Head Of Opera at Roosevelt University is Selected for Prestigious Fulbright Specialist Program

Andrew Eggert, assistant professor and head of opera at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts (CCPA), has been selected for the U.S. Department of State's competitive Fulbright Specialist Program.

An expert in American opera who regularly directs productions around the nation and at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Eggert will be a Fulbright Specialist in November at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hungary.

Contemporary American opera from the 20th and 21st centuries will be the topic of a special two-week Fulbright workshop that the Roosevelt professor is leading this month with Liszt students.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for me to serve as an ambassador for American composers and American music," said Eggert, who has been involved with a number of contemporary American operas during a seasoned directing career that has included operas from all over the world, both old and new.

Daron Hagen's Amelia, produced by Roosevelt's CCPA in its Chicago premiere in 2013 and Hannah Lash's Beowulf, premiered by Guerilla Opera in Boston in 2016, are among high-profile contemporary American operas that the Roosevelt professor has directed. He has also served as associate director on several projects staged by Diane Paulus, including Tod Machover's Death and the Powers and Matthew Aucoin's Crossing, which made its debut in 2015 and returned to American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., in October.

He also has worked closely during the annual CCPA OperaLab competition and learning program with a number of Roosevelt student composers, assisting them in premiering new operas featured during Roosevelt's OperaFest, which this fall celebrated its 10th anniversary.

"Andrew has a comprehensive understanding of American opera, including new operas that are frequently being staged all over the country in venues large and small," said Henry Fogel, dean of CCPA.

"We are proud of the commitment he has made to our students in our unique OperaLab program, and I have a lot of confidence that he will be able to reach young musicians overseas who may have had very limited exposure to American opera," said Fogel.

Eggert is the eighth Roosevelt professor selected for a Fulbright since 2010, and the 13th to receive the honor since 2000.

A native of Hinsdale, Illinois, he first became interested in theatre and directing as a Hinsdale Central High School student, and has since had a career spanning nearly 20 years directing a variety of productions at Chicago Opera Theater, Gotham Chamber Opera, the Dallas Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, and Opera Omaha. He has also been a guest director at Princeton University and the Yale Baroque Opera Project, and has worked with young artist programs of Glimmerglass Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, and the Napa Music Festival. His work was selected as a winner of Opera America's inaugural Director-Designer Showcase. He is a graduate of Yale University and earned his PhD in Historical Musicology at Columbia University.

"I'm looking at this project as a wonderful opportunity to build relationships and foster future project exchanges between Roosevelt and the Liszt Academy," said Eggert, who has worked with CCPA's OperaFest since 2006 and joined the full-time CCPA faculty in 2013.

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