Eastman graduates such as distinguished alumni Julia Bullock, Nicole Cabell, Renée Fleming, Anthony Dean Griffey, Kathryn Lewek and Erin Morley have excelled in the operatic profession as a natural extension of their Eastman experience.
Our productions most often have two complete principal casts, are fully designed, performed in the original language, and depending on the venue, use full orchestral accompaniment. Studio productions, scenes programs, and outreach events are also presented to further enhance the variety of performance experience. Eastman Opera Theatre equally utilizes undergraduate and graduate students in all of our productions.
Past EOT productions include Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el amazonas, Handel’s Alcina, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Sondheim’s Into the Woods, The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Ricky Ian Gordon and Jean-Claude van Itallie, Lear on the 2nd Floor by Anthony Davis and Allan Havis, Proving Up by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek, and Elizabeth Cree by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell. We are committed to working with living composers and librettists. Recent collaborators have included Adam Guettel, Anthony Davis, Jake Heggie, Ricky Ian Gordon, Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell. In December 2020 during the pandemic, Eastman Opera Theatre represented a unique collaborative production, Our Voices, featuring the vocal music of six contemporary composers: Anthony Davis, Ricky Ian Gordon, Lori Laitman, Missy Mazzoli, Ben Moore, and Errollyn Wallen. These six renowned composers programmed their own music, collaborated with our students and artistic team to create six unique lyric theatrical programs.
