Brooklyn Repertory Opera

The Brooklyn Repertory Opera is a Park Slope, Brooklyn-based opera company founded in 2006 by artistic director Kathleen Keske and executive director Brett Wynkoop. The company formed to produce the world premier of the two act version of a new opera, A.F.R.A.I.D., based upon the life of Fanny Fern by composer/librettist Susan Stoderl, after having a successful run of the one act version of A.F.R.A.I.D. in the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. In March of 2010, BRO will world premiere another Stoderl opera, The Veil of Forgetfulness.
BRO performs in a former bathhouse and landmark building, known as the Brooklyn Lyceum. Beginning in June 2007, the company began performing public domain works from the standard repertoire: Così fan tutte, Fidelio, Cavalleria rusticana, Hänsel und Gretel, Le nozze di Figaro, Orfeo ed Euridice, Un ballo in maschera, and Ariadne auf Naxos, all in English translations for the purpose of making opera accessible to a wider audience.
Conductors who have worked with Brooklyn Repertory Opera are Hardin Butcher, Stephen Francis Vasta, Conrad Chu, Yoon Jae Lee, Roger Malouf, Christopher Fecteau, Harry Saltzman, Francesco Lecce-Chong, and Jason Wirth. Beginning with the production of Hänsel und Gretel, the company added a choreographer, Mary Silverstein, who has sung in many choruses with BRO.
Singers who have performed principal and/or comprimario roles multiple times with the company are: Allison Atteberry, Angela Billings, Alyssa Bowlby, Marcella Caprario, Barrett Cobb, Tracey Adele Cooper, Mary Jane Dingledy, Elizabeth Eiel, Ivy Frenkel, Melissa Gerstein, Kathleen Gorman, Shannon Elizabeth Hunt, Stefanie Izzo, Kathleen Keske, Karmen Kluge, Jocelyne O'Toole, Susanna Raymond, Pamela Scanlon, Courtenay Schowalter, Ilya Speranza, Wilma Wever, Amanda White, Jay Gould, Scott Andrew Hutchins, Jonathan Ichikawa, Eric Jorgenson, Ilberto Lagana, Francis Liska, Dominique Rosoff, Peter Schmitz, Matthew Smedberg, Nicholas Tamagna, Leslie Tay and Matthew Yohn.
A skilled cartoonist, Francis Liska drew the advertising artwork for Fidelio, Cavalleria, Hansel & Gretel, Figaro, Ballo and Ariadne. Barrett Cobb, an award-winning portrait and landscape painter, painted the artwork for the advertising and projections in Orfeo, and the projections used in Ariadne.
The Brookyln Repertory Opera made history during the performances of Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera by being the first production in which a countertenor, Nicholas Tamagna, played the role of Ulrica as Ulrico.

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