Die Walküre

Die Walküre

Cast

Viktor Antipenko
Siegmund

Greer Grimsley
Wotan

Laura Wilde
Sieglinde

Wendy Bryn Harmer
Brünnhilde

Gretchen Krupp
Fricka

Raymond Aceto
Hunding

Julie Adams
Gerhilde

Yelena Dyachek
Helmvige

Alexandra Razskazoff
Ortlinde

Catherine Martin
Waltraute

Deborah Nansteel
Rossweisse

Aubrey Odle*
Seigrune

Maya Lahyani
Grimgerde

Meridian Prall
Schwertleite

Creative

Arthur Fagen
Conductor

Tomer Zvulun
Director

Erhard Rom
Scenic & Projection Designer

Erin Teachman
Projection Programmer

Mattie Ullrich
Costume Designer

Robert Wierzel
Lighting Designer

Ran Arthur Braun
Live Action Designer

Anne Nesmith
Wig & Makeup Designer

Lauren Carroll
Associate Projection Designer

Gregory Luis Boyle
Assistant Director

Nora Winsler*
Assistant Director

Gina Hays
Stage Manager

Eric Weimer
Assistant Conductor

*Sponsored in name this season by a gift from Beth & Gary Glynn, The Glynn Studio Artists also receive significant support from the Donald & Marilyn Keough Foundation, John & YeeWan Stevens, and Jerry & Dulcy Rosenberg.

PerformanceBanner_2324_Walkure

Composer & Librettist: Richard Wagner
Premiere Performance: June 26, 1870, National Theatre, Munich Germany

The Ring Cycle, Wagner’s magnum opus, continues with Die Walküre, the second epic installment in the series. The daughters of Wotan, ruler of the gods, serve as Valkyries tasked with guiding the souls of fallen warriors to Valhalla. But as scandal erupts, Wotan finds himself at odds with whom he most trusts. Greer Grimsley returns as the definitive Wotan in The Atlanta Opera’s new production of one of opera’s greatest triumphs.

Sung in German with English Supertitles

Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre

Performance runtime: approximately 4 hours, 25 minutes
Act I:
65 minutes  |  Intermission: 25 minutes  |  Act II: 90 minutes  |  Intermission: 20 minutes  |  Act III: 65 minutes

PerformanceBanner_2324_Walkure

Composer & Librettist: Richard Wagner
Premiere Performance: June 26, 1870, National Theatre, Munich Germany

The Ring Cycle, Wagner’s magnum opus, continues with Die Walküre, the second epic installment in the series. The daughters of Wotan, ruler of the gods, serve as Valkyries tasked with guiding the souls of fallen warriors to Valhalla. But as scandal erupts, Wotan finds himself at odds with whom he most trusts. Greer Grimsley returns as the definitive Wotan in The Atlanta Opera’s new production of one of opera’s greatest triumphs.

Sung in German with English Supertitles

Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre

Performance runtime: approximately 4 hours, 25 minutes
Act I:
65 minutes
Intermission: 25 minutes
Act II: 90 minutes
Intermission: 20 minutes
Act III: 65 minutes

Cast

Viktor Antipenko
Siegmund

Greer Grimsley
Wotan

Laura Wilde
Sieglinde

Wendy Bryn Harmer
Brünnhilde

Gretchen Krupp
Fricka

Raymond Aceto
Hunding

Julie Adams
Gerhilde

Yelena Dyachek
Helmvige

Alexandra Razskazoff
Ortlinde

Catherine Martin
Waltraute

Deborah Nansteel
Rossweisse

Aubrey Odle*
Seigrune

Maya Lahyani
Grimgerde

Creative

Arthur Fagen
Conductor

Tomer Zvulun
Director

Erhard Rom
Scenic & Projection Designer

Erin Teachman
Projection Programmer

Mattie Ullrich
Costume Designer

Robert Wierzel
Lighting Designer

Ran Arthur Braun
Live Action Designer

Anne Nesmith
Wig & Makeup Designer

Lauren Carroll
Associate Projection Designer

Gregory Luis Boyle
Assistant Director

Nora Winsler*
Second Assistant Director

Gina Hays
Stage Manager

Eric Weimer
Assistant Conductor

*Member of The Atlanta Opera Glynn Studio. Sponsored in name this season by a gift from Beth & Gary Glynn, The Glynn Studio Artists also receive significant support from the Donald & Marilyn Keough Foundation. The Studio Artist director position is funded by Jerry & Dulcy Rosenberg in honor of Tomer Zvulun.

Community Events

Behind The Ring—Wagner Symposium

Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 11:00am | Before Opening Night Performance
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
Free—Tickets required | Get tickets here

You are invited for an in-depth look at the making of The Atlanta Opera’s production of Die Walküre and the development of our first Ring Cycle. Meet the designers in a panel presentation, hear about the work from Jay Hunter Morris—one of the greatest artists of our time to perform the role of Siegfried, and hear from Jonathan Dean of the Seattle Opera—the most recent American opera company to present Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

Identity & Conflict: An Evening of Music & Reflection

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 at 6:30pm
The Temple | 1589 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30309
Temple / Atlanta Opera Members: $18; Community members: $25 | Tickets available through The Temple here

Join us leading up to Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day, for a concert and community discussion.

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To save her life, a Jewish woman during WWII denies her identity. Her story is portrayed in Another Sunrise by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer. The question of identity during conflict has impacted Jews for centuries and the struggle affects many others as well.

The Atlanta Opera presents this work in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls during The Opera’s mainstage performances of Die Walküre by Richard Wagner (a controversial anti-Semite whose works are effectively banned in Israel to this day). Raising the questions of identity, personal choices, social pressures, and living in the world today, this concert and panel discussion seek to examine the choices people make during a crisis. Further, the evening is an opportunity to discuss the dangers of bigotry, especially in the hands of influential artists.

Synopsis

Prior History
During the lengthy time that has passed since the gods entered Valhalla at the end of Das Rheingold, Fafner has used the Tarnhelm to assume the form of a dragon, and guards the gold and the ring in the depths of the forest. Wotan has visited Erda seeking wisdom, and by her has fathered a daughter, Brünnhilde; he has fathered eight other daughters, possibly also by Erda. These, with Brünnhilde, are the Valkyries, whose task is to recover heroes fallen in battle and bring them to Valhalla, where they will protect the fortress from Alberich’s assault should the dwarf recover the ring. Wotan has also wandered the earth, and with a woman of the Völsung race has fathered the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde, who have grown up separately and unaware of each other. From the Völsungs Wotan hopes for a hero who, unencumbered by the gods’ treaties, will obtain the ring from Fafner.

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Act I
Scene 1
As a large storm rages, Siegmund finds shelter from his enemies in a large dwelling built around a massive ash-tree. Unarmed and wounded, he collapses with exhaustion. Sieglinde enters; she tells Siegmund that she is the wife of Hunding, and that he may rest here until Hunding’s return. As they talk, they look at each other with growing interest and emotion. Siegmund gets ready to leave, telling Sieglinde that misfortune follows him, and he does not want to bring it on her; she replies that misfortune dwells with her already.

Scene 2
Hunding returns and questions Siegmund’s presence. Calling himself Wehwalt (“woeful”), Siegmund explains that he grew up in the forest with his parents and twin sister. One day he found their home burned down, his mother killed and his sister gone. Recently he fought with the relatives of a girl being forced into marriage. His weapons were destroyed, the bride was killed, and he was forced to flee. Hunding reveals that he is one of Siegmund’s pursuers; Siegmund may stay, he says, but they must fight in the morning. Before leaving, Sieglinde gives a meaningful glance to a particular spot on the tree in which, the firelight reveals, a sword is buried to the hilt.

Scene 3
Sieglinde returns, having drugged Hunding’s drink. She reveals that she was forced into the marriage and that during their wedding feast, an old man appeared and plunged a sword into the trunk of the ash tree which neither Hunding nor any of his companions have been able to remove. She is longing for the hero who will draw the sword and save her. When Siegmund expresses his love for her, she reciprocates, and when he speaks the name of his father, Wälse, she recognises him as Siegmund, and realises that the sword was left for him. Siegmund then draws the sword from the tree. She reveals herself as Sieglinde, his twin sister. Siegmund names the sword “Nothung” and declares that it will be her protection. The two sing of their passionate love for each other, as the act ends.

Act II
Scene 1
On a high mountain ridge, Wotan instructs Brünnhilde, his Valkyrie daughter, to protect Siegmund in his forthcoming battle with Hunding. Fricka arrives, and in her role as goddess of family values demands that Siegmund and Sieglinde be punished for their adultery and incest. She scorns Wotan’s argument that he requires Siegmund as a “free hero”, who can further his plans to recover the ring from Fafner, uninhibited by Wotan’s contracts. She retorts that Siegmund is not free but is Wotan’s pawn, whose every move the god seeks to direct. Defeated by Fricka’s argument, Wotan reluctantly agrees that he will not protect Siegmund.

Scene 2
After Fricka leaves, the troubled Wotan gives Brünnhilde the full story, and with great sorrow rescinds his earlier instruction; he orders her to give the victory to Hunding and then departs.

Scene 3
Siegmund and Sieglinde are running away from Hunding but are forced to stop. With a vision of Hunding’s dogs scratching Siegmund’s face Sieglinde faints, consumed with guilt and exhaustion.

Scene 4
Brünnhilde suddenly appears to Siegmund and tells him of his impending death; he refuses to follow Brünnhilde to Valhalla when she tells him Sieglinde cannot accompany him. Siegmund still believes that his father’s sword will assure him of victory over Hunding, but Brünnhilde tells him it has lost its power. Siegmund threatens to kill both Sieglinde and himself. Much moved, Brünnhilde decides to defy her father and grant victory to Siegmund.

Scene 5
Hunding’s horn is heard; he arrives and attacks Siegmund. Under Brünnhilde’s power, Siegmund begins to overpower Hunding, but Wotan appears and shatters Siegmund’s sword with his spear. Hunding then stabs him to death. Brünnhilde gathers up the fragments of the sword and flees on horseback with Sieglinde. Contemptuously, Wotan kills Hunding via a simple wave of hand, and swearing that Brünnhilde will be punished for her defiance, sets out in pursuit of her.

Act III
Scene 1
The Valkyries congregate on the mountain-top, each carrying a dead hero and chattering excitedly. Brünnhilde arrives with Sieglinde, and begs her sisters for help, but they dare not defy Wotan. Sieglinde tells Brünnhilde that without Siegmund she no longer wishes to live. Brünnhilde tells Sieglinde that she is pregnant by Siegmund, and urges her to remain alive for her child’s sake, and to name the child Siegfried. Brünnhilde gives the fragments of the sword Nothung to Sieglinde, who thanks her for her loyalty and comfort, and resolves to save the child. As she departs, Wotan is heard approaching with great wrath.

Scene 2
When Wotan arrives, the Valkyries vainly try to hide Brünnhilde. He faces her and declares her punishment: she is to be stripped of her Valkyrie status and become a mortal woman, to be held in defenceless sleep on the mountain, prey to any man who finds her. The other Valkyries protest, but when Wotan threatens them with the same, they flee.

Scene 3
In a long discourse with Wotan, Brünnhilde explains that she decided to protect Sieglinde knowing that this was Wotan’s true desire. Wotan consents to her request that he surround her resting place with a circle of fire that will protect her from all but the bravest of heroes. He bids her a loving farewell and lays her sleeping form down on a rock. He then invokes Loge, the demigod of fire, and creates a circle of perpetual fire around her. Before slowly departing, Wotan pronounces that anyone who fears his spear shall never pass through the fire.

Courtesy of Opera America

Characters & Cast

Siegmund

Viktor Antipenko

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Wotan

Greer Grimsley

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Sieglinde

Laura Wilde

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Brünnhilde

Wendy Bryn Harmer

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Fricka

Gretchen Krupp

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Hunding

Raymond Aceto

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Gerhilde

Helmvige

Waltraute

Catherine Martin

Rossweisse

Siegrune

Grimgerde

Schwertleite

A First Timer’s Guide

The Opera Experience

Operas on our mainstage are grand theatrical experiences. You can always expect the unexpected, and for our productions to be presented at the highest quality.

Supertitles

Many operas are in a foreign language. Supertitles are similar to subtitles in a film, except they are projected above the stage. These translations will help you follow what’s happening on stage.

What to Wear

There is no dress code at The Opera and you will see everything from jeans to evening gowns and formal suits. Most people use it as a chance to enjoy dressing up in their own style.

Arriving in Good Time

If you are late, you will be escorted to the nearest late seating area. At intermission ushers will show you to your seat. Plan ahead to arrive with extra time.

Directions & Parking at Cobb Energy Center

Enhance Your Visit

Pre-Performance Talk

Learn about the history of the opera, the composer, and more from artists and opera aficionados. One hour prior to curtain. Free with your ticket!

Learn More

Familiarizing Yourself with the Story

Because of the foreign languages, classical music, and often complex plots, you will very likely enjoy the performance better if you spend a few minutes familiarizing yourself with the story and characters in advance. Some people even like to listen to the music in advance and others prefer to let it wash over them during the show and perhaps look it up afterwards.

Visit our Study Guides Library

How is an Opera Staged?

Auditions

Actors first audition for roles up to a year in advance, or for more experienced artists, directors also invite them to play a role.

Rehearsals

Most of the rehearsals are held in our rehearsal hall, and not the actual theatre. The conductor begins orchestra rehearsals about a week and half before opening night. They have four rehearsals with the conductor, and then the singers are added into the mix.

Sets & Costumes

The Atlanta Opera Costume Shop alters the costumes to fit our singers. Sometimes they do have to make costumes if there aren’t enough, or if there is nothing that fits, etc. Once the sets are in place, the cast begins rehearsing at the theatre. The Opera production staff works with staff at the theatre to get all of the lighting and technical aspects of the production together.

Sitzprobe & Dress Rehearsal

The orchestra comes together with the singers in a special rehearsal called sitzprobe. There are no costumes during the sitzprobe, this is mainly to hear the voices with the orchestra. There is a piano dress rehearsal, when the singers rehearse in full costume for the first time so they can get used to wearing them. Finally, all of the pieces are put together for two full dress rehearsals leading up to opening night.

Composer

Richard Wagner
(1813 – 1883)

Richard Wagner molded opera according to his own creative definition with revolutionary zeal. Consequently, his innovations in melodic structure, harmony, characterization and orchestration have inspired awe among audiences and music professionals alike for over a century. Impressionist and expressionist composers have spent most of this century struggling to overcome his influence, rebelling against him. Wagner was a man who lived in capital letters and bold print, a study in superlatives: huge creative canvases, legendary feuds and hatreds, gigantic depressions and losses, enormous successes, and passionate romantic liaisons. His music represents the dynamic and incandescent final flowering of romanticism.

Egocentric from childhood, Wagner began at age twenty to record details of his personal and creative life in a series of journals, all in anticipation of drafting an extensive autobiography in later life. He never seems to have doubted his destiny or his own titanic genius. At first, Wagner fancied himself a writer and planned a career in the literary world, drafting a ghoulish drama, Leubald  which killed off forty-two characters in the first four acts, with some returning as ghosts in the fifth.
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Attendance at performances of Weber’s Der Freischutz and Beethoven’s Fidelio  turned his attention toward a lifelong obsession with operatic composition. With his mother’s encouragement, he undertook the serious study of music, an academic process peppered with bouts of drinking, dueling, and gambling. Wagner’s father, at least in name, was Karl Friedrich Wagner, a police court clerk who died while his son was in infancy. In recent years, evidence gathered would indicate that Wagner’s biological father was actually Ludwig Geyer, a talented painter, dramatist and actor. Geyer married Wagner’s mother shortly after she was widowed.

He introduced his love of literature, art and theater into the household. Although Geyer died while Wagner was only eight years old, the stepfather’s influence had an indelible effect on the boy.

Wagner’s earliest works, two orchestral overtures, were completed in 1829 and received scornfully. A spare six months of formal music education came from Theodor Weinlig, cantor of the Thomasschule, in 1831. Those studies culminated in the composition of a Wagner symphony which was well-received in Leipzig and Prague. He began work on an opera Die Hochzeit , and tossed it aside unfinished, then completed a full operatic work Die Feen , which was destined not to be performed until five years after the composer’s death.

He undertook a series of conducting posts with small, sordid operatic companies, and there built the instinct and skills which would forge his colossal vision of musical drama. In 1836, Wagner married Minna Planer, an impulsive act he almost instantly regretted. Although mediocre, the union lasted until 1862.

Wagner struggled to establish himself in opera in Paris, living on the verge of starvation, from time to time imprisoned for his debts. Minna took in boarders. His preliminary sketches of the operas Rienzi  and Das Liebesverbot were rejected by producers despite introductory letters from Giacomo Meyerbeer. Wagner staggered briefly under the humiliation, then turned to a new concept, The Flying Dutchman, and although impoverished and unknown declared himself victorious at its completion in 1841. He was not far from wrong. La Rienzi  opened in Dresden in 1842 to enormous acclaim. A triumph followed the next year for The Flying Dutchman, in the same city.

Wagner became Kapellmeister of the Dresden opera and should have realized financial security at last. However, he continued to live far in excess of his means, accumulating impossible debts. Within the five years which followed, he had completed Tannhauser  and Lohengrin. However, Lohengrin, which he considered his greatest effort to date was rejected by Dresden opera and, in anger, Wagner turned to revolution. He wrote handbills sympathetic to Dresden rioters who were creating a growing insurrection in the state of Saxony. When the revolution failed, Wagner was forced to flee to Paris.

During the thirteen years of Wagner’s exile, Lohengrin was presented in Weimar and was received tentatively just as Tannhauser had been. However, in the decade which followed both operas were embraced by German audiences. In fact, by the time his exile ended in 1860, Wagner was one of the few Germans who had never witnessed a performance of Lohengrin.

Years of high living had nearly bankrupted Wagner when, in 1864, the newly-crowned eighteen year old King Ludwig II became the composer’s devoted benefactor. Wagner produced Tristan and Isolde, Meistersinger, Das Rhinegold, and Die Walküre, in the five years between 1865 and 1870. However, his enormous persuasive influence on King Ludwig placed Wagner at the mercy of warring political factions who demanded the composer’s allegiance. Wagner refused all of them categorically. His refusal to engage in intrigue, combined with his involvement in a scandalous affair with the married daughter of Franz Lizst, Cosima von Bulow, drove Wagner from Munich. Wagner had indulged in numerous romantic liaisons in the past. However, in this case he had fathered a child whom his betrayed friend, Cosima’s husband Hans von Bulow, graciously accepted as his own. Cosima and Wagner acknowledged von Bulow’s discretion by naming the girl Isolde.

Once more in exile, Wagner continued receiving financial support from King Ludwig at a retreat near Lucerne, Switzerland. And, when his legal wife, Minna, died in 1866, he at last married Cosima.

The final years of Wagner’s life were dedicated to completion of the gargantuan music project – The Ring – which was to combine all the noblest forms of Art in its presentation: innovative melodic structure, ambitious orchestration and instrumentation, intensely dramatic characterization and evocative sets. His concept was immense: an orchestral, vocal and theatrical portrayal of the legendary struggle between gods and men for control of the earth. This compelling mythological drama would be presented over consecutive days in a series of four sequential operas: Das Rhinegold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung.

And to that end, he also undertook the construction of his concept of the perfect operatic performance facility at Bayreuth. When the theater opened for the first full performance of The Ring cycle on August 13, 1876, the event was attended by the luminaries of the musical world including Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Gounod, Grieg, and Liszt. Tchaikovsky noted, “Whether Wagner is right in pursuing his idea to the limit, or whether he stepped over the boundary of aesthetic conventions which can guarantee the durability of a work of art, whether musical art will progress further on the road started by Wagner, or whether the “Ring” is to be the point from which a reaction will set in remains to be seen. But in any case what happened in Bayreth will be well remembered by our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.” And so it has been.

Wagner died suddenly of heart disease in 1883, having been seriously debilitated by his efforts at premiering his final work, Parsifal. He was buried in the garden of his home Wahnfried, at Bayreuth to the music of “Siegfried’s Death.”

Courtesy Arizona Opera Virtual Opera House

ARCHIV - Der Komponist Richard Wagner (Archivfoto von 1877). Nach groflem Wirbel um die Besetzung der Titelpartie beginnen an diesem Mittwoch (25. Juli) die Bayreuther Festspiele mit der Oper ´Der Fliegende Holl‰nderª. dpa/lby (nur s/w,zu dpa-Themenpaket vom 23.07.2012)  +++(c) dpa - Bildfunk+++

Conductor

Arthur Fagen

Arthur Fagen has been the Carl and Sally Gable music director at The Atlanta Opera since 2010, and continues to be in great demand as a conductor of symphony and opera both in Europe and the United States. He is a regular guest at the most prestigious opera houses, concert halls, and music festivals at home and abroad, and his career has been marked by a string of notable appearances including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Staatsoper Berlin, Munich State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and New York City Opera.

From 1998 to 2001, Fagen was invited regularly to be guest conductor at Vienna State Opera. On the concert podium, Fagen has appeared with internationally renowned orchestras, including Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Munich Radio Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, and RAI Orchestras of Turin, Naples, Milan, and Rome. From 2002 to 2007, he was the music director of Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and Opera. He serves as Chair and Professor, Department of Orchestral Conducting at Indiana University in Bloomington.

A former assistant of Christoph von Dohnanyi (Frankfurt Opera) and James Levine (Metropolitan Opera), he served as principal conductor in Kassel and Brunswick, as chief conductor of Flanders Opera of Antwerp and Ghent, as music director of Queens Symphony Orchestra, and as a member of the conducting staff for Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Fagen was born in New York and studied with Laszlo Halasz, Max Rudolf (Curtis Institute) and Hans Swarowsky. Fagen has an opera repertoire of more than 75 works and has recorded for Naxos and BMG. His Naxos recording of Bohuslav Martinůs works was awarded Editor’s Choice in the March 2010 issue of Gramophone Magazine.

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Director

Tomer Zvulun

General and Artistic Director of The Atlanta Opera since 2013, Israeli born Tomer Zvulun is also one of opera’s most exciting stage directors, earning consistent praise for his creative vision, often described as cinematic and fresh.  His work has been presented by prestigious opera houses around the world, including The Metropolitan Opera, the opera companies of Israel, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Montreal, Wexford, Glimmerglass, Houston, Washington National Opera, Seattle, Dallas, Detroit, San Diego, Minnesota, Boston, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Wolf Trap, as well as leading educational institutes and universities such as The Juilliard School, Indiana University, Boston University, and IVAI in Tel Aviv.   

Since taking the leadership in Atlanta a decade ago, he personally directed thirty of the company’s productions. He increased the operations of the company from three to six productions per season, while stabilizing the financials and in the course of his first decade tenure, secured Atlanta’s position as one of the top 10 opera companies in the US. Some of his noted achievements includes launching the successful Discoveries series, creating the first young artist program in the company’s history, tripling the company’s annual fund raising, launching the company’s first RING cycle, creating The Atlanta Opera Film Studio, and building a theatre in a circus tent where performances were conducted safely during the pandemic. 

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His work at The Atlanta Opera attracted international attention by earning numerous awards and prizes including the nomination of The Atlanta Opera for the International Opera Awards in London and the selection of his production of Silent Night as both the Irish Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution production of the year. His focus on innovation led to an invitation to deliver a TED talk as well as a case study that is being taught at Harvard Business School. His productions travel the world and bring wide exposure to the company. Next season his productions of  Rigoletto travel to Los Angeles Opera, his La bohème returns to The Dallas Opera, and his acclaimed production of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs will make its Kennedy Center debut at the Washington National Opera.  

Headshot_Tomer2022