The Old Man and the Sea at The Wallis

From: Phoenix, Arizona. LA Opera: Hemingway/Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea (2027, debut). Praised for "one of the performances of the year" (Los Angeles Times), Mexican-American baritone Armando Contreras is quickly becoming a standout in the world of opera. He was recently featured in Opera America magazine as one of the rising stars in opera. In the 2025/26 season, following summer performances of his signature role of Lt. Roberto Gonzalez in The Knock with Central City Opera, Armando sings the title role in The Old Man and the Sea with Opera Columbus. He also appears in Zorro with both Arizona Opera and Pacific Opera Project and in Offenbach's Songbird with Kentucky Opera. In the 2024/25 season, he returned to Pacific Opera Project in the title role of Antonio Cagnoni’s Don Bucefalo, appeared as Figaro in The Barber of Seville with Opera Las Vegas, and was the baritone soloist in Ein deutches Requiem by Johannes Brahms with the Larimer Chorale. He also joined the Crested Butte Center for the Arts for concerts as Guglielmo in an abridged version of Così fan tutte.

From: Trento, Italy. LA Opera: The Hubble Cantata (2017). Composer Paola Prestini has cultivated a uniquely expansive and humanistic musical voice, through pieces that transcend genre and discipline, and projects whose global impact reverberates beyond the walls of the concert hall. Far more than just notes on a page, Prestini's works give voice to those whom society has silenced, and offer a platform for the causes that are most vital to us all. Prestini has been named one of the Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music by The Washington Post, one of the top 100 Composers in the World by National Public Radio, and one of the Top 30 Professionals of the Year by Musical America. As co-founder of National Sawdust, she has collaborated with luminaries like poet Robin Coste Lewis, visual artists Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and musical legends David Byrne, Philip Glass, and Renée Fleming, and her works have been performed throughout the world with leading institutions like the New York Philharmonic, LA Opera, Dallas Opera, London's Barbican Center, Mexico's Bellas Artes, and many more.

From: Grande Prairie, Canada. LA Opera: Dog Days (2015), Song from the Uproar (2015), The Hubble Cantata (2017), Adoration (2025). Royce Vavrek is a Canada-born, Brooklyn-based librettist and lyricist who has been called “the indie Hofmannsthal” (The New Yorker) a “Metastasio of the downtown opera scene” (The Washington Post), “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times), and “one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world” (CBC Radio). His opera Angel’s Bone with composer Du Yun was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Beth Morrison is the creative producer of Beth Morrison Projects. Her long collaboration with LA Opera began with Dog Days in 2015. The 2025 presentation of Adoration marks BMP's 16th collaboration with the company. She is an opera and theater producer, singer, and voice teacher with bachelor and master of music degrees and a master of fine arts in theater management/producing from the Yale School of Drama, as well as many years of experience in the development of new opera and theater works. She first cultivated her extensive experience in arts administration at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute where she served as administrative director for four years. Beth served a founding tenure as the Producer for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre from 2009-2011, as well as Producer for New York City Opera’s VOX: Contemporary American Opera Lab from 2010-2011.

Karmina Šilec is a multidisciplinary artist. As a director, author, writer, conductor, composer, set and costume designer, she executes projects with theaters, opera houses, festivals and ensembles worldwide. Her projects have been granted with major international awards in the fields including Music Theatre Now awards for Threnos (for the Throat) and From Time Immemorial... Her work has been seen at the Festival d'Automne á Paris, Ruhrtriennale (Germany), Prototype Festival NYC, Holland Festival, Moscow Easter Festival, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Melbourne Festival, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall (Russia), Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Teresa Carreño Theater (Venezuela), and Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, among others.

Dorian Šilec Petek is a theater artist working in the fields of direction and scenography. His work centers around the critique of late capitalism and its manifestations in society. Petek’s theater is interested in recontextualizing history, where his projects delve into the legacy of our understanding of structures of power, emotional disorders, narratives of adulthood, and solitude. His upcoming theater works are centered around the understanding of a more-than-human world. His work has been commissioned by various Slovenian theaters, including the Slovenian National Theatre Drama Ljubljana, the Ljubljana City Theatre, and the Prešeren Theat Kranj; presented at various international venues such as Z Space in San Francisco, Theater Basel, ASU Gammage in Arizona, and Watermill Center in New York; and shown at festivals around the world.

Mila Henry is a music director and pianist who maintains an active and versatile career leading works that defy genre, from rock musicals to folk operas to reimagined classics. She has worked with Lileana Blain-Cruz, Heather Christian, Bill T. Jones, George Lewis, Missy Mazzoli, Wayne Shorter, and esperanza spalding. Recent and upcoming projects include conductor for The Old Man and the Sea (Opera Columbus); music director/pianist for Precipice (Prototype Festival); and associate music director for Black Swan (American Repertory Theater).

Andrej Hajdinjak has designed lighting for more than 200 productions spanning theater, dance, ballet, opera, concerts, and exhibitions, collaborating with renowned directors, choreographers, and institutions across Europe and beyond. His credits include Tosca (G. H. Seebach), Lakmé, The Tales of Hoffmann, Prince Igor (Plamen Kartaloff), Carmen (Charles Roubaud), Faust (Alessia Pizzech), Don Quixote (Thomas Schulte Michels), and Julie (Manfred Schweigkofler). With choreographer Edward Clug, he created designs for Architecture of Silence, Radio and Juliet, and Pret-a-Porter. He also lit Tomaž Pandur’s Medea and Vito Taufer’s Three Oranges, as well as major cultural events including the Slovenian National Day celebrations and the National Prešeren Awards.

From: New York City, New York. LA Opera: The Old Man and the Sea (2027). Sidra Bell was commissioned as the first Black female choreographer to make works for New York City Ballet in the fall of 2020 (Fall Digital Season) and 2021 (Fall Fashion Gala/Innovators & Icons Program). Recent features of her historical work at NYCB include Essence Magazine, NY1, News12, Cero Magazine, and Amsterdam News. She was the choreographer of ARENA in collaboration with acclaimed visual artist Derek Fordjour for his feature solo show at Petzel Gallery in Fall 2023 (New York Times Critic Pick). She was nominated for Outstanding Choreographer at the Bessies in 2022 and 2023. She was featured on air for a special segment on The Today Show: “How choreographer Sidra Bell is blazing a trail for next generation: Groundbreaking dancer and choreographer Sidra Bell talks making history at the New York City Ballet and blazing a trail for future generations”

From: NoCal/Brooklyn. LA Opera: Dog Days (2015, debut); anatomy theater (2016); The Source (2016); The Hubble Cantata (2017); Soldier Songs (2018); prism (2018); In Our Daughter's Eyes (2022). Sound designer Garth MacAleavey is Director of Sound and Technical Design of National Sawdust. Recent credits include Spatial...no problem by Lee Scratch Perry and Mouse on Mars; Soldier Songs for Opera Philadelphia; the New York Philharmonic’s Sound On: Leading Voices; Ricky Ian Gordon’s Ellen West; Ted Hearne’s Dorothea; Michael Gordon’s Aquanetta; and Nick Cave’s The Let Go at Park Ave Armory.