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Stefanos Koroneos is a director, librettist, and costume designer with 35 years of experience in opera across the United States, Europe, and Latin America. As Artistic and General Director of Teatro Grattacielo in New York City, he has shaped one of the city's most distinctive opera companies — expanding its programming to a year-round season, building robust educational and community initiatives, and establishing co-productions with partners across Europe. 

His directing work spans a wide range of repertoire and geography. Recent credits include the critically acclaimed Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, and Le nozze di Figaro in the United States, Greece, and Italy; an award-winning production of Zandonai's Giulietta e Romeo in Battery Park City; Don Giovanni, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, and La Vestale for Light Opera of New Jersey, La Tech Monterrey, the Cultural Center of Crete, and the Megaron Thessaloniki. In 2025 he produced and directed Le nozze di Figaro, L'amico Fritz, and Rossini Perduto for Teatro Grattacielo, oversaw the world premiere of Daniel Asia's Tin Angel at La Mama, and joined the directing staff of the Metropolitan Opera for their revivals of Barber of Seville and Carmen. He is currently directing Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle for Ithaca College.

Koroneos is also an active costume designer — his designs have been seen in productions of L'Elisir d'Amore and Don Giovanni — and in 2025, he completed the libretto for Jefferson Lives!, a new opera premiering in 2026 in Tucson, Phoenix, and New York City, marking a significant expansion of his creative voice beyond the rehearsal room. 

His artistic formation was shaped by close collaborations with some of opera's most influential figures — Franco Zeffirelli, Fabrizio Melano, Moisés Kaufman, and Richard Bonynge — partnerships that deepened his understanding of theatrical storytelling and continue to inform everything he directs. 

Before turning fully to direction, Koroneos built an international career as a baritone, performing with Teatro alla Scala, Teatro Regio di Torino, the Bolshoi Theater, New York City Opera, Palm Beach Opera, the Greek National Opera, and opera houses in Germany and the Netherlands. That experience as a performer — knowing what it feels like to stand on stage, to navigate a score, to find a character from the inside — remains central to how he works with singers today.

Tamara Acosta has been a member of the Ithaca College Voice faculty since 2017.  She strives to create an environment in the studio that supports, encourages and celebrates each singer's unique talents.  Her teaching is grounded in the 'bel canto' tradition which is applied to all genres of music. The objective is to provide students with the necessary tools to become the artist they choose to be, reaching their greatest potential. 

Her extensive performance career has taken Ms. Acosta to many of the great opera and concert stages of the world, including Lyric Opera Chicago, The Santa Fe Opera, Sarasota Opera, Nashville Opera, Opera Delaware, Opera Pacific and Opera Theatre of St. Louis, where she appeared in the world premiere of Judith Weir’s The Vanishing Bridegroom. The New York Times has called Tamara Acosta’s soprano “ solid…her singing clarion-toned and ardent."  Recently, Tamara appeared as the soprano soloist in Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem, first with the Symphony of the Mountains in Bristol, TN, followed by a performance with the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra at Cornell University having previously performed the same piece with Orquesta Sinfónica de Xalapa in Xalapa, Mexico. 

Recognizing a need for greater diversity in the classroom and on the concert stage, Tamara is a co-founder of ONEcomposer, an arts advocacy initiative dedicated to telling the stories of neglected musical voices. ONEcomposer’s collaboration with the Philadelphia Orchestra to present the original orchestration of Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement was hailed as “a knockout” by The Philadelphia Inquirer. On July 26, 2024, ONEcomposer released Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, the organization’s inaugural commercial recording, featuring previously unpublished and unrecorded art songs of Florence Price as performed by soprano Karen Slack and pianist Michelle Cann. The album was awarded the 2024 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. Tamara co-produced the album and authored the liner notes. 

Ms. Acosta earned her Master of Music Degree from the New England Conservatory and her Bachelor of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

American bass Curtis Streetman is an artist that strives to perform a rich and excitingly varied repertoire. Mr. Streetman’s artistry has been presented in some of world's major concert halls and opera houses.  He has appeared in Le Nozze di Figaro (Figaro), Die Zauberflötte (Sarastro), La Bohème (Colline), Don Giovanni (Leporello), Rigoletto (Sparafucile) as well as leads in Verdi, Handel and Rossini operas. Operatic performances include appearances at The Salzburg Festival, as well as opera houses in Vienna, Bilbao, Dortmund, Halle, and Victoria.

International performances include appearances in Geneva, Basel, and The Theatre Champs-Élysées, The Concertgebouw, and Musikverein. Festival appearances include Ravinia, The Savannah Music Festival, The Hong Kong Arts Festival, Tanglewood, Herrenchiemsee Festspiele, The Halle Handel Festival, and The San Juan Arts Festival.

He has appeared with The National Symphony in performances of Handel’s Messiah. Other American appearances include performances with The Cleveland Orchestra in performances of Schumann's Szenen aus Goethe’s Faust, as well as Mozart's Requiem with The San Diego Symphony. He has been presented in concert with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in programs featuring recently discovered cantatas of CPE Bach.

Recording credits include Monteverdi's Vespers for Musical Heritage Society, Castelnuovo-Tedesko's Romanciero Gitano for New World Classics, Charpentier Christmas Cantatas for Naxos, Clarembault Cantatas for Dorian, and Sony's release of Handel's Riccardo Primo, on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.

Mr. Streetman performed the role of Christus in Jonathan Miller’s staged production of The St. Matthew Passion, produced by The Brooklyn Academy of Music; he performed the title role in Lalo’s Le Roi d'Ys with The American Symphony Orchestra a Lincoln Center.

Mr. Streetman was recently appointed Director of Voice and Opera at the University of the Bahamas in Nassau, where he makes his home. Live recordings of Mr. Streetman's artistry are available at: https://soundcloud.com/user-26394210

Described by Classical Voice of North Carolina (CVNC) as an “impressive conductor…outstanding in his attention to detail and his command of the big picture”, Hong Kong-born conductor Ho-Yin Kwok is a three-time winner of The American Prize, 2021, winner of 2017-2018 Vincent C. LaGuardia, Jr. Conducting Competition and 2021 International Conductors Workshop and Competition. Recently concluded an 8-year tenure as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Mississippi Valley Orchestra, Kwok is the Director of Orchestras at Ithaca College, New York. He also serves as Music Director of Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra in Duluth, Minnesota. 

Having established a nationwide reputation, Ho-Yin Kwok’s recent guest conducting engagements include the New World Symphony, the Syracuse Orchestra, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, Arapahoe Philharmonic, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, Gwinnett Symphony Chamber Orchestra, Eastern Festival Orchestra, and Collegium Musicum Hong Kong. He also has been invited to serve as cover conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and Kansas City Symphony. In the 2025-2026 season, he will make his debut with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and Tucson Symphony Orchestra as well as conducting the season opener for Syracuse Orchestra at the Masterworks Series. 

Known for his passion in diversifying the orchestral concert repertoire, Ho-Yin Kwok has been involved in multiple initiatives and special projects. With the Mississippi Valley Orchestra, he created the annual Foreground Composers Series, a year-round celebration and in-depth research on an underrepresented composer.

This ongoing project has led to numerous US premieres of works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Ruth Gipps, Ina Boyle, and Bao Yuankai, along with many other neglected composers. Kwok is also a panel member of …And we were heard, a national initiative to promote contemporary music and composers of underrepresented backgrounds.

Ho-Yin Kwok studied conducting at the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities and the University of Iowa. His principal teachers are Mark Russell Smith and William LaRue Jones. His other important mentors are Gerard Schwarz, Kevin Noe, Cristian Măcelaru, Giancarlo Guerrero, the Ensō String Quartet, Brentano Quartet, Joel Krosnick, David Shifrin, Kathy Saltzman Romey, and Grant Cooper. He is a Marquis Who’s Who biographical listee.

Marc Webster combines artistry and a passion for teaching as a singer and educator. He has been a member of the voice faculty in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at Ithaca College for over 15 years. He cultivates a dynamic learning environment where students develop their artistry, technical foundation, and professional skills, shaping the field as performers, educators, and arts professionals in professional performance, graduate programs, and young artist residencies internationally, and as music educators nationwide. 

Upcoming performing highlights for Marc include summer performances as Father Truelove (The Rake’s Progress) and Jules (Sunday in the Park with George) at Glimmerglass Opera, Simone (Gianni Schicchi) at Tri-Cities Opera, a recital appearance at IC with Sparks & Wiry Cries/Oxford Lieder, and oratorio performances with the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, Mohawk Valley Oratorio Society, and the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mark Russell Smith. He will also present recital and pedagogy residencies at Cedarville University and Colorado State University. 

Recent engagements include developmental workshops with Glimmerglass Opera and Ithaca College faculty and students , singing the roles of Milo Carter in The Rip Van Winkles (Ben Morris and Laura Fuentes) and the title role in Rumpelstiltskin and the Unlovable Children (Jens Ibsen). Other recent appearances include performances with NYS Baroque, Defiance Requiem Project, Albany Pro-Musica and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Syracuse Opera, Tri-Cities Opera, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Symphoria, and Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. 



An active recitalist, Marc has appeared with the Cincinnati Song Initiative, New York Festival of Song, The Song Continues series at Weill Recital Hall, and the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar in the Repertoire Development for Teaching Professionals Program. He has been a guest artist at Si Parla, Si Canta in Arona, Italy, and has served as interim co-director and faculty member of the vocal studio at the Songe d’été en Musique Festival in Quebec, Canada. 

Marc's professional training includes residencies in the Filene Studio at Wolf Trap Opera, Seattle Opera Studio, Florida Grand Opera Studio, San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, and the Juilliard Opera Center. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from Eastman School of Music ('25), an Artist Diploma in Opera Performance from The Juilliard Opera Center at The Juilliard School ('08) and a master’s degree in performance and literature from the Eastman School of Music ('06). His principal voice teachers include Carol Webber, Robert C. White, and David Parks. A proud graduate of Ithaca College’s B.M. in Vocal Performance and Music Education ('02), he is honored to mentor the next generation of singers at his alma mater, fostering a learning environment where students develop their unique artistic voices and prepare for fulfilling careers in music.

This work began its life shortly after November 2024 began. What was once a hopeful time quickly turned rancid. I felt despair, worry, and above all else, anger. This piece attempts to capture the anger I felt and still feel. It opens with a small but powerful gesture on a diminished chord before a restrained Phrygian solo in the Contrabass. This melody is juxtaposed with dissonant structures in the winds and brass, shortening and strengthening until the orchestra erupts in a whirlwind of frustrated chaos. The melody, now taken by the trumpets, grows ever shorter until it is fully monorhythmic, and the entire orchestra states its frustration.

- Program note by the composer

Synopsis:

Bluebeard and his new wife, Judith, enter his empty stone castle, descending a flight of stairs into the dark, windowless great hall. He is afraid that she won’t like her new home, especially compared to her father’s castle, but she insists that she loves him and wants to brighten up the castle. Noticing the seven large closed doors framing the hall, she asks Bluebeard what lies behind them. He initially refuses to show her, but soon relents in the face of her pleas. As Judith approaches the first door, the castle sighs. She opens the door to reveal a blood-red rectangle of light. Inside, she finds a torture chamber, its walls dripping with blood. Bluebeard asks if she is afraid, but she declares that her resolve and love for him have only been strengthened. She demands the key to the next door. 


Behind the second door is Bluebeard’s armory, glowing yellowish red. Judith notices that all his spears and daggers are stained in blood. Undaunted, she moves to the third door. The light inside is golden, illuminating the hall. This room contains piles of coins and countless treasures, but Judith observes that the brightest jewels are covered in blood. Bluebeard then encourages her to open the fourth door, to let the sunshine in. Behind the bluish-green light are the most beautiful flowers that Judith has ever seen, but even here the roses are dappled with blood. Judith wonders who has bled to water Bluebeard’s secret garden, but he just ushers her to the fifth door, which leads to a balcony overlooking Bluebeard’s vast realm. The hall is suffused with even more daylight. As Bluebeard declares that everything she sees is hers, Judith is awestruck until she notices a blood-red shadow cast by some passing clouds. In an attempt to distract her, he asks for a kiss, but she does not move, drawn instead to the final two doors. Bluebeard resists, noting the bright sunlight which now fills the previously darkened hall. Nevertheless, she persists, insisting that the final two doors be opened, whatever the cost. 


As Judith approaches the sixth door, she hears a sobbing sigh. When she opens it, the hall darkens as though a shadow were passing over. She sees a mysterious lake, which Bluebeard says is filled with tears. He once again asks her to come closer, which she does. Once in his embrace, she asks about his previous wives, inferring that it must be their blood and tears she has seen, and that they must be behind the seventh door. He hands her the key, but says the tears are actually his. Judith unlatches the door. Silver moonlight emanates as Bluebeard’s three previous wives, resplendent in precious gems and very much alive, walk into the great hall. He praises each of them individually, as Judith, resigned and broken, joins them in line. After the three older wives leave, Bluebeard grabs a cloak and crown from inside the third door and places them on Judith’s head. Slowly, Judith walks through the seventh door. The stage is swallowed in darkness.



Program Notes:

Bluebeard is one of folklore’s great womanizers. Originally recounted in Charles Perrault’s 1697 Histoires ou contes du temps passé (popularly known in English as The Tales of Mother Goose) the story of Bluebeard has undergone hundreds of variations over the centuries. The general story is nearly as dark as Bartók’s adaptation: Bluebeard is a nobleman whose several wives have all mysteriously disappeared. Shortly after marrying his neighbor’s daughter) against her will), he is called away from his castle and tells his wife she has free reign save for one room in the basement, which she is forbidden to open. Overwhelmed by curiosity, she unlocks the door only to find the butchered remains of Bluebeard’s previous wives. Bluebeard returns, unexpectedly early, and finds the key still covered in blood. As he prepares to kill his wife, her brother appears and kills Bluebeard instead. She then takes Bluebeard’s riches for her family.

By the late nineteenth century, Bluebeard had entered the literary realm as the topic of many short stories, plays, and other theatrical works, including several operas. Between 1907 and 1910, the Hungarian writer Béla Balázs (born Herbert Bauer) began working on a new play based on the character. His original idea involved a meeting in a bar between Bluebeard and Don Juan, though nothing came of it. Instead, drawing inspiration from Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1899 symbolist play Ariane et Barbe-bleue—particularly Maeterlinck’s decision to give Bluebeard’s castle seven locked doors—Balázs’s final play returned Bluebeard to his castle and focused on the story’s symbolist core, stripping away nearly all the action and reducing it to the interactions between Bluebeard and his new wife, Judith.

Balázs met Bartók in 1906 while collecting folksongs with their mutual friend, composer Zoltán Kodály, and the two began an often tenuous friendship, nevertheless marked by their respective admiration for the other’s art. When Bartók received the manuscript of Balázs’s play Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911, he immediately set about adapting it into an opera, completing work in just over six months. Balázs’s symbolist, recitative-like text proved a perfect vehicle for Bartók’s goal of using Hungarian folk music to craft a new form of expression.


Throughout the work, he sets Bluebeard’s and Judith’s lines in unevenly divided rhythms reminiscent of the everyday patterns of Hungarian speech, using a harmonic language derived from various kinds of pentatonic scales he had found during his ethnomusicological fieldwork of the 1900s. Bartók maintains the play’s episodic form by constructing scenes of discrete and largely unrelated musical materials, which gradually change colors in tandem with the changes in light onstage.

Though Bartók completed the work in 1911, it wasn’t premiered until 1918, though not for a lack of trying. Bartók entered it into two separate competitions in fall 1911: the Lipótvárosi Kaszinó and the Rózsavölgyi. Famously, the work wasn’t selected for either prize, despite there being only one other entry in the Lipótvárosi Kaszinó. Over the years, the story of these rejections has grown to mythic proportions—an egregious instance of genius unrecognized— though the politics behind those rejections is, of course, a good deal more complicated. When Bluebeard’s Castle was finally premiered, Bartók brushed off the incidents of 1911, writing merely that “conditions were not suitable for its performance.”

- Program note by Dan Ruccia

Director, Photography and Lighting Design: Stefanos Koroneos
Conductor: Ho-Yin Kwok
Rehearsal Pianist: Jamie Decker
Stage Manager: Dena Chen
Projection: Stephen St. Francis Decky, Roy H. Park School of Communications
Lighting: Zachary McDonald
Sound: Brian Dozoretz
Supertitle: Jack Cecere

Special thanks to Paul Nicholson (Handwerker Gallery), Devin Croad (Dillingham Center) and Miguel Flores (Dillingham Center) for technical and personnel support.

VIOLIN I
Marie Nemeth, concertmaster
Maya Connolly, assistant concertmaster
Valerian Connor
Rachel Berger
Cristian Rodriguez
Andrew Neal
Naveen Tomlinson
Maxwell Lines
Julia Chu
Imogene Zybala
Jaxon Yeagy
Jade Vadeboncoeur
Max Detzer

VIOLIN II
Mackenzie VanVoorhis, principal
Kaitlyn Murray, assistant principal
Jonas Chen
Marisol McDowell
Lily Lemery-Allen
Sarah Chruscicki
Katalena Hume
Katie Hayes
Abby Marchesani
Lily Huwer
Deandre Simmons
Joshua Chang

VIOLA
Elijah Shenk, principal
Zoe Galgoczy, assistant principal
Breanna Annonio
Sasha Narea
Leo Maring
Andrei Popovici

CELLO
Natalie Bryan, principal
Ariel Alejandro, assistant principal
Eli Jort
Emilia Lyons
Tom Bowstead
Emily Donohue
Ian Croker
Molly Davey
Miles Summerlin
Nina Hughes
Chiara Marino

OFFSTAGE TRUMPET
Cal Fitanides
Camilo Mamani
Thomas Papke
Lamar Williams

TENOR TROMBONE
Gabriel Ramos, principal
Estelle Kamrass
David Miller

BASS TROMBONE
Isiah Owens, principal
David Miller

OFFSTAGE TROMBONE
Elvis Lazo
Meghan Liang
Miguel Lopez
Elias Orphanides

TUBA
Nick Smith, principal

DOUBLE BASS
Sophia Gates, principal
Alexa Markowitz, assitant principal
Nellie Cordi
Garrett Jorgensen
Matt Argus
Jack Bradway
Jake Smith

PICCOLO
Tori Hollberbach, principal
Mad Andrus

FLUTE
Madi Connor, principal
Mad Andrus
Tori Hollberbach
Hannah McAlpine

OBOE
Reid Canham, principal
Cole Trenkelbach

ENGLISH HORN
Brady Santin, principal

CLARINET
Christian Laughlin, principal
Joseph Carrero
Liam Kearney

BASS CLARINET
Joseph Carrero, principal

BASSOON
Meg Moriarty, principal
Dylan Frey
Griffin Harrel
Nearah Sanon

HORN
Finny Keefe, principal
Eliza Ferrara, co-principal
Kate Martin
Madison Stolarski

TRUMPET
Juliet Arau, principal
Lizzy Carvell
Nathan Felch
Alessio Vega
TIMPANI
Jack Foley
Nicole Galicia

PERCUSSION
Nicole Galicia, principal
Tommy Anzuini
Brayden Reed

KEYBOARD
Jamie Decker, principal

HARP
Elizabeth Mayo, principal
Sunshine Quan