Stephanie Havey Appointed Director of Oberlin Opera Theater Program

Award-winning stage director Stephanie Havey has been appointed to the tenure-track position of associate professor and director of Oberlin Conservatory’s Opera Theater program. In this role, she will teach classes and direct two fully-staged productions, performed with orchestra, each academic year. With this appointment, Havey joins the outstanding faculty of Oberlin's Vocal Studies Division.

"I have had a connection to Oberlin for many years as a guest artist," says Havey. "I have always had immense respect and appreciation for the incredible instruction taking place here as well as the caliber of musicians that graduate from this program. I look forward to guiding the next generation of opera artists in developing their unique voices and to producing a wide variety of opera projects and productions that will engage with current events and interdisciplinary topics. Oberlin is the ideal environment for engaging with difficult questions and varying viewpoints as we create art that is relevant and vital to our culture." 

Havey has staged numerous productions for professional opera companies across the country including the Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Arizona Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Opera Omaha, Madison Opera, New York City Opera, and Hawai’i Opera Theatre, as well as the Canadian company Opéra de Montréal. She has also created new productions for Boston Lyric Opera, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Opera, Atlanta Opera, Finger Lakes Opera, Tulsa Opera, and Lyrique-en-mer International Festival de Belle-Ile in France. 

A frequent collaborator for the development of new opera, Havey has staged new works with Opera Philadelphia for their Double Exposure event, OPERA America’s New Works Forum, and spent three seasons as the Resident Stage Director for the North American New Opera Workshop. Havey is currently in development for a new work with composer Jennifer Jolley through the OPERA America Discovery Grant for Women Composers program. 

Last year, Havey directed two productions as a visiting professor at Oberlin. Her first outing in November 2023 was Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring "that was delightful and authentic in every respect. The denizens of the fictional village of Loxford all seemed to be playing themselves rather than just animating cardboard figures ordered up from central casting." (ClevelandClassical.com) 

Havey says, "I especially love working on comedies. I love the way that laughter brings us all together and the way that cleverly written comedy can open our eyes to aspects of society that might be difficult to acknowledge or discuss. Social commentary and satire have long been part of the operatic tradition. I enjoy examining these historical methods of storytelling and synthesizing them with a modern perspective that is connected to the lived experience of our students and audiences in order to create meaningful productions."

The second production in March 2024 was Claudio Monteverdi’s musical fable L’Orfeo, performed in period musical style but staged in modern dress on a minimal set with some plot modernizations. A 25-piece instrumental ensemble—a collaboration with Oberlin's Historical Performance department—included Baroque strings with theorbos, recorders, and cornetti, sackbuts, harp, harpsichord, chamber organ, and regal, performed by students with guest artists. 

For the 2024-25 academic year, Havey will direct Jules Massenet's Cendrillon in four performances running November 7-10 and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's La finta giardiniera, March 6-9.

Havey says her vision for Oberlin Opera Theater is, "to foster an environment that promotes creative exploration and dialogue around advancing the operatic art form in a way that is culturally impactful. I want students to consider what stories they want to tell and to expand their views on how they might tell them. Opera is a vast art form with yet so much untapped potential. Modern composers are driving innovation through new musical styles and stories that have never been told on the operatic stage. I hope to engage with both classic and modern composers, librettists, and creatives to help our students develop their point of view as opera artists of the future."