In 1984, Jan Burian completed his studies of stage direction at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In his final year, he worked as a director at the Evening Brno Theatre of Satire. His first engagement was at the Oldřich Stibor Theatre in Olomouc. In 1986, he served as a guest stage director in Plzeň, where in the next year he was engaged. Until 1989, when he assumed the post of Artistic Director of the Plzeň drama company, he staged a number of remarkable produc­tions, including of Mikhail Bulgakov’s play Adam and Eve, Karel Steigerwald’s The Tartar Fair and, in Czechoslovak premiere, Alexander Kazantsev’s Eve’s Dreams. In 1990, he staged the Czechoslovak premiere of Václav Havel’s play Temptation. From 1991 to 1995, he worked at the Vinohrady Theatre in Prague.

As Music Director of LA Opera, James Conlon has led more operas than any other conductor in company history—over 500 performances of more than 60 works. 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.

Joy H. Calico is Professor of Musicology and Director of Graduate Studies in the Musicology Department. Her scholarship focuses on interdisciplinary Cold War cultural politics, opera since 1900, and Arnold Schoenberg. She is the author of two monographs published by University of California Press: Brecht at the Opera (2008; paperback 2019) and Arnold Schoenberg’sA Survivor from Warsawin Postwar Europe (2014; expanded Italian edition published in 2023; Russian translation forthcoming in 2024). Her current book project, also under contract with California, is a theory of twentieth- and twenty-first-century opera according to scene type built on Kaija Saariaho’s L’amourde loin. She is also co-editor with Justin Vickers of a collection for OUP entitled Childhood and the Operatic Imaginary since 1900.

Per Boye Hansen is an experienced opera, music and theatre manager. Born in Oslo in 1957, from 2012 to 2017 he held the post of Artistic Director of Den Norske Opera (Norwegian National Opera), which during his tenure rose to become a prominent opera company and enjoyed great international acclaim. Between 2005 and 2012, he served as General and Artistic Director of the Bergen International Festival. The largest of its kind in Northern Europe, it annually presents a number of world premieres in the field of dance, theatre, classical music and opera

Canadian collaborative pianist Blair Salter is a versatile performer and music director who has worked at prestigious opera companies throughout North America. Blair is currently Head Coach for the LA Opera Young Artist Program, and has been a member of the music staff at Santa Fe Opera since 2019. She has previously worked as music staff at San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Colorado, Michigan Opera Theatre, and New Orleans Opera, and was Music Director for Opera Theatre at Penn State University from 2021-23. Blair was a conductor with The Dallas Opera's Hart Institute in 2023, and she is the creator of the contemporary aria database Voce Moderna. She is a graduate of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, Wolf Trap Opera, and the Glimmerglass Festival; Blair completed her DMA at the University of Michigan, where she studied with Martin Katz.

Adam Millstein is a violinist who is developing a multifaceted career as a performer, lecturer, and music curator. He is currently pursuing his Artist Diploma at the Colburn School in Los Angeles under the renowned pedagogue, Robert Lipsett. He holds his Masters Degree from Colburn and his Bachelor of Musical Arts Degree from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Danielle Belen. Millstein is also the Program Manager of the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices at the Colburn School.