeless service organizations, Another City aims to center and give voice to the stories of unhoused Houstonians and to explore the meaning of home.

Local efforts to support and help the city’s homeless community have included a $56 million joint homelessness initiative between the City of Houston and Harris County in 2020 and, as part of that initiative, a $7.1 million contract to rehouse people living in homeless encampments in 2022. As the Houston Chronicle reported last year: “The city’s homelessness programs have garnered attention and praise from other major U.S. cities in recent years following a more than 50 percent decrease in homelessness from 2010 to 2021, according to the Coalition for the Homeless’s data.”

Another City’s storytelling embraces “a constantly shifting and interwoven structure that gives the audience a feeling of moving through the city and the sense that although Houston is making a good deal of progress on this front, there will always be remaining questions, new challenges to resolve,” said librettist Stephanie Fleischmann.

To honor the stories of people experiencing homelessness, Fleischmann and composer Jeremy Howard Beck held listening sessions – and recorded more than 60 hours of interviews – with Houstonians through collaborations with SEARCH, The Beacon, Star of Hope, Coalition for the Homeless, and New Hope Housing, as well as the Houston Mayor’s Office. They also “joined case managers for ride-alongs … volunteered in kitchens and at clothing drives, and helped with client intake, listening closely to community members generous enough to speak with them,” according to Houston Grand Opera. From these words and rhythms, the opera’s libretto and score began to emerge.

“Listening to all these myriad stories, we soon realized we could not just tell one story, with a single protagonist,” said Fleischmann. “Our mandate, as we saw it, was to attempt to put a city on stage.”

The 75-minute opera – set within the course of a single day in the life of Houston – tells the stories of a young man who has just spent his first night on the street, a woman who has lost her son to homelessness, an unhoused veteran, a teenage volunteer, and others.

“The opera is populated with many other characters who … are all in their own way equally important to this truly ensemble work,” said Fleischmann. She added that the storylines also encounter “a young man fresh out of jail and new to the system, a man struggling to overcome his addiction so that he can be there for his wife, a chronically homeless woman who lives at the bus station.”

Composer Jeremy Howard Beck said he was inspired by the sounds of the voices of the people he interviewed.

“There were the many different musics of the way people spoke as they talked to us, and I felt a deep responsibility to honor that musicality in how the voice parts were composed,” said Beck.

“Some people told us about their favorite music, and I believed that referencing those musical languages for those characters was something I could give back to them, a way the characters could ‘speak for themselves,’” he said.

Beck also made field recordings around the city to layer in his score, which creates the “feeling of immersion in an urban soundtrack.”

“One recording I made just a few days ago happened to include a sort of ‘duet’ between a post-dawn chorus of songbirds and a worker intermittently power-washing a roof many stories above me,” said Beck. “I also love grackle sounds! I can’t get enough of them and their strange, swoopy, laser-gun, rusty-gate calls.”

Houston Grand Opera says that Another City is not only a vehicle for sharing the stories of unhoused Houstonians but also an opportunity to create continued engagement with the city’s homeless service groups and their clients.

“We have connected with a multitude of amazing individuals committed solving the issue of homelessness. They have educated HGO on how we, as an opera company and not a social service organization, could contribute to the needs of this community,” said Jennifer Bowman, HGO’s Director of Community and Learning.

“Thanks to that guidance, HGO has steadily provided performances and youth, family, and other programming to clients and staff at facilities like The Beacon, Brigid’s Hope, Ecclesia, and House of Tiny Treasures,” she said. “These activities will continue in some form after the close of Another City.”

Another City is the penultimate commission of HGO’s long-running “Song of Houston” initiative, which since 2007 has commissioned groundbreaking operas that celebrate diverse experiences and contemporary life in Houston – including Cruzar la Cara de la Luna (2010), considered to be the world’s first mariachi opera.

According Bowman, the “Song of Houston” initiative will be discontinued next year (after the commission of The Big Swim, a chamber opera in honor of the Lunar New Year, scheduled for February 2024), as the company shifts its focus to creating new Houston-centric works in collaboration with composer-in-residence Joel Thompson.

“The company will be invested in supporting Mr. Thompson as he continues to grow as a Houston resident and develop multiple projects, including a full-length opera, within this city’s unique atmosphere, history, culture, and diversity,” said Bowman. “He is already working on a song cycle with playwright, educator, librettist, and former Houston Poet Laureate Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, based on oral history archives of Black Houstonians collected by the Emancipation Park Conservancy in Third Ward and others.”

Bowman added, “No matter the initiative, HGO’s mission remains to enrich our diverse community through the art of opera.”