Opera Projects
Umbra (80’)
Director/Co-Creator: Héctor Alvarez
Umbra is an opera-theater work on the journey through grief’s inner mythic landscape.
Presented in Latin and English, Umbra entwines two stories: the composer's journey through grief after the suicide of her childhood best friend and Orpheus’, after emerging from the Underworld without Eurydice.
Umbra is written for mezzo-soprano, SSAA vocal ensemble, cello, flute, and electronics.
Sulpicia Songs (60’)
Director/Designer: Rosie Tabachnick
Sulpicia Songs is a solo opera-theater fever dream for voice, electronics, and piano.
Caught between an ancient and future self in the endless process of “coming of age,” performer-composer Elliot Menard looks to the 20 BCE poems of Sulpicia (the only ancient Roman female poet whose work survives) to explore her own 2026 CE growing pains and power struggles in love, work, and family. The music blends experimental opera with confessional pop, weaving Sulpicia’s Latin elegies (voice and electronics) together with Elliot’s songs (voice and keyboard) through personal stories. Projections by director-designer Rosie Tabachnick are both supertitles (text & translation) and glimpses into the inner worlds of each song.
Watch & Listen
Umbra (2023-)
chamber opera for 5 treble voices, cello, flute, and electronics- Umbra trailer (1’05”)
- Bacchae (5’13”) — SSAA, cello, flute, electronics
- Apollo et Hyacinthus (16’48”) — SSAAA, cello, flute, electronics
- Pygmalion et Galatea (12’05”) — SSAAA, cello, flute, electronics
- Perque os (6’09”) — SSAA, cello, flute
- Umbra loco (2’38”) — cello, flute, whispers
- Umbra subit (5’01”) — SSAAA cello, flute
- Leviore lyra (5’57”) — mezzo, cello, flute
- Arbor (4’27”) — SSAA, cello, flute
- Full video (74’01”)
Sulpicia Songs (2025-)
solo opera for mezzo, electronics, and pianoVoice & electronics:
- Sulpicia VI — “Ne tibi sim” (4’00”)
- Sulpicia I — “Tandem venit amor” (8’00”)
- Sulpicia IV — “Gratum est” (5’00”)
- Sulpicia II — “Invisus natalis” (7’00”)
Voice & piano:
- Mixed Signals (8’00”)
- Hinge Hole (3’00”)
- Postcard Song (2’00”)
- Full video (60”)
Choral
- exsangues, 2022 (3’29”) — SSAA
- arbor, 2023 (5’36”) — SSSSAAAA
Performance
Here be Sirens by Kate Soper (75’)
Role: Polyxo
Director: Héctor Alvarez
Music Director: Daniel Newman-Lessler
Here be Sirens is an opera for three sopranos and prepared grand piano.
Set on a Mediterranean island in the pre-archaic Greek past and the post-apocalyptic U.S. future, the opera follows three Sirens (Polyxo, Peitho, and Phaino) caught in a purgatorial state, destined to lure sailors to their deaths for eternity. Desperate to break the cycle, Polyxo tries to determine how the Sirens came to be.
Dada Din Din by Jacqui Bobak et al. (120’)
Role: Mina Loy
Directors: Jacqui Bobak, Micaela Tobin, Carmina Escobar.
Dada Din-Din is a devised opera-theater piece inspired by the women artists of the Dada movement: Emmy Hennings, Mina Loy, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Hannah Höch, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Florine Stettheimer, Sayako Kishimoto, and others. Through Dada performance practices and compositional techniques, Dada Din Din explores womanhood, reproductive rights, sexual freedom, anti-capitalism, utopia, memory, war, and ritual.