2024 Recipients

Since his 2019 professional debut at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Louis Lohraseb has established himself as an exciting young conductor of both symphonic and operatic repertoire. The New York native joined the LA Opera family as a member of the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program from 2018 through 2020, working closely with Music Director James Conlon. During that time, he conducted the LA Opera Orchestra in live performances of Bernhard Herrmann's soundtrack score for Psycho. He made his mainstage company debut conducting Tosca in 2022. (Parterre Box: "It was apparent from his entrance into the pit that he’s a favorite with the orchestra and he proved immediately why. The LA Opera Orchestra veritably erupted and sparkled under his sure-handed guidance.") In 2023, he made his mainstage company debut conducting The Barber of Seville. (Indulge magazine: "Louis Lohraseb's enthusiastic conducting infuses the performance with a contagious energy that electrifies the entire production.") He subsequently returned to conduct La Traviata in 2024.

His appearances elsewhere in the 2023/24 season include debuts with the Hamburg State Opera for The Marriage of Figaro and with Atlanta Opera for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Recent engagements include Carmen with the Semperoper Dresden, La Traviata with the Komische Oper Berlin, Massenet’s rarely performed Thérèse with Sarasota Opera and Così fan tutte with Tel Aviv Summer Opera.

Based in New York, stage director Kaneza Schaal has made a mark in theater, opera and film. She has created two highly acclaimed new productions for LA Opera. She made her company debut in 2022 with the West Coast premiere of Omar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels. (SF Classical Voice: "A profoundly moving spectacle at LA Opera...director Kaneza Schaal delivered a scheme of streamers, scrims, drapes and projections filled with Omar’s Arabic writings.") She returned in 2024 for William Grant Still's Highway 1, USA, the highest profile staging that the rarely performed opera has received to date.

By creating performances that speak many formal, cultural, historical, aesthetic and experiential languages, she seeks expansive audiences. Her work has been shown in divergent contexts from courtyards in Vietnam, to East African amphitheaters, to European opera houses, to U.S. public housing. Domestically, her work has been shown at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Opera, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Kennedy Center, Detroit Opera, The Shed, Walker Arts Center and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, United States Artist Fellowship, SOROS Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, Ford Foundation Art for Justice Bearing Witness Award and Creative Capital Award.

In her 14 years with the company, Patricia McLeod has been foundational to the company's success, both as an inspirational administrative leader for her staff, and as an exceptional steward of relationships that have paid and will continue to pay dividends to the organization for generations to come. Chief among her many accomplishments, she is principally responsible for the largest single gift in the history of LA Opera.

During her tenure at the company, she has helped in the strategic planning and guidance of the company’s largest campaign, which has nearly tripled the company’s endowment. Through her efforts, she has has a profound impact on helping make the company's artistic goals achievable. She leads the individual giving team and is responsible for many of the company’s most successful fundraising initiatives and programs, including the planned giving program which, under her leadership, has produced several of the largest estate gifts received by the company. She expertly staffs board leadership and executive staff in all the company’s most critical development efforts. She came to LA Opera in 2010, after previously holding leadership positions in development with a number of arts organizations, including the San Jose Museum of Art, the Montalvo Arts Center and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has also held leadership development positions in academia, working for the Stanford University School of Medicine and the California College of the Arts.