Artistic Staff
Christopher Fecteau, Artistic Director
Steven Jarvi, Principal Guest Conductor

     * Guest Conductors
          Fiora Contino
          Daniel Kleinknecht
          John Yaffé

     * Collaborating Pianists
          Tony Bellomy
          Lynda Saponara
          Jeffrey Grossman
          Jonathan Kelly
          David Mayfield

PRINCIPAL GUEST CONDUCTOR
Steven Jarvi has been described as an “eloquent and decisive” conductor by the Wall Street Journal and praised for his “uncommonly expressive and detailed performances” by the Miami Herald. He is one of the fastest rising conductors of his generation with an equal passion for the concert hall and the opera house. Maestro Jarvi is currently Assistant Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony. Prior to his recent appointment, he served two seasons as Conducting Fellow for the New World Symphony in Miami Beach under Michael Tilson Thomas and as an Associate Conductor for New York City Opera. Before his position in Miami, he was the conductor in the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program at the Washington National Opera, a position for which he was personally selected by Plácido Domingo. In 2005, Mr. Jarvi was the Seiji Ozawa Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he studied with James Levine.



















GUEST CONDUCTOR
Fiora Contino was born into an eminent musical family. Her father, Ferruccio Corradetti, was a leading baritone at La Scala and other principal European opera houses. She studied at the Conservatoire Americain at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and was awarded the 1960 Premier Prix Hors Concours, cum laude from the Conservatoire in the field of conducting.
A respected educator, she has held teaching positions at Hillsdale College, Smith College, and Mount Holyoke College, as Director of Opera and Choral Activities at Bowling Green State University, and as principal conductor and Chairman of the Choral Department at Indiana University. Dr. Contino has led many productions for the Memphis Opera, including a performance of Puccini's Turandot with Birgit Nilsson.
Dr. Contino has been a regular conductor at the Temple University Music Festival in Ambler, Pennsylvania and Director of the Choral Institute at the Aspen Music Festival. She has also led performances with the symphony orchestras of New Orleans, Hartford, Baltimore, Memphis, San Francisco and San Antonio. New York columnist Byron Belt wrote of her in the Sunday Press: “She is too little known, but Ms. Contino is certainly one of the outstanding women conductors of our day – and we mention the sex…to underscore the fact because a man of her superlative gifts would surely be an international superstar today.”







GUEST CONDUCTOR
Daniel Kleinknecht, executive director and conductor of Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre, is also an associate professor of music at Mount Mercy College. As founder of Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre, he has led the company in performances of major operatic repertoire and under his leadership the company has received five consecutive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts He has conducted the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Long Bay Symphony, Evansville Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, members of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Opera Illinois, the Cedar Rapids Symphony, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Singers, the Fort Dodge Symphony, the Hunter Symphony, the Hunter College Opera Theater, and the Iowa City Community Orchestra, and several national tours of Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors.
The Peoria Journal wrote, “with Kleinknecht at the podium, the sound was wonderfully hall-filling and alive with exceptional power and grace.” The Myrtle Beach Press said “what was most impressive was Kleinknecht…he controlled every aspect of the music.”
An advocate of new music, Kleinknecht has commissioned and led premieres of works by Michael Daugherty (Flying Saucer), Nicolae Bratean (Golem), Edwin Penhorwood (Too Many Sopranos), and Theodore Gregorui (Violin Concerto). Of the Gregoriu Violin Concerto premiere, the Indianapolis Star wrote “the orchestra’s well-balanced assistance, for which Kleinknecht deserves a large share of the credit, also contributed handsomely.”
Dr. Kleinknecht has been a Conducting Fellow at the Aspen Music School and at Quebec’s Domaine Forget, and holds music degrees from Oberlin College, Indiana University, and The University of Iowa where he conducted performances of the Opera Theatre and the Center for New Music. He is listed in the International Who’s Who in Music, and has had articles published in the American Choral Review and the Choral Journal.




















GUEST CONDUCTOR
John Yaffé has been Music Director of both the orchestra of New York City’s prestigious 92nd Street Y and Encompass New Opera Theatre since 1996. He recently returned from leading the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra on their U.S. tour. From 1999 to 2004, he was also Music Director of the Centre Symphony Orchestra. In recent seasons he led special performances for Carnegie Hall with the Colorado Springs Symphony, the San Antonio Symphony, the Staten Island Symphony, the Warsaw Philharmonic (Warsaw Autumn Festival), as well as the world premiere of Louis Gioia’s opera Un Racconto Fiorentino at Lincoln Center. He spent ten years as a conductor in the German opera houses of Hagen, Münster, Osnabrück and Stuttgart, and with orchestras in Remscheid, Konstanz, Munich, and Stuttgart. From 1989 to 1991, he was Resident Conductor of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra and has served also as co-director of the Orchestral and Chamber Music Program of the Tanglewood Institute. Further guest engagements include the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, Walla Walla Symphony, State Opera of Turkey, and the State Opera of Albania. He has led performances of numerous new works with Encompass New Opera Theatre, American Opera Projects, and at The Kitchen.



















COLLABORATIVE PIANIST
Tony Bellomy, a native of Illinois, has served as coach/accompanist for both the Florentine Opera Company in Milwaukee, and also for the Skylight Opera Theatre, where he helped institute a resident artist program for the company and prepared and performed educational outreach programs. In recital, Mr. Bellomy has worked with baritone Kurt Ollmann, and appeared at universities throughout Georgia and with tenor Darryl Taylor. He has also appeared in recital with regional winners and national semi-finalists of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and collaborated on a recital of songs with texts by Langston Hughes for the Yolanda Marculescu Vocal Arts Series at the University of Wisconsin. From 2002 to 2006, he was a member of the faculty of the Black Hills Summer Institute of the Arts, where his recital programs were praised as both inventive and exceedingly well planned for the young singer. He now coaches voice in New York City and serves as the Assistant Music Director for the Little Opera Theater of New York as well as for Encompass New Opera Theatre. He has recently been named Associate Conductor for the Grace Choral Society.














COLLABORATIVE PIANIST
Lynda Saponara has performed in the United States and Austria with singers, instrumentalists, orchestras, and choirs. For five seasons, she has been invited to the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, as recital pianist and repetiteur. She has served as pianist/coach for La Bohème, Carmen (Princeton Festival), Roméo et Juliette (dell’Arte Opera Ensemble), and Madama Butterfly (Opera at Florham). She has performed as keyboardist in the premiere performance of Burning Bright by Frank Lewin (onstage keyboard) and Six Characters in Search of an Author by Hugo Weisgall (celesta) with Opera Festival of New Jersey, and as keyboardist for A Midsummer Night’s Dream with dell’Arte Opera. Ms. Saponara has also performed with the American Handel Festival, South Mountain Theaterworks, and at the annual meeting of the African-American Women Composers and Arrangers Symposium in Dayton, Ohio. She has served as master class pianist for composer John Corigliano, percussionist Evelyn Glennie, pianist Dalton Baldwin, and singers Paul Plishka, Sharon Sweet, Patricia Craig, and Gabriela Lechner. Ms. Saponara has been a faculty member at The College of New Jersey, New Jersey City University, and Wagner College. She holds D.M.A. and M.M. degrees in Collaborative Piano Performance from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, and a B.M. in Piano Accompanying from Westminster Choir College. Teachers have included Barbara González-Palmer, José Ramos-Santana, JJ Penna, Dalton Baldwin, John Simmons, and David Lutz. Ms. Saponara is an active recitalist with both vocalists and instrumentalists, and maintains vocal coaching studios in Princeton and Manhattan.




















COLLABORATIVE PIANIST
Jeffrey Grossman has been consistently praised for his impressive and wide-ranging musicality in nearly every style. His extensive experience includes repertoire for the piano, harpsichord, and chamber organ from every period of the classical repertoire. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from Harvard College, where he sang with the Glee Club and conducted the Chamber Singers. He also co-founded and currently serves as artistic director of the Cambridge Early Music Project, an organization which has presented numerous concerts in the Boston area. Recent performances as a conductor cover diverse ground—from Marvin Hamlisch’s A Chorus Line, to Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring, to an all-baroque concert of music by Bach and Schütz. Jeffrey recently completed a Master of Music degree in conducting at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied with Grammy-award winning conductor Robert Page. He served last year as the assistant conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, Harvard College’s mixed chorus, and this season looks forward to the release of three compact discs he recorded during the 2007-08 season with various collaborators. Jeffrey currently resides in New York City and Boston, where he is active as a collaborative pianist and harpsichordist.



















COLLABORATIVE PIANIST
Jonathan Kelly serves on the faculty of the Yale University School of Music as the song repertoire coach. He is also a faculty member of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California where he serves as the Assistant Conductor of the Opera. He has worked as accompanist and opera coach at the Manhattan School of Music, The Chautauqua Institution, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Opera Theatre of Lucca. Mr. Kelly has performed with many of today’s premiere vocal artists including Ramon Vargas, Anna Netrebko, Vinson Cole, and Rolando Villazon at venues such as Alice Tully Hall, The Kennedy Center and The United Nations. He has been presented numerous times in recital under the auspices of the Marilyn Horne Foundation including a gala concert at Carnegie Hall. Not limiting himself to operatic repertoire, he has enjoyed performances with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at Kirk in the Hills, and The National Chorale at Avery Fisher Hall. Mr. Kelly resides in New York City.



















COLLABORATIVE PIANIST
David Mayfield has served as operatic repertoire coach for the touring company of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera and for three years conducted opera workshops for Young Audiences of Dallas. He has worked at Dallas Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Virginia Opera and the touring company of New York City Opera, as well as companies in Fort Worth, Little Rock, Utah, New Orleans and elsewhere. His repertoire includes Patience, H.M.S. Pinafore, and Hansel and Gretel. He has also conducted Aïda and Le nozze di Figaro in the Slovak Republic. In three summers with Utah Festival Opera, he prepared and/or conducted Giulio Cesare, Les contes d‘Hoffmann, The Student Prince, Carmen, and several gala concerts. He has prepared numerous operas as assistant conductor as well as playing harpsichord for productions of Il barbiere di Siviglia and Don Giovanni. In New York, Mr. Mayfield coaches singers in the areas of performance style, language and interpretation, both privately and at Manhattan School of Music and New Jersey City University, where he is head of the opera scenes program. He enjoys collaborating in recital with instrumentalists and vocalists and has recently performed concerts in Key West, Delaware, Grenada, and Bloomington, Indiana.



















BOARD MEMBER
During the 2007 season, Kathleen Powers directed The Winter’s Tale at the American Shakespeare Center, Twelfth Night at Richmond Shakespeare, A Christmas Carol at the North Shore Music Theatre and Fräulein Else at Theatre 5 in New York. Other recent credits include Measure for Measure on the Kansas City Rep. mainstage, Noël Coward’s Private Lives at the Irish Classical Theatre in Buffalo, NY, and Emily Mann's Execution of Justice at the Pioneer Theatre in Salt Lake City. In 2003, she directed the Royal National Theatre's UK Tour of Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy, featuring Hayley Mills, and The Taming of the Shrew at the North Shore Music Theatre. She has directed Shakespeare at theatres large, small, and out-of-doors in New York City; Boston, MA; Memphis, TN; central Ohio; on the coast of Maine and at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Ms. Powers has directed extensively off-off-Broadway and in the American regions, working on classics as well as new plays, including Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive and Zohar Tirosh’s Pieces. Ms. Powers has been a Drama League Directing Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar in Shakespeare; she earned an M.A. with Distinction at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. She is a guest director at the Juilliard School and works regularly with graduate and undergraduate students at theatre training programs across the country.














BOARD MEMBER
Karen Rich has been a singing actress for many years, performing in many cities in the United States, across Europe and in the Caribbean. Favorite roles have included title roles in Tosca, Ariadne auf Naxos and Salome, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, and Der Komponist in Ariadne auf Naxos. She has been a Board Member of dell'Arte Opera Ensemble since the company's inception, and presently performs numerous administrative functions for the company. In the 2008 season, she took on directing duties as well, creating the staging for Carmen and collaborating with Mr. Fecteau on Roméo et Juliette.