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Derrell Acon

Fulbright scholar Dr. Derrell Acon is a dynamic performer/teacher/activist who has appeared in venues across the nation, Africa, and Europe. As an award-winning bass-baritone, Derrell Acon understands the level of passion and understanding that music can instill.

Dr. Acon is a 2013-2014 Fulbright scholar to Italy, where he researched the operas of Giuseppe Verdi and lectured on the Black American experience. He is also an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grantee for his work in Verdian scholarship and performance and a frequent presenter throughout the U.S. at such venues as conferences for the National Association for Ethnic Studies and National Association of Negro Musicians, and internationally at venues in Europe and Africa. He has also been seen as an opera lecturer at The Chautauqua Institution, Portland Opera, Long Beach Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, and Des Moines Metro Opera.

Julia Bullock

American classical singer Julia Bullock is “a musician who delights in making her own rules” (New Yorker). Combining versatile artistry with a probing intellect and commanding stage presence, she has, in her early 30s, already headlined productions and concerts at preeminent arts institutions around the world. Also an innovative curator in high demand, she holds notable positions including opera programming host of the new broadcast channel All Arts, founding core member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), 2018-19 Artist-in-Residence at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019-20 Artist-in-Residence of the San Francisco Symphony and 2020-22 Artist-in-Residence of London’s Guildhall School. Bullock previously made debuts at San Francisco Opera in the world premiere of Girls of the Golden West, Santa Fe Opera in Doctor Atomic, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and Dutch National Opera in The Rake’s Progress, and the English National Opera, Spain’s Teatro Real and Russia’s Bolshoi Theatre in the title role of The Indian Queen. In concert, she has collaborated with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic, while her recital highlights include appearances at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Celebrity Series, Washington’s Kennedy Center, the Mostly Mozart and Ojai Music festivals, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her growing discography features Grammy-nominated accounts of West Side Story and Doctor Atomic, which she recorded with the composer conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Committed to integrating community activism with her musical life, Bullock is also a prominent voice for social consciousness and change.

Anthony Roth Costanzo

This season, GRAMMY- Nominated Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo returned to the Metropolitan Opera in the title role of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten. He has appeared with many of the world’s other leading opera companies including Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, English National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Los Angeles Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Glyndebourne, Dallas Opera, Glimmerglass and Teatro Real Madrid. In concert he has sung with the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Versasilles, The Kennedy Center, The Met Museum, The Armory, Madison Square Garden, and the Guggenheim. He received his bachelors from Princeton University and his Masters from Manhattan School of Music.

Liz Diamond

Liz Diamond is the Chair of Directing at Yale School of Drama and Resident Director at Yale Repertory Theatre. Among the many productions she has directed at Yale Rep and nationally are premieres by playwrights Suzan-Lori Parks, Nilo Cruz, Octavio Solis, and Marcus Gardley, and productions of classical and modern works by Stravinsky, Shakespeare, Euripides, Shaw, Racine, Molière, Beckett, and Brecht. Her work has garnered OBIE awards and Connecticut Critics Circle Awards. Liz recently adapted and directed Maia Kalman’s beloved children’s book, Max Makes a Million for the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, and is working with Anna Deavere Smith on a theatrical adaptation of the James Baldwin/Margaret Mead dialogue, A Rap on Race for the New York Theatre Workshop. She is a proud member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and serves on its Executive Board.

Gundula Kreuzer 

Gundula Kreuzer is Professor of Music at Yale University and author of the award-winning Verdi and the Germans: From Unification to the Third Reich (Cambridge, 2010) as well as Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera (Oakland, 2018). She edited Verdi’s chamber music, was reviews editor for The Opera Quarterly and editorial board member for JAMS, and serves on the editorial boards of VerdiPerspektiven, WagnerSpectrum, and Cambridge Opera Journal. Her current research interests include contemporary “indie opera”; media archaeologies of opera and the screen; and post-war historiography, performance practice, and cultural amnesia regarding music from the Nazi era. She also enjoys talking and writing about operatic matters in public contexts, such as in TLS, on BBC Radio3, and at the Metropolitan Opera. In 2019, she launched the YOST initiative and received the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association for her “outstanding contribution to musicology.” 

Wendy Lesser

Wendy Lesser, the founding and current editor of The Threepenny Review, is the author of twelve nonfiction books and one novel; her latest book, entitled Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery, came out from Farrar Straus & Giroux in May 2020. She has received awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and many other institutions, and she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences as well as of the New York Institute for the Humanities. Her journalistic writing about literature, dance, film, and music has appeared in a number of periodicals in America and abroad. Born in California and educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and UC Berkeley, Lesser now divides her time between Berkeley and New York. 

JEANINE TESORI

Jeanine Tesori is a composer of five Broadway musicals and four operas. She is the recipient of the Tony Award for Best Score, a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and one of the first women to be commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. In addition to her work as a composer, Ms. Tesori is a producer, teacher, and mother.

Broadway: Fun Home (Tony Award, Pulitzer finalist), Violet, Shrek the Musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Twelfth Night, A Free Man of Color (LCT). The Public: Soft Power (Pulitzer finalist), Mother Courage, Romeo and Juliet. Opera: Blue (WNO); A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck (Glimmerglass); The Lion, the Unicorn and Me (WNO); Grounded. Along with Missy Mazzoli, Ms. Tesori is one of the first women to be commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera. Founding Artistic Director of City Center's Encores! Off-Center. Producer: Sunday in the Park with George (Broadway, West End). Supervising Vocal Producer: Steven Spielberg's West Side Story. Lecturer: Yale.