Arts in Action: Piedmont Opera launches Fiftieth-Anniversary mainstage Season with North Carolina premières of Jake Heggie’s and Gene Scheer’s Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark (Winston-Salem, 12 - 20 November 2026)

A light breaks: Piedmont Opera presents the North Carolina premières of Jake Heggie’s and Gene Scheer’s Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark at Winston-Salem’s Hanesbrands Theatre on 12 November 2026, with additional performances on 15, 17, and 20 November
[Graphic © by Piedmont Opera]

Admirable efforts at thoughtful stewardship of the art form notwithstanding, relevance is perhaps the most divisive and confoundingly damaging concept in opera, not—as patrons who have experienced any of the forty-nine sagaciously-curated seasons presented by Piedmont Opera can affirm—owing to any inherent lack of it but because it is too often determined that relevance must be invented and fitted like ill-tailored garments onto works old and new in order to heighten opera’s appeal to Twenty-First-Century audiences. How, though, is relevance assessed? Must a listener have fought to free a wrongly-incarcerated loved one in order to find Beethoven’s Fidelio or Anthony Davis’s Central Park Five relevant? Are only those whose lives are affected by the tragic deaths of their children capable of being truly moved by Verdi’s Rigoletto or Missy Mazzoli’s Lincoln in the Bardo, or must music of any era be removed from its intended context and disguised in popular trends in pursuit of emotional connections that flourish when audiences are permitted merely to listen and to feel?

Inaugurating a Fiftieth-Anniversary Season that offers splendid musical variety with a pair of poignant, timely works by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, Piedmont Opera continues a dedication to inviting audiences to participate in journeys into the heart of opera. Under the baton of General Director Joseph Mechavich, whose wide-ranging credentials include conducting performances of many of Heggie’s and Scheer’s operatic collaborations, Piedmont Opera’s production of Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark brings to North Carolina’s Triad region exciting—and rare—opportunities both to make the acquaintance of contemporary works in the presence of their creators and to discover anew the undiminished relevance of insightfully-conceived and intelligently-performed unions of music and words—an opportunity that embodies Piedmont Opera’s mission to advocate for opera via productions of the highest caliber, always seeking to entertain, enlighten, and energize aficionados and novices alike.

Recently reflecting on preparations for Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark, Maestro Mechavich immediately paid tribute to the significance of his interactions with Heggie and Scheer, artistically and personally. ‘Selfishly, I am a better human and artist because of my friendship with Jake and Gene,’ he shared. ‘Their authenticity translates to their impeccable ability to tell stories.’ Mechavich’s work with Piedmont Opera has manifested an unwavering and consistently compelling focus on storytelling, allied with unflagging musical integrity. These traits are particularly apt for introducing North Carolinians to Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark, the Maestro suggested. ‘These two one-acts are true stories about identity, hope, and resilience.’, he said, describing them as ‘emotionally-charged pieces;rsquo; to which he returns with renewed reverence and appreciation. Immersing himself and the gifted artists assembled by Piedmont Opera in the deeply-affecting nuances of these works, Mechavich is confident that audiences will echo the sentiments that overtake him as he revisits this music. ‘I silently and tearfully say to myself at the end of every rehearsal, “WOW...just WOW!”’

Scored for mezzo-soprano soloist, clarinet, violin, ’cello, double bass, and piano, creating a soundscape recalling Klezmer music, Another Sunrise recounts harrowing events from the life of Holocaust survivor Krystyna Żywulska, whose 1946 book I Survived Auschwitz stands alongside Elie Wiesel’s Un di velt hot geshvign (best known as Night) as a seminal account of the horrors inflicted upon interned peoples by the Third Reich. In Scheer’s adaptation, atrocities witnessed and endured are omnipresent, the inability to fully fathom their cruelty expressed with aching simplicity in lines such as ‘It was always in my head but I never found the words,’, but unflappable hope and dogged determination to prevail over oppression resound in Heggie’s music and in Scheer’s closing words, ‘I just saw another sunrise.’ In Piedmont Opera’s staging, Krystyna Żywulska is portrayed by one of the Triad’s most beloved artists, soprano Jodi Burns.

A flute is added to the instrumental ensemble of Another Sunrise to form the orchestral component of Before It All Goes Dark, Scheer’s libretto for which is based upon a cinema-worthy narrative first elucidated in a series of Chicago Tribune articles penned by Howard Reich. Baritone Keith Phares appears as direly ill, traumatized Vietnam veteran Gerald ‘Mac’ McDonald, the unlikely heir to a trove of valuable artwork stolen from Prague’s Jewish elite. Traveling to Czechia to reclaim his birthright, Mac confronts the near-crippling loss of identity imposed by his rediscovery of the Jewish heritage that was hidden from him. Here, too, Scheer and Heggie powerfully depict the gnawing uncertainties of deprivation, war, and cultural suppression, but the opera’s ethos celebrates rebirth through acceptance. Phares is joined in the cast by his wife, mezzo-soprano Katherine Pracht, who revels in the challenge of bringing three characters—Mac’s Jewish ancestor Emil Freund, museum curator Misha, and Mac’s Chicagoland neighbor Sally—to life. Piedmont Opera’s production is directed by Tonya McKinny and features specially-designed scenic projections by her husband Ryan McKinny, who originated the rôle of Mac McDonald in 2024, in a performance conducted by Mechavich.

Products of an artistic partnership that has yielded some of the most acclaimed operas in the contemporary American canon, including Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick, both of which have been staged by New York’s Metropolitan Opera, as well as Virginia-set Intelligence, the world-première recording of which won the 2026 GRAMMY™ for Best Opera Recording, Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark are works in which Heggie asserts that ‘the stories and music of the present and the past exist side by side.’, as do mood and melody. ‘Both of these one-act operas were commissioned by the amazing Seattle-based organization Music of Remembrance (MOR), which was created nearly thirty years ago by Mina Miller to inspire us to remember voices silenced by the Holocaust,’ he explained. ‘Gene [Scheer] and I have created five works for MOR, each with a different perspective on what it is to survive and remember; how each of us writes and rewrites the story of our lives every day, based on what we choose to carry forward and what we want to forget.’ It is from these exchanges between embracing and rejecting elements of individual and universal histories that the relevance of these pieces emerges. ‘It’s a fascinating landscape to explore,’ the composer said. ‘In Another Sunrise, it is a woman trying to find the words to describe how she survived—what it was like—and ultimately giving up, realizing that “for some melodies, there are no words.”’

Written twelve years after Another Sunrise, as humanity grappled with recovery from global pandemic, Before It All Goes Dark examines a similar struggle to choose which aspects of a troubled existence to retain and which to abandon from a vastly different point of view. ‘In Before It All Goes Dark, it is an ailing Vietnam vet whose family would never share his ancestry or identity,’ Heggie explained. ‘And then he discovers he’s the sole heir to a priceless art collection that was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish relative. Suddenly a doorway is opened to his identity, ancestry, and legacy.’ This, Heggie suggested, is the fulcrum upon which the dramatic balance of these works rests. ‘A light breaks. And that’s what these operas are all about—the legacy of the past shining a light on who we are today.’

Epitomized by the much-lauded 2017 production of Kevin Puts’s Silent Night, Piedmont Opera’s commitment to championing contemporary repertory is indicative of the ingenuity and bold initiative with which the company perpetuates the tradition, cultivated over a half-century, of bringing opera to the citizens of central North Carolina—and bringing the people of North Carolina to the opera. In Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark, as in Piedmont Opera’s productions, the relationships among words and music, voices and instruments, artists and audiences are paramount. Is there any more meaningful measure of relevance than forging new rapport and respect in this vibrant, diverse community?

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Piedmont Opera’s production of Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark, with music by Jake Heggie and libretti by Gene Scheer, opens at Winston-Salem’s Hanesbrands Theatre at 7:30 PM on Thursday, 12 November 2026. Additional performances follow on Sunday, 15 November (3:00 PM matinée), Tuesday, 17 November (7:30 PM), and Friday, 20 November (7:30 PM).

Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer will participate in a free Question-and-Answer event at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem at 1:00 PM on Saturday, 14 November.

Tickets for performances of Another Sunrise and Before It All Goes Dark, as well as details of other events and productions in the Fiftieth-Anniversary Season, can be obtained by visiting Piedmont Opera’s website or by phoning 336.725.7101.

Sincerest thanks to Jake Heggie, Joseph Mechavich, and Mariedith Appanaitis for their kind assistance with this article.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Teatro Grattacielo brings Joseph Summer’s The Tempest to the stage in an evocative, enchantingly-sung production (New York City, 18 July 2026)

JOSEPH SUMMER (born 1956): The Tempest [world staged première] — Daniel Klein (Prospero), Kayla Viviana (Ariel), Sara Kennedy (Miranda), Benjamin Sieverding (Caliban), Omar Najmi (Ferdinand), Maggie Finnegan (Iris), Chantelle Grant (Ceres), Sarah Johnson (Juno), Jordan Rutter-Covatto (Trinculo), Eliam Ramos (Stephano), David Gordon (Sebastian), Justin Ryan (Antonio), DeAndre Simmons (Alonso), Heather Green (Nereus), Eleanna Finokalioti (Calypso), Shira Ziv (Ligeia), Jenna Weitman (Echo); Teatro Grattacielo Orchestra; Enrico Fagone, conductor [Stefanos Koroneos, director; Hala Shah, choreographer; Gregory Pernicone, Jr., assistant director and properties; Oscar Escobedo, set designer; Will Rossiter, lighting designer; Anabel Simotas, costume designer; Karine Ivey, hair and makeup designer and artist; Matthew Deinhart, projections and mapping; Teatro Grattacielo, Ellen Stewart Theatre, Shares at La MaMa, New York City, USA; Saturday, 18 July 2026]

Likely completed in 1611, as its author entered the final phase of his creative career, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest was from its inception a work of uncommon insight and ingenuity. Shaped by characters and plot devices with autobiographical associations, episodes derived from then-recent history, and allegory that, despite the passing of four centuries, retains its relevance, The Tempest is in many ways an incarnation of what librettists and composers would later designate as ‘dramma giacosa,’ a fascinating domain in which duress and diversion coexist. In Prospero, the deposed duke of Milan who by being robbed of his regal authority learns to govern both his own ambitions and his stewardship of his subjects’ welfare, some scholars find a depiction of Shakespeare himself, contemplating his approaching farewells to life and the stage. Whether this symbolic representation of the artist in what he may have known would be one of his final solo projects was overtly intentional can be debated, but there can be no doubt that The Tempest is an acutely personal piece, an engaged mind’s paean to discovery through deprivation. It is not solely in its chronology, skilled use of language and meter, and still-potent theatricality that The Tempest is a ‘mature’ play: in its themes of isolation, corruption, deception, self-cognizance, magnanimity, and hope, it is akin to a treatise on the ills and healing of humanity, the beauty of its words intensifying the bitterness of their meaning.

The depth and diversity of its character development, allied with the prevalence of music in Shakespeare’s original concept, heighten The Tempest’s appeal to composers. In tandem with adaptations in an array of genres, composers’ settings of texts from and incidental music for The Tempest have introduced the play to audiences with little interest in Jacobean theatre. The obvious advantages of adapting Shakespeare plays for the stage notwithstanding, there is also tremendous peril in the enterprise: even a work like Bellini’s I Capuleti ed i Montecchi, which shares its subject with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet but is not directly sourced therefrom, is illogically subjected to analysis of its merits as a work within the Shakespearean diaspora.

Composers of Shakespeare adaptations acclaimed as worthy of their provenance—notably Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Brett Dean’s Hamlet—would surely unanimously cite the efforts of their librettists as a critical component of these successes. Whether using Shakespeare’s own words, in English or in translation, or crafting new texts inspired by them, a librettist faces innumerable questions of which passages, characters, and scenes to include or omit, ever cognizant of the likelihood that their decisions will earn the disapprobation of some observers. A piece like Franco Faccio’s Amleto, a high-quality product of a much-admired musician, is therefore dismissed as a failure because its libretto is deemed to be inadequate in its reworking of Shakespeare—a cautionary tale full of sound and fury, signifying the difficulties of bringing Shakespeare to the opera stage.

The most fruitful familial collaborations between composer and librettist are perhaps those of the brothers Tchaikovsky, but composer Joseph Summer found in his daughter Eve Summer an optimal partner in transforming The Tempest into an opera. Wading into waters commendably navigated in recent decades by composers Lee Hoiby and Thomas Adès and their respective librettists, the Summers dove into Shakespeare’s drama with respect for both its literary and humanistic splendors and its astonishing parallels with events in their own lives. By choosing and arraying Shakespeare’s words with scrupulous consideration of their dramatic purpose and aural potential, the younger Summer fashioned a libretto that possesses necessary concision and clarity without sacrificing any of the play’s spirit and substance. The Summers’s Tempest began its public journey on the concert platform, but Teatro Grattacielo’s world-première fully-staged production, astutely devised to utilize the full space of the Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa, affirmed that the piece belongs in opera houses. Only during the allegorical wedding scene in Act Two was there a loss of momentum, and the fault there is shouldered in part by Shakespeare, whose verses in that sequence are more engrossing as literature than as theatre. Brave are the poets who wrangle with molding Shakespeare texts into libretti: still more valiant—and exceedingly rare—are those who do so as effectively as Eve Summer did in this Tempest.

Bear up and board ’em: countertenor Jordan Rutter-Covatto as Trinculo (left) and baritone Eliam Ramos as Stephano (right) in Teatro Grattacielo’s July 2026 production of Joseph Summer’s The Tempest
[Photographs © by Jennifer Katzman, Steven Pisano, & Teatro Grattacielo]

Its fundamental conflicts between liberating solitude and need for connection drawn from harrowing misadventures with man and nature, Joseph Summer’s score is a marvel: harmonically advanced but tonal, rhythmically vibrant but singable, unapologetically innovative but enchantingly melodic. A particular wonder of the composer’s writing is the skill with which competing texts and emotions are communicated and contrasted in ensembles. Aided by thoughtful casting, characters’ vocal lines remained discernible throughout the performance, including in the most intricately-scored passages. Summer’s orchestral writing also contributed immensely to this quality, as did the virtuosic work of conductor Enrico Fagone and the thirteen musicians under his guidance.

Summer’s instrumental writing allies close attention to individual and combined timbres with text-driven use of colorations, at times recalling pages from Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex and Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero. In Teatro Grattacielo’s performance, Fagone conducted expertly, mostly maintaining accuracy of ensemble despite spatial trials. Occasional missteps in the strings and winds were quickly righted. Pianist Saverio Alfieri and harpist Tomina Parvanova played with exceptional grace, and Pawel Knapik conquered Summer’s exacting lines for the double bass with unflinching aplomb. Summer’s music deserves nothing less than the committed, euphonious performance that it received, and each musician’s labors were lavishly rewarded.

Continuing the odyssey of self-discovery begun by Shakespeare and furthered by Summer, Teatro Grattacielo’s Artistic and General Director Stefanos Koroneos incorporated aspects of his traumatic origin story into his staging of The Tempest. Conjuring a visual and cultural atmosphere reminiscent of the films of Theo Angelopoulos, the production mirrored Koroneos’s escape from the oppression of his native Greece, finding in Prospero’s exile on and eventual acclimation to a desolate isle vestiges of the director’s quest for safety and acceptance. The action observed by a quartet of mythological personages (Eleanna Finokalioti as Calypso, Heather Green as Nereus, Shira Ziv as Ligeia, and Jenna Weitman as Echo), Anabel Simotas’s chic costume designs and Karine Ivey’s cosmopolitan hair and makeup stylings dovetailed appealingly with Oscar Escobedo’s whimsical sets, dominated by illuminated palm trees, inflatable flamingoes, and an omnipresent typewriter, symbolic of Prospero’s sorcery but one that worked its magic too loudly and distractingly during sung passages.

Both Will Rossiter’s lighting designs and Hala Shah’s choreography danced entrancingly. Koroneos heightened the cinematic pace of Summer’s storytelling by frequently changing the cast’s and the audience’s visual perspectives, not least by relocating the primary setting from one end of the theatre to the other during Act Two. This ‘reset’ intensified focus on the opera’s developing crisis, mimicking the upending of the characters’ lives. Koroneos’s experience as a singer perceptibly informed his management of the staging’s physicality, ensuring that the athleticism of vocal production was never impeded, but the director’s life experiences—danger, dismay, disenfranchisement, and, at last, ascendancy, belonging, and happiness—provided the vessel in which Summer’s opera made its victorious maiden voyage.

Deployed by Summer in his Tempest much as the nymphs Najade, Dryade, and Echo are in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, notably in the extensive masque celebrating Miranda’s and Ferdinand’s nuptials in Act Two, the spirits Iris, Ceres, and Juno—portrayed by soprano Maggie Finnegan, mezzo-soprano Chantelle Grant, and soprano Sarah Johnson—brought Aliki Vougiouklaki-esque glamour to the stage. Finnegan’s voice glistened as her lines ascended above the stave, and both Grant and Johnson sang with lustrous tone. Summer’s treatment of the comedic characters Trinculo and Stephano, jester and butler to the waylaid king of Naples, also has much in common with the commedia dell’arte players in Ariadne auf Naxos. Countertenor Jordan Rutter-Covatto voiced Trinculo’s ‘Here’s another storm brewing’ incisively, and bass-baritone Eliam Ramos articulated Stephano’s ‘I shall no more to sea’ suggestively. Much farcical business was asked of the perennialy-inebriated Trinculo and Stephano, and Rutter-Covatto and Ramos responded with uninhibited antics that amused without lessening appreciation of the excellence of their singing.

The isle is full of noises: bass Benjamin Sieverding as Caliban in Teatro Grattacielo’s July 2026 production of Joseph Summer’s The Tempest
[Photographs © by Jennifer Katzman, Steven Pisano, & Teatro Grattacielo]

Sebastian, the Neapolitan king’s none-too-loyal brother, was depicted with vocal sheen and wryly obsequious demeanor by tenor David Gordon, and Prospero’s usurping brother Antonio had in baritone Justin Ryan an interpreter who conveyed the illicit duke’s weakness of constitution with vocal strength. Bass DeAndre Simmons triumphed over bizarre costuming to lend regal authority and genuine pathos to Alonso, the distraught king of Naples who believes his son to have perished in the shipwreck that landed him and his misfit band on Prospero’s island. The king’s desperation in seeking news of his son was all the more wrenching for being declaimed with vocal opulence, Simmons’s voice effortlessly filling the theatre. In Act Two, he sang ‘By’r lakin, I can go no further’ with visceral weariness, his tone shaded by despair. His son restored to him and his participation in removing Prospero from his throne forgiven, the proud king was at least in those moments of reconciliation foremost a rejoicing father, and Simmons voiced his music with magnetic poise and beauty.

Unlike Hoiby and Adès, whose writing for the character often rockets into the vocal stratosphere, Summer centered his music for Ariel in mezzo-soprano range, respecting the sprite’s oft-neglected masculinity. In Kayla Viviana’s performance, Ariel was an androgynous, ethereal presence, at times seeming to function as his fellow characters’ collective conscience. Whether Ariel was at center stage or surveying events from peripheral perches, Viviana’s soft-grained timbre floated into the hall to hypnotic effect. The flute-like mellifluence of her voicing of ‘Come unto these yellow sands’ was soothing, and, in Act Two, she sang ‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I’ with growing fervor. There were fleeting insecurities in the lower range, and trills were sketched rather than truly sung, but Viviana recovered with unflustered musicality, her Ariel’s calm disdain for the turmoil in which he finds himself echoing his counterpart Puck’s assertion of ‘What fools these mortals be!’

Vocally and theatrically, bass Benjamin Sieverding inhabited the rôle of Caliban with incredible immediacy and unexpected expressivity. The ill-begotten son of the vengeful Sycorax is unquestionably monstrous of form and intent, as Sieverding’s serpentine movements and thunderous vocalism intimated, but he is also wronged, orphaned by his mother’s death and subsequently enslaved by Prospero. With his singing of ‘All the infections that the sun sucks up,’ his resentful confrontations with Prospero, and his near-manic interactions with Sebastian, Trinculo, and Stephano, this Caliban garnered true pity. In Sieverding’s portrayal, Caliban was often more true to his nature—and therefore, by the standard advocated by Polonius in Hamlet, more human—than his fellow characters. In Act Two, ‘I shall be pinched to death!’ was humorous but also unnerving, prompting new horror at the injustice Caliban was forced to endure. Sieverding’s commands of range, dynamics, inflections, and diction were complete. Too many singers and directors fail to grasp that a villain must be attractive to be credible. Caliban’s villainy is situational and to some degree justified, but he, too, engages most when he is permitted to display modicums of softer feelings. This Sieverding achieved with extraordinary aptitude.

My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up: tenor Omar Najmi as Ferdinand (left) and soprano Sara Kennedy as Miranda (right) in Teatro Grattacielo’s July 2026 production of Joseph Summer’s The Tempest
[Photographs © by Jennifer Katzman, Steven Pisano, & Teatro Grattacielo]

Love as a redeeming force is a theme that is as prevalent—and as complex—in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets as in the operas of Richard Wagner. The unlikely union of Prospero’s daughter Miranda and Ferdinand, Alonso’s presumed-lost son, in The Tempest is rare in facilitating lasting rapprochement, the lovers’s changing of Prospero’s heart akin to the awakening of paternal affection and protectiveness in Sachs as he accepts Eva’s love for Walther in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. As sung in this performance by tenor Omar Najmi, Summer’s Ferdinand was pensive and intelligent, an atypical romantic hero except in his refulgence of voice. His singing of ‘Where should this music be?’ exuded a sense of wonder, and the dulcet ecstasy that reverberated as Ferdinand’s desire for Miranda increased robbed the voice of none of its strength and projection. ‘Admired Miranda!’ in Act Two was sung with a young man’s eagerness and earnestness, the words surging from the character’s passion. His polished-garnet timbre luminous in all registers, Najmi’s singing might be said to have been fittingly Shakespearean: nuanced, boundary-defying, and unforgettably sincere.

Soprano Sara Kennedy’s Miranda was a faithful daughter to Prospero and a well-matched partner for Ferdinand whilst also preserving her individuality. Inquisitiveness quivered in the soprano’s voice as Miranda conversed with her father about the circumstances of their arrival on the island, Kennedy ladening ‘If by your art, my dearest father’ with uncertainty and trepidation. Warmth radiated from her singing as Miranda fell in love with Ferdinand, however, her upper register taking on added brilliance. Still, there were shadows of shyness and doubt when, in Act Two, she sculpted the line in ‘I do not know one of my sex’ with exquisite finesse. Miranda is perhaps the opera’s most dynamic character, her embrace of womanhood amidst strife not unlike that of Puccini’s Cio-Cio San, and Kennedy enacted the character’s evolution with conviction and singing of uniform beauty.

In literature, in this opera, and in this production, Prospero is comprised of elements of Shakespeare, Summer, and Koroneos, and all of these guises were served by bass-baritone Daniel Klein, yet his Prospero remained his own man, the product of profound thought and feeling. The recalcitrant ruler ousted from his seat of power predominated in Act One, the timbre flinty and rugged, but when he sang ‘In few, they hurried us aboard’ to Miranda the father’s tenderness was palpable. Loathing both for Caliban and, more gnawingly, for his own choices boiled in ‘I have used thee, filth as thou art,’ rendering the very different attitudes in Prospero’s exchanges with Miranda and Ferdinand more pointed.

In Act Two, regret emerged touchingly from Klein’s singing of ‘If I have too austerely punish’d you’ and ‘Our revels now are ended,’ the vocalism tinted with autumnal hues. Though intonation intermittently wavered, the dignity of ‘I do forgive thy rankest fault’ was also movingly imparted through innate nobility of phrasing and superb mezza-voce singing. The calibre of Summer’s music for The Tempest reaches its zenith in ‘Now my charms are all o’rthrown,’ and Klein’s singing followed suit, closing the opera with gripping stillness. Not every note of his singing of Prospero’s daunting music was effortless, but every moment of his performance was heartfelt, disclosing the inner tumult that rages within Prospero.

The Tempest is a valedictory work, an ode to the foibles of men and letters in which one of theatre’s most penetrating minds ponders withdrawal and mortality. In Teatro Grattacielo’s momentous staging of this operatic homage, Prospero found elusive tranquility, Shakespeare astounded with undiminished poignancy, Stefanos Koroneos thrived in a world that welcomes him, and Joseph Summer inaugurated a new path for his sublime Tempest.

RECORDING REVIEW: Sergei Prokofiev — Miniatures (Brian Woods, piano; Navona Records NV6870)

SERGEI SERGEYEVICH PROKOFIEV (1891 – 1953): Miniatures – Works for Solo Piano, Opp. 22, 31, 17, and 4 — Brian Woods, piano [Recorded in Arianna String Quartet Recital Hall, University of Missouri at St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, 12 – 15 January 2026; Navona Records NV6870, 49:28; Available from major music retailers and streaming services via Navona Records]

Contemplating his achievements as both composer and global citizen and the gravity of creators’ responsibilities to Art, self, and humanity, Sergei Prokofiev asserted in 1951 that a composer’s foremost charges are to ‘beautify human life and defend it.’ Aspects of this belief lurk within the plot of Prokofiev’s Soviet opera Semyon Kotko, in which a ‘son of working people’ seeks to expose corruption and disloyalty and allow true love to prevail. This is perhaps typically operatic in its singleminded naïveté, but it exemplifies Prokofiev’s conviction that artists can and must strive to combat the wrongs of their societies. In a body of work encompassing many genres and forms, Prokofiev’s music for solo piano spans the entirety of his career, from juvenile works to the remarkable Sonatas of his final years, paralleling the composer’s musical and philosophical maturation. The handful of piano works with extant programmatic associations exhibit a conscious aspiration to spur action by inspiring reaction, the composer instigating social progress by providing it with new sounds and rhythms.

With Miniatures, expertly produced and engineered for Navona Records by Nathan Hershey, pianist Brian Woods journeys through an assortment of some of Prokofiev’s most experimental works for solo piano, none of them longer than four minutes in duration. Listeners who heard Woods’s previous Navona release Wanderings, a superbly-played recital of works by Chopin, Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger, and Amy Beach, are acquainted with the impeccably-honed technique and interpretive discernment that are cornerstones of his pianism, but even the briefest of Prokofiev’s works for piano present formidable challenges to very gifted pianists. Woods’s playing of these ‘miniatures’ demonstrates comprehension not only of their singular musical accents but also of Prokofiev’s mandate that artists should devote their work to defying barriers and boundaries.

Products of a fertile compositional period in the second decade of the Twentieth Century, a time during which the composer was also preparing ballet scores, an array of songs, and his First Symphony, the twenty-episode Visions fugitives of Prokofiev’s Opus 22 constitute an intelligently-curated survey of common and emerging styles of contemporary composition, incorporating elements of Russian traditions with the innovations heard in music by French composers including Erik Satie and Claude Debussy. Lauded even before their public premiere as a noteworthy advancement of Prokofiev’s unique musical idiom, the Visions ally dissonance prefiguring the Second Viennese School with adherence to conventional tonalities and rhythmic figurations, albeit unconventionally employed. Nearly twenty years after giving the first performance of Visions fugitives as part of a 1918 recital in today’s Saint Petersburg, Prokofiev recorded a sampling of the pieces in Paris. These recordings remain a benchmark, but Woods’s playing of the Visions on this recording reveals that he embraced the lessons offered by the composer in his preserved performances but was not tempted to emulate Prokofiev’s approach.

Traversing all twenty of the Visions requiring only twenty-five minutes affirms that these are indeed fleeting works, the most concise of which lasts only a half-minute, yet there is remarkable cohesiveness in the progression of disparate rhythms, tempi, and colors that characterize Visions. From the equivocal, enigmatic first bars of the opening Lentamente, Woods’s playing of Visions fugitives shares the interpretive flexibility and technical prowess with which Walter Gieseking played the music of Debussy. The halting, almost harsh intervals and harmonic stridency of the following Andante is realized with unflagging energy. The subsequent Allegretto resembles a bel canto scene on a diminutive scale, the bristly central section delivered with theatrical intensity. Woods’s management of the alternations of staccati and cantilena in the Animato is deft, as is his delineation of the contrasting joviality, terpsichorean crispness, and gossamer buoyancy in the Molto giocoso, Con eleganza, and Pittoresco, the last of which is phrased with lightness that honors the movement’s popular incarnation for harp.

Arguably the least-radical of the Visions, the Commodo is nevertheless tinged with Modernist shades that glisten in Woods’s performance, and the Allegro tranquillo’s mercurial melodic shifts between the hands are cleverly integrated into a seamless flow. Woods limns first the jocular irony in the aptly-titled Ridicolosamente and then the discordant ambivalence of the Con vivacità with striking specificity. The darkness that pervades the Assai moderato is disquieting but never threatens to become lugubrious. The Allegretto and the toccata-esque Feroce are played with a level of skill that belies the demands of the music, but the power with which the near-cyclonic thrust of the Inquieto is conveyed is still more arresting. Riveting, too, is the somber dignity disclosed in the six repetitions of a funereal bass figuration in the Dolente.

The Poetico movement is unique among the Visions in being built upon a melodic line assigned to the bass, and Woods misses none of the significance of its haunting quality, wholly avoiding histrionic excess. The pianist vividly communicates a dulcet gentleness that, despite Prokofiev’s description, can all too easily be overlooked amidst the listlessness of the Con una dolce lentezza. The triadic writing that permeates the Presto agitatissimo e molto accentuato receives from Woods a performance of unaffected intensity, his concentration on the accuracy of note values unmistakable—and invaluable. The most expansive of the Visions, the valedictory Lento irrealmente, is characterized by a piquant theme, deployed in this performance with refreshing restraint. In approximately the time required to play a single movement of many of the great Romantic sonatas, Woods and Prokofiev summarize virtually the entire history of composition for the piano prior to 1920 and foretell much of what has followed, from Britten and Finnissy to Adams and Adès.

The Opus 31 «Сказки старой бабушки» (Tales of an Old Grandmother) were composed after Prokofiev emigrated to New York, following the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and are suffused with a refugee’s sadness and yearning for distant places. Each of the work’s four movements is centered in a minor key, the first in D minor, the base key of many Requiem settings. The moods of Opus 31 could hardly be more different than those of the far larger and long-delayed work that dominated Prokofiev’s artistic resources during the writing of the Tales, the farcical opera L’amour pour trois oranges. More than a mere escape from the stress caused by work on the opera, Opus 31 provided the displaced artist with an outlet for lamenting the loss of innocence, symbolized by a child’s interaction with a grandmother ostensibly nearing the end of her life. Hypothesizing about subtexts in generations-old works of art is often ill-advised and almost always unnecessary, but it is not difficult to imagine Prokofiev reflecting through Opus 31 on conversations with elders from his own boyhood.

In this recorded performance, Woods shapes the Tales with attention to musical architecture and thematic interplay, imparting the music’s wistful narratives. An aura of Classicism pervades the opening Moderato, the arpeggi recalling the Alberti bass often used in the Eighteenth Century in a nod to both youths’ and pianists’ formative experiences. This is still unmistakably Twentieth-Century music, but Woods plays it with the sort of apt poise with which he might deliver the slow movement of a Haydn sonata. The F♯-minor Andantino is closely related to the rhapsodic moments in Visions fugitives and is executed with meditative eloquence. The vein of implacability that flows beneath the skin of the E-minor Andante assai is tapped by Woods with surgical precision, but here, too, melancholy emerges from the music’s angst. The final movement, an ambiguous Sostenuto in B minor, is marked by the uncertainty of competing solemnity and agitation. Woods excels at elucidating the subtleties of the music without distorting its carefully-wrought structures, his technical mastery facilitating evocations of song-like simplicity in even the most thorny passages.

Also dating from the 1910s, the Opus 17 «Сарказмы» (Sarcasms) were more controversial when new than much of Prokofiev’s piano music. Not unlike Mozart’s Musikalischer Spaß, the five movements of Sarcasms utilize rhythmic anomalies and intentional ‘wrong’ notes to challenge performers’ and listeners’ expectations. The quicksilver transformations of spirit between the Tempestoso and Allegro rubato Sarcasms are effected with appreciable focus on thematic development. Extending its kinship with Mozart’s Musikalischer Spaß, the Allegro precipitato is notable for its use of polytonality, with simultaneous lines for the right and left hands written in different keys. As Richard Strauss did in Die Frau ohne Schatten, Prokofiev achieves emotional depth with deviations from diatonic models. Woods emphasizes the relationship between tonal duality and Sarcasms’ bipartite framework. The latent restlessness of the Smanioso crackles through the pianist’s fingers, and the transition from Precipitosissimo to Andantino in the closing movement is rendered with dramatic impetus similar to Clara Haskil’s navigations of changes of tempo in her celebrated recording of Chopin’s F-minor Piano Concerto.

Woods ends this exploration of Prokofiev’s ‘miniatures’ not with the widely-known fourth of the Opus 4 Four Pieces for piano but with the less-familiar opening piece, the Tranquillo «Воспоминания» (‘Reminiscences’). A sensitive, deceptively unassuming piece in F major, it is perceptibly the work of a young artist—a prototype of the child of Opus 31, perhaps. His account of the work’s Penseroso theme is a fitting illustration of Woods’s playing of all of the music in this collection. Their brevity notwithstanding, these are not pieces that can be played successfully without thorough study, but Woods’s is the kind of meticulously-rehearsed readiness that permits expressive spontaneity. Is there any more meaningful, memorable way to beautify human life?

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Catherine Pisaroni demonstrates in directorial début that not all stagings of Mozart’s Così fan tutte are ‘like that’ (Teatro Grattacielo, New York City; 19 July 2026)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791): Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti, K. 588 — Yi Liu (Fiordiligi), Ashlyn Taylor King (Dorabella), Hayden Smith (Ferrando), Young-Kwang Yoo (Guglielmo), Ziliang Hao (Don Alfonso), Stella Christine (Despina), Catherine Pisaroni (Cupid); Teatro Grattacielo Orchestra; Abdiel Vázquez, conductor [Catherine Pisaroni, director; Teatro Grattacielo, Ellen Stewart Theatre, Shares at La MaMa, New York City, USA; Sunday, 19 July 2026]

Opera companies face a Mozart problem—or, rather, a host of Mozart problems. The operatic masterworks of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s compositional maturity—Idomeneo, re di Creta, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, La clemenza di Tito, and, above all, Die Zauberflöte and his trio of collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte—are enduringly popular with audiences, yet their logistical challenges are daunting. For all their brilliance, these pieces are not suited to the gargantuan spaces of the largest houses, but smaller companies sometimes lack the resources needed to stage them imaginatively and cast them effectively. Perhaps the greatest marvel of any of Mozart’s post-1780 operas is its ability to delight and move despite musical and dramaturgical adversities. These are operas with plot devices deemed by Nineteenth-Century observers to require editorial correction and thought in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries to demand infusions of ‘relevance.’ Might it not be argued, however, that a work like Così fan tutte—an exquisitely beautiful telling of an outrageously indelicate, even immoral story—succeeds because of its problems, because, under the most thoughtful circumstances, directors, conductors, and singers are compelled to explore beyond prettiness and politeness and thereby to ask audiences to confront their own pettiness and prejudices?

Staging Così fan tutte in the intimate space of the Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa, Teatro Grattacielo provided first-time stage director Catherine Pisaroni with precisely the thoughtful circumstances in which to discard tired traditions in order to look deeply into the psychological motivations of the characters created by Mozart and da Ponte and the external forces that manipulate them. Few artists are more immersed in the genre than Pisaroni, but her extensive exposure to all aspects of preparing and performing opera yielded not a clever adaptation of conventional approaches to staging Così but a thorough, unmistakably affectionate dismantling, analysis, and reconstruction of the pitfall-laden drama. Framing the opera as a treatise on ever-evolving, ever-devolving notions of gender, sexuality, and romantic attachments, supervised and narrated with bemused and confounded aloofness—though, owing to the amplification system, not always with audibility—by an unambiguously feminine Cupid, Pisaroni employed simplicity as her most powerful tool in examining the work’s amorous intrigues. As wily as in any production, Despina was here a meddling roommate of Fiordiligi and Dorabella, lending her advice to the ladies greater impact than an impertinent servant’s counsel might wield. Everyone was young and fanciful: even Don Alfonso, though charismatically cunning, was savvy more through experience of the world than time in it. Aptly for a production coinciding with the FIFA World Cup, Ferrando and Guglielmo were boys-next-door standout athletes, ostensibly called up to the major league to facilitate their ‘return’ as stereotypical bad boys.

Utilizing a minimalist setting in which particular emphasis was devoted to differentiating the characters’ individual physical spaces, the sleekness of the concept perpetuated by uncomplicated costume designs, Pisaroni wholly eschewed reliance upon ‘Kleider machen Leute’ characterization, instead encouraging singers and listeners to seek the characters’ emotions and rationales in music and text. Cuts were numerous, including all choral numbers, and sometimes disfiguring, perhaps most regrettably so when Ferrando’s and Guglielmo’s sublime ‘Secondate, aurette amiche’ was interrupted for an intrusion of a modern club vibe, but Ferrando’s too-often-excised ‘Tradito, schernito’ was retained. In the opera’s final minutes, with Cupid’s machinations hurtling towards disaster, Don Alfonso and Despina were transformed into Mozart and da Ponte and tasked with setting things right, only to suggest that there are no right answers to Così’s questions. In affairs of the heart, it was theorized, no outcome is any more right or less wrong than any other. Ferrando therefore claimed the hands of Fiordiligi and Dorabella, Despina connected with Guglielmo, and Don Alfonso turned his attention to a handsome stagehand. It was a plausible resolutuon for an opera with no wholly-logical conclusions; and, most importantly, one achieved with humor and humanity. In her inaugural outing as a director, Pisaroni excelled both at asking herself and her audience why much of Così is uncomfortable and at refusing to attempt to ‘fix’ any of Mozart’s and da Ponte’s perfect imperfections.

Pisaroni had in conductor Abdiel Vázquez an ideal partner for bringing this unique realization of Così to fruition. From the spirited Overture to the valedictory chord of Act Two, the eleven musicians under his baton played with such joy and involvement that infrequent intonational insecurities and moments of disjointed ensemble were unobtrusive. The conductor’s tempi, discernibly rooted in adherence to Mozart’s instructions and familiarity with Eighteenth-Century practice, allowed the singers to breathe air into their much-tested lungs and life into the characters they portrayed. Vázquez’s playing of the continuo was one of the performance’s foremost glories, his virtuosity giving the keyboard an engaging voice in recitatives. The interpolation of the ominous sounds that announce the arrival of the spectral Commendatore in the penultimate scene of Don Giovanni was enthralling, but most inspired was the—admittedly anachronistic—inclusion of the haunting melody of ‘Lacrimosa’ from the Requiem, played with heartrending delicacy. A plethora of advancements in comprehension and execution of period-appropriate style notwithstanding, a half-century of historically-informed handling of Eighteenth-Century music has largely eroded the sort of organic pacing of Mozart’s operas cultivated in earlier generations by conductors such as Josef Krips and Karl Böhm. Vázquez’s conducting of Teatro Grattacielo’s Così fan tutte lacked none of the scholarly accomplishment of recent decades but also exhibited a now-rare fluency in Mozart’s singular musical language.

I festeggiamenti prematuri: (from left to right) tenor Hayden Smith as Ferrando, bass-baritone Ziliang Hao as Don Alfonso, soprano Stella Christine as Despina, and baritone Young-Kwang Yoo as Guglielmo in Teatro Grattacielo’s performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Così fan tutte, 19 July 2026
[Photograph © by Wesley Sherow and Teatro Grattacielo]

Vivid of personality but wan of voice in Despina’s interactions with Fiordiligi, Dorabella, and Don Alfonso in Act One, soprano Stella Christine found her vocal footing during the interval and launched Act Two with an incisive, artfully-sung account of ‘Una donna a quindici anni.’ As the romantic entanglements careened from playful subterfuge to life-altering betrayal, Christine limned the metamorphosis of Despina’s ennui into apprehensiveness with immediacy and increasing musical comfort. With each successive ensemble, she seized opportunities to distinguish Despina from her female counterparts with greater confidence. The voice’s focus blossomed as the line ascended, bringing Despina musically and theatrically to the core of the opera’s emotional upheaval.

Were they to stage their hometown composer’s Così fan tutte, the fictionalized sisters of Stift Nonnberg might ask, ‘How do you solve a problem like Don Alfonso?’ Directors and interpreters of the part contend with difficult decisions about the character’s constitution and intentions, Mozart and da Ponte having drawn a figure of chameleonic morality whose ambitions ultimately remain enigmatic. Under Pisaroni’s guidance, bass-baritone Ziliang Hao’s Don Alfonso was assured but never asinine, persuading without bullying. Singing boldly and with easy command of the range, Hao avoided the vocal bluster and acerbic scheming that can make the character insufferably pompous. There was a glimmer of genuine feeling in the voice in ‘Soave sia il vento’, and his Alfonso sparred with his male friends and captivated the ladies with equal fervor. In recitative, aria, and ensemble, text provided the impetus for singing, accentuating the mastery of the collaboration between composer and librettist. Hao’s Don Alfonso unashamedly enjoyed his game, but this was no ‘retired’ Don Giovanni still exulting in debauchery. There was no overt effort to explicate or justify Alfonso’s actions, which seemed to be the point. ‘Così fan tutte,’ after all: are gli uomini not as inclined as le donne to certain inscrutable behaviors?

The dashing Guglielmo, often portrayed as the more assertive of the suitors, was sung by baritone Young-Kwang Yoo with a finely-judged balance of sophistication and bravado. The effervescent swagger of Yoo’s vocalism enlivened ensembles without overwhelming the music or his onstage colleagues. Like all of the principals in this performance, he dedicated close attention to maintaining verbal lucidity even in the music’s most demanding passages. Yoo delivered ‘Non siate ritrosi’ captivatingly, the interplay between words and music propelling the performance. ‘Donne mie, la fate a tanti’ was sung with equal commitment to allying dramatic thrust with unimpeachable musicality. Musically, Guglielmo is no easy sing, the center of vocal gravity positioned awkwardly for many of today’s singers. In conquering this potential obstacle, as well as in credibly imparting the character’s impetuous machismo, Yoo’s youth was a boon, one upon which he instinctually capitalized.

Though initially paired with Ferrando, Dorabella is more temperamentally aligned with Guglielmo, her innate adventurousness needing little provocation to suppress orthodox propriety and capitulate to a new lover’s wooing. Mezzo-soprano Ashlyn Taylor King’s Dorabella was the epitome of a young woman immersed in the turmoil of finding her own identity amidst societal dictates and expectations. The voice’s shimmering timbre gave emphasis to the character’s lines in ensembles, but it was the intelligence of the singer’s interpretation that inspired greatest admiration. There were ascending phrases in which vocal comfort was compromised, but pitches were accurate despite moments of toil. An especially ebullient presence in recitative, King also sang ‘Smanie implacabili’ strikingly, articulating the text with wit. ‘È amore un ladroncello’ was shaped with complementary involvement, the voice serving as a conduit for the aria’s sentiments. King’s Dorabella was passionate but principled: both erotic zeal and conscience resounded in the voice.

Some of the afternoon’s most alluring and authentically Mozartian singing was contributed by tenor Hayden Smith, whose boyish but soulful Ferrando beguiled with expressive sincerity and tonal luster. A worthy comrade for Yoo’s Guglielmo, Smith’s Ferrando was deceptive without ever being duplicitous, his courting of Fiordiligi executed without ill intent—and thus all the more cogent when, contrary to his will, it assumed a measure of earnestness. The celebrated ‘Un’ aura amorosa’ was phrased with eloquence and subtlety, the voice gleaming and secure even when reduced to a wonderfully-projected mezza voce. The nimbleness with which the fiorature in the final scene of Act One were sung increased the injustice of the omission of ‘Ah! lo veggio, quell’anima,’ but Smith voiced ‘Tradito, schernito dal perfido cor’ with unflinching vulnerability that belied the unassailable technical adroitness that enabled it. Both Fiordiligi and Dorabella choosing Ferrando was an unexpected result of the opera’s sensual meanderings, but this Ferrando earned the double adulation, Smith’s singing consistently affirming Mozart’s comprehensive understanding of the mesmerizing capabilities of the human voice.

That Fiordiligi was in this production less an archetypal operatic leading lady and more a multi-dimensional young woman on the brink of sexual awakening was due in part to Pisaroni’s direction and still more so to the performance of soprano Yi Liu. As she sang the rôle, the expansive range of Fiordiligi’s music was dreaded by neither singer nor audience, the voice evenly produced across two octaves to C₆. Like her Dorabella and Don Alfonso, Liu’s Fiordiligi was affecting in her singing in ‘Soave sia il vento,’ and poised vocalism in ensembles was a considerable strength of the soprano’s performance. Defiance and indignation boiled in her voicing of ‘Come scoglio immoto resta,’ rhythmic precision heightening the potency of the text, and, as Fiordiligi conceded her acquiescence to Ferrando’s advances, ‘Per pietà, ben mio, perdona’ was sung with wrenching self-reproach tempered by an understated thrill of liberation. Like the production’s voyeuristic Cupid, Fiordiligi found contentment by relinquishing her flawed control over her situation, surrendering not to duty but to desire.

Perhaps, this production and the artists who gave it life proposed, it is not so much that ‘così fan tutte’ but, rather, that così dovrebbero essere tutti; or, as Cicero put it, ‘esse quam videri,’ it is better to be than to seem.

BOOK REVIEW: Ben Bliss — Making It Work: The Practical Guide to Financial and Entrepreneurial Literacy for Freelancers in the Performing Arts (ISBN 979-8254608806, 2026)

BEN BLISS (born 1985): Making It Work: The Practical Guide to Financial and Entrepreneurial Literacy for Freelancers in the Performing Arts [231 pages, ISBN 979-8254608806; Available from Amazon]

Thirty-four years after James Carville asserted in response to debate over which issue most motivates voters’ choices at the polls that it is ‘the economy, stupid,’, far too many artists—and not solely those in the formative phases of their careers—continue to underestimate the extent to which personal and global economic conditions affect the success and longevity of artistic journeys. It is not only artist’ financial health that is tested by the booms and busts of the gig economy, but the emotional, social, and physiological tolls of struggles with solvency remain too seldom acknowledged. Sadly, mentorship sometimes exacerbates the neglect of hollistic approaches to career-building: an attitude of ‘If you are not thriving, you are not doing it correctly’ is still over-prevalent amongst the institutions and individuals guiding young artists. Amidst so many concerns about musical education that promotes erudition at the expense of practicality, is the failure to adequately prepare young artists to manage the business interests of their careers perhaps the most injurious disservice?

Though eclipsed by the incalculable impact of the lives lost, the battle for financial survival that compelled many artists to curtail or abandon their careers was a particular horror of the COVID-19 pandemic. Work stopped, but the bills came. The rent was due. Student debt loomed. In a time of life-threatening illness, insurance premiums needed to be paid. Despite well-meaning assurances of all of humanity being ‘in the same boat,’ some freelance artists watched from leaking rafts as colleagues with extensive management and representation teams sailed past aboard yachts, certainly not enjoying carefree voyages but buoyed by hope for an eventual entry into tranquil waters. ‘What have I been doing wrong?’ sinking freelancers asked. Pandemics of course defy predictions and preparation, but insightful, self-cognizant artists found that there were no simple or uniform answers. Rarely are foolish actions wholly the cause of strife, but acting wisely, both in the moment and in years to come, is the necessary foundation of a career—and a life—that could withstand future calamities.

The development and deployment of strategic wisdom are the central focus of Making It Work: The Practical Guide to Financial and Entrepreneurial Literacy for Freelancers in the Performing Arts, a work of engaging but challenging depth from the pen of acclaimed tenor Ben Bliss. Equally adept at turning a lathe, distinguishing a true classic car from merely old ones, and projecting alluring tone into the vast spaces of the world’s most prestigious opera houses, Bliss demonstrates in Making It Work that he also excels at both devising innovative ways to solve problems that plague today’s freelance artists and advising his readers with unflinching honesty. When Thomas Paine published Common Sense in January 1776, sense may well have been common, but Bliss recognizes that the do-or-die cultivation of business sense by freelance artists is now dismayingly uncommon. As early as the book’s Disclaimer, its author’s abiding counsel to fellow artists is succinctly articulated: ‘You alone bear full responsibility for evaluating the merits and risks associated with any decisions you make’ (Kindle edition location 4/1330).

In her autobiography, Dame Joan Sutherland expressed disdain for haggling over performance fees and contract terms, but trusted sources impart that, knowing her worth, she weaponized conviviality with remarkable effectiveness. Today’s Arts environment has evolved in ways that would likely baffle even the most business-savvy artists of past generations, but Bliss advances aspects of Sutherland’s ‘conquer by kindness’ mentality in his suggestions to freelancers, writing, ‘Use your judgement to push back with enough strength to not leave any money on the table.’ He continues with a reminder of the power of finesse, recommending ‘also being realistic, respectful and not souring your relationship with the presenter’ (Kindle edition loc. 869/1330). From this start, Bliss argues, the conscientious freelance artist can fashion a career in which self-interest, self-promotion, and self-reliance are strengths rather than stumbling blocks, allying the benefits of traditional channels of external influence in the full utilization of the artist’s own intellect and intuition.

Throughout Making It Work, Bliss provides cogent, well-reasoned proposals that are specific enough to be valuable to a broad array of artistic ventures yet of universal importance to all readers. Moreover, the precepts addressed in these pages arise from lived experirnce and are conveyed with unadorned language, ensuring that every point is made with clarity. Outlining the obstacles that obstruct freelance artists’ paths, the book’s real-world scenarios are explained and analyzed with disarming candor. Never shrinking from admitting his own mistakes and miscalculations, but owning them with self-depricating playfulness, Bliss avoids any vestige of the condescending ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ tome. Espousing an artist’s unique variation on Shakespeare’s ‘to thine own self be true,’ this book seeks above all to instill in readers an unalterable awareness that ‘this is show business, not show thanks-for-letting-me-be-on-stage’ (Kindle edition loc. 850/1330).

Musicians who, as Ben Bliss has done in rightly-acclaimed portrayals of parts like Bajazet in Händel’s Tamerlano and Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, succeed in Baroque and Classical works understand that a vital component of their success is delivering ‘dry’ recitatives with vigor that heightens the drama rather than distracting from it. The same might be said of writing about the behind-the-scenes machinations of freelance artists’ careers. Though humorously warning that he may ‘sound like your Mom or your rich uncle’ (Kindle edition loc. 1023/1330), Bliss transforms topics that some readers might be inclined to find tedious into threads in an informative, entertaining, and ultimately enlightening narrative. Should anything else have been expected of one of the lyric stage’s most captivating storytellers?

Note: Citations in this review refer to the digital edition of Making It Work compatible with Kindle version 8.148.1.0, updated on 21 May 2026. Location designations will not correspond with locations in editions compatible with other Kindle versions or with the print edition.