Oedipus Rex - Online

With a “heroically shining tone of exceptional clarity and precision” (Opera magazine) and “gorgeously burnished power” (The New York Times), American tenor Russell Thomas uses his signature elegance and intensity to create vivid character portrayals on the world’s most important stages.

In the 2023/24 season, Mr. Thomas undertakes his first Parsifal at Houston Grand Opera and returns to major stages around the world in signature Verdi and Puccini roles. He sings Radames in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Aida, Cavaradossi in the Royal Opera House’s Tosca, Calaf in LA Opera’s Turandot and Alvaro in the Norwegian Opera’s La Forza del Destino. He appears in concert and recital with the Edinburgh International Festival, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and Vocal Arts DC at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, before concluding his artistic residency at LA Opera with Fire and Blue Sky, a world premiere song cycle composed for him by Joel Thompson.

Acclaimed for his “voice of intrinsic warmth and refined sense of style” (Opera News), Mr. Thomas has enjoyed a string of operatic triumphs in key Verdi roles, including appearances as Otello at Canadian Opera Company and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Ernani at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Manrico in Il Trovatore at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Radames in Aida at Houston Grand Opera, Stiffelio at Opera Frankfurt, and Don Alvaro in La Forza del Destino at Deutsche Oper Berlin and Opéra National de Paris. An alumnus of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Program, he most recently returned to the Met as Don Carlo and Rodolfo in La Bohème. Other important appearances include Cavaradossi at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Idomeneo at the Salzburg Festival, Roberto Devereux at San Francisco Opera, Radames and Otello at LA Opera, Florestan in Fidelio at San Francisco Opera and Cincinnati Opera, and Calaf and Adorno in Simon Boccanegra at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Mr. Thomas created the role of Lazarus in the world premiere of The Gospel According to the Other Mary by John Adams and Peter Sellars, and his portrayal of Tito in the new Sellars production of La Clemenza di Tito at the Salzburg Festival drew praise from The New Yorker, which noted, “Thomas’s penetrating tenor, which has lately acquired richness and heft, anchored the evening.”

Mr. Thomas’s “ardent expression and spine-tingling high notes” (Cincinnati Enquirer) have been heard in the Verdi Requiem with the New York Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Washington, D.C. and Barcelona. He has appeared as tenor soloist in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the symphonies of Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle, and Houston; the title role in Oedipus Rex at LA Opera and with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen; and as tenor soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the New York Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, BBC Proms, and Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. He joined the Met Orchestra for their first overseas tour in more than 20 years, singing Otello opposite Angel Blue at Carnegie Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Barbican Centre, and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.

During the hybrid 2020/21 season, Mr. Thomas began his tenure as Artist in Residence at LA Opera, where he plays a substantial role in artistic planning and casting. In addition to hosting and curating the company’s After Hours recital series, he has spearheaded new training programs designed to serve outstanding singers from historically Black colleges and universities and Los Angeles public high school students from underserved communities.

Learn more at RussellThomasTenor.com.

 American mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, known for her “plush-voiced mezzo-soprano” (New York Times), has been heralded as “a rising star” (Los Angeles Times), gracing the world’s top opera and concert stages.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the cancellation of Ms. Bridges’ engagements in the title role of Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera and Canadian Opera Company, she has emerged at this unique moment as a leading figure in classical music’s shift toward conversations of inclusion and racial justice in the performing arts. Bridges led a highly successful panel on race and inequality in opera with LA Opera that drew international acclaim for being a “conversation of striking scope and candor” (New York Times). Bridges also performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel for two episodes of the digital SOUND/STAGE series. Upcoming highlights of Bridges’s 2020/21 season include her role debut as Giovanna Seymour in Anna Bolena at Dutch National Opera.

Highlights from her 2019/20 season included her highly-acclaimed debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Nefertiti in a sold-out run of Philip Glass’ opera Akhnaten, as well as a house and role debut with Washington National Opera as Dalila in Samson et Dalila. Bridges was also originally scheduled to sing the title role of Carmen at Dutch National Opera and was scheduled to make her debut with the Festival d’Aix-en-provence singing Margret in a new production of Wozzeck, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, which were unfortunately cancelled due to the pandemic.

Other recent career highlights include her sold-out Carnegie Hall Recital debut, her role debut of Kasturbai in Satyagraha at LA Opera, her Los Angeles Master Chorale debut, and her debuts at Dutch National Opera and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. In addition, Ms. Bridges made her role debut as Carmen at the San Francisco Opera, creating the role of Josefa Segovia in the world premiere of John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West at San Francisco Opera, her debut as Preziosilla in La Forza del Destino with Opernhaus Zürich, and performances as Carmen in the world premiere of Bel Canto, an opera by Jimmy Lopez, based on the novel by Ann Patchett at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Bridges is a recipient of the prestigious 2018 Sphinx Medal of Excellence Award, a 2016 Richard Tucker Career Grant, first prize winner at the 2016 Francisco Viñas International Competition, first prize winner at the 2015 Gerda Lissner Competition, a recipient of the 2013 Sullivan Foundation Award, a 2012 Marian Anderson award winner, the recipient of the 2011 Sara Tucker Study Grant, the recipient of the 2009 Richard F. Gold Grant from the Shoshana Foundation, and the winner of the 2008 Leontyne Price Foundation Competition. J’Nai completed a three-year residency with the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, represented the United States at the prestigious BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition and was a Young Artist at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York.

A native of Tacoma, Washington, she earned her master of music degree from Curtis Institute of Music, and her bachelor of music degree in vocal performance from the Manhattan School of Music.

Learn more at JNaiBridgesMezzo.com.

Mr. Relyea has appeared in many of the world’s most celebrated opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera (where he is an alumnus of the Merola Opera Program and a former Adler Fellow), Lyric Opera of Chicago, Seattle Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Paris Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Vienna State Opera, Theater an der Wien, and the Mariinksy Theater. He made his LAO debut in 2011 as the bass soloist in Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.

His roles include the title roles in Attila, The Marriage of Figaro, Bluebeard’s Castle, Don Quichotte, Attila and Aleko; Zaccaria in Nabucco, Bertram in Robert le Diable, Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Colline in La Bohème, Don Alfonso in Lucrezia Borgia, Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville, Alidoro in La Cenerentola, Giorgio in I Puritani, Banquo in Macbeth, Garibaldo in Rodelinda, Méphistophélès in both Faust and La Damnation de Faust, the Four Villains in The Tales of Hoffmann, Escamillo in Carmen, Marke in Tristan und Isolde, Caspar in Der Freischutz, Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress, Collatinus in The Rape of Lucretia, and King René in Iolanta.

Mr. Relyea also remains in high demand throughout the concert world where he appears regularly with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Berlin Philharmonic. He has also appeared at the Tanglewood, Ravinia, Blossom, Cincinnati May, Vail, Lanaudière, Salzburg, Edinburgh, Lucerne and Mostly Mozart festivals, and in the BBC Proms.

Recent engagements include his role debut in the title role of Mefistofele with Opera de Lyon, recording the role of Duke Bluebeard with the Bergen Symphony for Chandos, Claggart in a new production of Billy Budd with the Norsk Opera Oslo, and a return to the Dresden Semperopera as Marcel in a new production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots.

Learn more at JohnRelyea.com.

Morris Robinson is considered one the most interesting and sought-after basses performing today.

In the summer of 2022, he will be a Filene Artist with Wolf Trap Opera, where he will appear as Max in Der Freischütz and Sam Polk in Susannah. In the 2022/23 season, he will make his Dallas Opera debut as Froh in Das Rheingold and perform Melot in Tristan und Isolde with the LA Philharmonic.

In the summer of 2021, he returned to Santa Fe Opera as an Apprentice Artist, creating the role of the Captain in the world premiere of Mark Adamo's The Lord of Cries. For Santa Fe Opera's cancelled 2020 season, he had been contracted to return as a second-year Apprentice Artist and to sing the roles of the First Armored Man in The Magic Flute and Melot in Tristan und Isolde. He had also been contracted to sing the role of Narraboth in Salome with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra.

Recent performances include the tenor soloist in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Lynn Philharmonia and the tenor soloist in Verdi's Messa da Requiem with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra.

Previous performances include William Marshall in Regina with Opera Theater of Saint Louis, scenes as Lenny in Of Mice and Men and Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos with the St. Louis Symphony, and Pang in Turandot with the Kentucky Symphony. He also appeared as Trajan in a workshop of Rufus Wainwright’s new opera Hadrian with the Canadian Opera Company, and was the tenor soloist in Schubert's Mass in A-flat with CCM choirs. He has been a studio artist with Wolf Trap Opera where he covered the roles of Rodolfo in La Boheme and the Male Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia. Other significant roles include the title roles in Candide and Idomeneo, the Schoolmaster in The Cunning Little Vixen, Charlie in Mahagonny-Songspiel, the Lamplighter and the Drunk in The Little Prince, Sam Kaplan in Street Scene, Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi and Hubert Humphrey in Dark River.

Mr. Stahley was the winner of the 2019 Wagner Society of New York Competition, was a third prize winner in the 2018 Gerda Lissner Vocal Competition, placed first in the 2017 Piccolo Vocal Competition, and was a finalist in the 2018 Mildred Miller Competition. He completed his Artist Diploma and Masters at the College Conservatory of Music. He has bowed with opera companies such as Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, Wolf Trap Opera, Cincinnati Chamber Opera, Arbor Opera Theater, Palm Beach Opera, and Cincinnati Opera.

Stephen Fry is an English author, actor, screenwriter, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, broadcaster, podcaster and film director.

Whilst at university, Fry became involved with the Cambridge Footlights, where he met his long-time collaborator and friend Hugh Laurie. As half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.

Fry's acting roles include an award-winning performance as Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film Wilde, Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, Peter Kingdom in the television series Kingdom, Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V for Vendetta, Mycroft Holmes in Warner Brothers’ Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and The Master of Laketown in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit. He played a Georgian presidential candidate in HBO’s Veep and Roland in CBS’ series The Great Indoors. He has also written and presented several documentary series, including the Emmy Award-winning Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, and was the long-time host of the BBC television quiz show QI. He played Prime Minister Alistair Davies in the 9^th season of Fox TV’s 24: Live Another Day.

As a proudly out gay man, the award-winning Out There, documenting the lives of lesbian, bisexual gay and transgender people around the world is part of his thirty year advocacy of the rights of the LGBT community. He has been President of Mind, Britain’s largest mental health charity, since 2011 and an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists for over ten years.

As well as his work in television, Fry has contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines, appears frequently on radio, reads for voice-overs and has written three volumes of autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot, The Fry Chronicles and his latest, More Fool Me.

Fry has written four novels, The Liar, The Hippopotamus (made into a feature film in 2018), Making History and The Stars’ Tennis Balls. Translated into many languages, they have never been out of print.

He has won many prizes for his performances as an audiobook narrator – of his own works and most notably as the voice of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.

His book on poetic form The Ode Less Travelled is widely used in schools and colleges as a guide to prosody.

The most recent works are Mythos, Heroes and Troy, a trilogy retelling the Greeks myths from the Creation to the aftermath of the Trojan War.

Stephen’s most recent television role in 2021 was Tory MP Arthur Garrison in Russel T. Davies’s highly acclaimed series for Channel 4, It’s A Sin.

Since his debut that year with La Traviata, he has conducted 67 different operas and more than 455 performances to date with the company.

(Click here to visit James Conlon's Corner, where you can find essays, videos and conversations he has created especially for LA Opera.)

Internationally recognized as one of today’s most versatile and respected conductors, James Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire. Since his 1974 debut with the New York Philharmonic, he has conducted virtually every major American and European symphony orchestra, and at many of the world’s leading opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera. Through worldwide touring, an extensive discography and filmography, numerous writings, television appearances, and guest speaking engagements, Conlon is one of classical music’s most recognized and prolific figures.

Conlon has been Principal Conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Torino, Italy (2016–20); Principal Conductor of the Paris Opera (1995–2004); General Music Director of the City of Cologne, Germany (1989–2003), simultaneously leading the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Cologne Opera; and Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (1983–91). Conlon was Music Director of the Ravinia Festival (2005–15), summer home of the Chicago Symphony, and is now Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival―the oldest choral festival in the United States―where he was Music Director for 37 years (1979–2016), marking one of the longest tenures of any director of an American classical music institution. He also served as Artistic Advisor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (2021–2023). He has conducted over 270 performances at the Metropolitan Opera since his 1976 debut. He has also conducted at leading opera houses and festivals such as the Vienna State Opera, Salzburg Festival, La Scala, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Mariinsky Theatre, Covent Garden, Chicago Lyric Opera, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

As Music Director of LA Opera, Conlon has led more operas than any other conductor in company history. Highlights of his LA Opera tenure include the company’s first Ring cycle; initiating the groundbreaking Recovered Voices series, an ongoing commitment to staging masterpieces of 20th-century European opera suppressed by the Third Reich; spearheading Britten 100/LA, a city-wide celebration honoring the composer’s centennial; and conducting the West Coast premiere of The Anonymous Lover by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a prominent Black composer in 18th-century France.

Conlon opens his 18th season at LA Opera conducting Mozart’s Don Giovanni directed by Kasper Holten. His groundbreaking Recovered Voices initiative, dedicated to rescuing works from historical neglect or censorship, returns to the company with a double-bill featuring the company premiere of William Grant Still’s Highway 1, USA in a new production directed by Kaneza Schaal, and a revival of Zemlinsky’s The Dwarf (Der Zwerg)—an opera that launched the Recovered Voices initiative in 2008—directed by Darko Tresnjak. He also conducts Verdi’s La Traviata—the first opera he led as Music Director of LA Opera—continuing his multi-season focus on the works of the great Italian composer. To date, Conlon has conducted more than 500 international performances of Verdi’s repertoire. Conlon closes his LA Opera season honoring the 100th anniversary of Puccini’s death, conducting Turandot, Puccini’s final opera composed in 1924.

Additional highlights of his season include returning to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to lead Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and conducting Wagner’s Lohengrin at Deutsche Oper Berlin. He also returns to Switzerland’s Bern Symphony, where he is Principal Guest Conductor, to lead three programs including Schubert and Beethoven symphonies, a celebratory New Years Day concert, and a season finale with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

Conlon is dedicated to bringing composers silenced by the Nazi regime to more widespread attention, often programming this lesser-known repertoire throughout Europe and North America. In 1999 he received the Vienna-based Zemlinsky Prize for his work bringing the composer’s music to a broader audience; in 2013 he was awarded the Roger E. Joseph Prize at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion for his efforts to eradicate racial and religious prejudice and discrimination; and in 2007 he received the Crystal Globe Award from the Anti-Defamation League. His work on behalf of silenced composers led to the creation of The OREL Foundation, an invaluable resource on the topic for music lovers, students, musicians, and scholars; the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices at the Colburn School; and a recent virtual TEDx Talk titled “Resurrecting Forbidden Music.”

Conlon is deeply invested in the role of music in civic life and the human experience. At LA Opera, his popular pre-performance talks blend musicology, literary studies, history, and social sciences to discuss the enduring power and relevance of opera and classical music. He also frequently collaborates with universities, museums, and other cultural institutions and works with scholars, practitioners, and community members across disciplines. He frequently appears throughout the country as a speaker on a variety of cultural and educational topics.

Conlon’s extensive discography and filmography spans the Bridge, Capriccio, Decca, EMI, Erato, and Sony Classical labels. His recordings of LA Opera productions have received four Grammy Awards, two respectively for John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles and for Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Additional highlights include an ECHO Klassik Award-winning recording cycle of operas and orchestral works by Alexander Zemlinsky; a CD/DVD release of works by Viktor Ullmann, which won the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik; and the world-premiere recording of Liszt’s oratorio St. Stanislaus.

Conlon holds four honorary doctorates, was one of the first five recipients of the Opera News Awards, and was distinguished by the New York Public Library as a Library Lion. He received a 2023 Cross of Honor for Science and Art (Österreichische Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst) from the Republic of Austria, and was named Commendatore Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by Sergio Mattarella, President of the Italian Republic. He was also named Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture and, in 2002, personally accepted France’s highest honor, the Legion d’Honneur, from then-President of the French Republic Jacques Chirac.

Learn more at JamesConlon.com.

Hailed for his adventurous and bold artistic leadership, and for eliciting technically precise and expressive performances from musicians, Grammy Award-winner Grant Gershon celebrated his 20th anniversary as Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale in the 2021/22 season. The Los Angeles Times has said the Master Chorale "has become the most exciting chorus in the country under Grant Gershon,” a reflection on both his programming and performances. 
 
During his tenure, Gershon has led more than 200 Master Chorale performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in programs encompassing a wide range of choral music, from the early pillars of the repertoire to contemporary compositions. He has led world premiere performances of major works by John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Eve Beglarian, Billy Childs, Gabriela Lena Frank, Ricky Ian Gordon, Shawn Kirchner, David Lang, Morten Lauridsen, Steve Reich, Ellen Reid, Christopher Rouse, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Chinary Ung, among many others.  

Gershon is committed to increasing representation in the choral repertoire, and in 2020 he announced that the Master Chorale will reserve at least 50% of each future season for works by composers from historically excluded groups in classical music. 
 
In July 2019, Gershon and the Master Chorale opened the famed Salzburg Festival with Lagrime di San Pietro, directed by Peter Sellars. The Salzburg performances received standing ovations and rave reviews from such outlets as the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which called Lagrime “painfully beautiful” (Schmerzliche schön). Gershon and the Master Chorale debuted the production in Los Angeles in 2016 and began touring the world with it in 2018. In its review of the premiere of Lagrime, the Los Angeles Times noted that the production “is a major accomplishment for the Master Chorale, which sang and acted brilliantly. It is also a major accomplishment for music history.”

He was the Resident Conductor of LA Opera from 2012 to 2022, and in this capacity conducted the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha in November 2018. He made his acclaimed debut with the company with La Traviata in 2009 and has subsequently conducted productions including Il Postino, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Florencia en el Amazonas, Wonderful Town, The Tales of Hoffmann and The Pearl Fishers. In 2017, he made his San Francisco Opera debut conducting the world premiere of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West directed by Peter Sellars, who also wrote the libretto, and made his Dutch National Opera debut with the same opera in March 2019. Gershon and Adams have an enduring friendship and professional relationship which began 27 years ago in Los Angeles when Gershon played keyboards in the pit for Nixon in China at LA Opera. Since then, Gershon has led the world premiere performances of Adams’ theater piece I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, premiered his two-piano piece Hallelujah Junction (with Gloria Cheng), and conducted performances of Harmonium, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, El Niño, The Chairman Dances, and choruses from The Death of Klinghoffer. 

In New York, Gershon has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the historic Trinity Wall Street, and he has performed on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center and the Making Music series at Zankel Hall. Other major appearances include performances at the Ravinia, Aspen, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Salzburg, and Vienna festivals, the South American premiere of LA Opera’s production of Il Postino in Chile, and performances with the Baltimore Symphony and the Coro e Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Torino in Turin, Italy. He has worked closely with numerous conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Simon Rattle, and his mentor, Esa-Pekka Salonen. 
 
His discography includes the 2022 Grammy Award-winning recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as Grammy–nominated recordings of Sweeney Todd (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) and Ligeti’s Grand Macabre (Sony Classical); six commercial CDs with the Master Chorale, including Glass-Salonen (RCM), You Are (Variations) (Nonesuch), Daniel Variations (Nonesuch), A Good Understanding (Decca), Miserere (Decca), and the national anthems (Cantaloupe Music); and two live-performance albums, the Master Chorale’s 50th Season Celebration recording and Festival of Carols. He has also led the Master Chorale in performances for several major motion pictures soundtracks, including, at the request of John Williams, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. Gershon was named Outstanding Alumnus of the Thornton School of Music in 2002 and received the USC Alumni Merit Award in 2017.  

Pictured, left to right: Manual Cinema Co-Artistic Directors Julia Miller, Kyle Vegter, Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace and Ben Kauffman. Photo by Maren Celest.

Manual Cinema is an Emmy Award winning performance collective, design studio, and film/video production company founded in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller and Kyle Vegter. Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive stories for stage and screen. Using vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design, and a live music ensemble, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity, and theatricality. The company was awarded an Emmy Award in 2017 for The Forger, a video created for The New York Times and named Chicago Artists of the Year in 2018 by the Chicago Tribune. Their shadow puppet animations will be featured in the film remake of Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta and produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.

To date, Manual Cinema has created nine feature length live multimedia theater shows (Lula del Ray, ADA/ AVA, Fjords, Mementos Mori, My Soul’s Shadow, The Magic City, The End of TV, No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks and Frankenstein); a live cinematic contemporary dance show created for family audiences in collaboration with Hubbard Street Dance and the choreographer Robyn Mineko Williams (Mariko’s Magical Mix: A Dance Adventure); an original site-specific installation for the MET Museum (La Celestina); an original adaptation of Hansel & Gretel created for the Belgian Royal Opera; music videos for Sony Masterworks, Gabriel Kahane, eighth blackbird, author Reif Larson and Esperanza Spalding; a live non-fiction piece for Pop-Up magazine; a self-produced short film (Chicagoland); a museum exhibit created in collaboration with the Chicago History Museum (The Secret Lives of Objects) a collection of cinematic shorts in collaboration with poet Zachary Schomburg and string quartet Chicago Q Ensemble (Fjords); live cinematic puppet adaptations of StoryCorps stories (Show & Tell) and NPR’s Invisibilia and four animated videos for the Poetry Foundation (We Real Cool, Poem, Three WWI Poems and Multitudes). The Forger, Manual Cinema’s Emmy Award-winning collaboration with The New York Times, was nominated for a documentary short Peabody Award and won second prize in the World Press Photo 2017 Digital Storytelling Contest, Long Form.

Learn more at ManualCinema.com.

Azra King-Abadi is a theater designer specializing in lighting and costume design. She is currently based in Los Angeles, after moving here from Montreal.

She trained at Concordia University and received her BFA in Fine Arts, Specialization in Theatre Design. Later she attended Cal State Long Beach where she received her MFA in Lighting Design. After graduation, she began working as a freelance designer in the Los Angeles area and took over the position of Assistant Lighting Designer for LA Opera. She is a member of United Scenic Artists, union local 829. She has worked at several prestigious companies such as the LA Opera, Opera Santa Barbara, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Long Beach Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Central City Opera, as well as many prestigious educational programs and theatre companies in California. Before moving to Los Angeles she mainly designed costumes in her hometown of Montreal. She designed for exciting young companies such as Tableau D’Hote and Gravy Bath Productions.

Azra found herself drawn to theater, as an environment for collaboration and the ability to mix so many different media.

Her design approach focuses on the emotional truth of the moment is order to tell the story in an effective way and bring the audience along on the journey. She enjoys the expressionistic style and tries to represent a character’s internal psychology on the stage. She has been able to do this in a variety of ways since she has worked in varying theaters with a wide range of capacities and/or budgets. She is always excited by the prospect of creating new and exciting work, and participating in the collaborative process.

Learn more at AzraKingAbadi.com.

Matthew Diamond began his critically acclaimed career as a director and dance choreographer for film and television in the mid-'80s. He began directing episodes of shows like Guiding Light, Designing Women and A Different World before gaining more extensive work directing episodes of Family Ties and Day by Day in the late 1980s. He continued to direct television shows in the early 1990s and even directed 21 episodes of the classic sitcom The Golden Girls before embarking on his crowning artistic achievement later in the decade.

In 1998 he put his experiences as a dance choreographer and television director to good use in the documentary Dancemaker. The documentary was nominated for an Academy Award in 1999 and propelled Diamond's directorial career into the 2000s. He enjoyed further success with dance-inspired programming when he earned heaping critical praise, which included Emmy and Directors Guild Awards, for his work directing Great Performances: Dance in America. He returned to more sitcoms on television afterwards by directing episodes of Scrubs, That's So Raven, and Gilmore Girls. He continued to intertwine dance, music, comedy, and dramatic storytelling with 2008's Camp Rock and, a year later, began directed episodes of the hit reality show So You Think You Can Dance.

Other recent credits include The Wiz Live!, extensive work for Great Performances at the Met and Live from Lincoln Center, and numerous LA Opera simulcasts.