Sweat – a film by The Bicycle Opera Project
Produced by Larissa Koniuk and Jennifer Nichols
Winner: Artistic Creation

In 2017, Bicycle Opera Project produced the Canadian premiere of Sweat, a 70-minute a cappella opera by Juliet Palmer and Anna Chatterton. Sweat enjoyed a 14-show run in 9 cities, including a mini residency at Ottawa Chamberfest. Now, Bicycle Opera Project is exploring the fusion of operatic and dance performance with cinematic storytelling. In 2022, Artistic Director Larissa Koniuk teamed up with director/choreographer Jennifer Nichols to adapt Sweat for the screen. Working with a limited budget and a skeleton crew, the team built a stripped-down world that conveyed the harsh reality of global sweatshops, the performers embodying the machine. Shot on location in Hamilton and Kingston, Ontario, the film premiered at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival and won Best Narrative Feature at the LA Independent Women Film Awards. Acclaimed film and opera director Atom Egoyan calls Sweat “an extraordinary film, made with care and bravura and full of rich emotion.”

Bicycle Opera Project presents opera for modern audiences through innovative approaches. Created in 2012 by two cycling opera singers, Bicycle Opera was founded to bring contemporary Canadian music to smaller communities where there is little opportunity to hear it. Bicycle Opera worked to close the gap between audiences and singers by performing in intimate spaces, performing in English (and French), and exploring modern stories. Since 2012, the company has grown considerably but maintains its environmentally friendly roots and creates productions that are renowned for their fresh and inventive style. Media response has been highly enthusiastic, and attention from the press has grown each year. Bicycle Opera has been featured on television programs such as CBC’s The National, CTV Atlantic, and TFO; in print on the cover of the Toronto Star’s Entertainment section, as well as in The Globe and Mail’s Critics’ Picks; on the radio on CBC Radio’s Fresh Air and All in a Day; and online in The Toronto Star, CBC News, and CBC Music.

A Pocket Magic Flute
Produced by Pocket Opera and The Lorraine Hansberry Theater
Winner: Education/Enrichment Materials

A Pocket Magic Flute reimagines Mozart’s masterpiece in an animated, pan-African world. A diverse team of artists from around the country and around the world contributed their unique talents to create this never-before-seen experience. Featuring an all-Black cast of opera singers and actors, A Pocket Magic Flute transforms the mystical journey of Tamino, Pamina, Papageno, and Papagena into a spectacular animated adventure, making this an ideal introduction to opera for children, especially children of Color. The primary project team consists of Pocket Opera, the Gibbs Sisters, San Francisco State University, and the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.

Pocket Opera is a chamber opera company in San Francisco that has been bringing the joy of opera in English to audiences for nearly 50 years. Pocket Opera does four mainstage shows per year and has the largest standing repertoire of any chamber opera company in the country — 90 discrete titles. In 2024, Pocket Opera’s La bohème won the San Francisco Classical Voice Award for Best Opera Production. During COVID, when live performance wasn’t possible, Pocket Opera used its PPP and ERC monies to dive into the digital world by creating a live-action/animated hybrid film, A Pocket Magic Flute. This groundbreaking work has already been shown to nearly 1,000 students from ages 8–12. The Gibbs Sisters were brought on to this production as lead animation producers. Originally from Oakland, California, Shawnee and Shawnelle Gibbs write, produce, and animate professionally. They work on major projects for Cartoon Network and Marvel, to name a few. Proponents of Black representation both onscreen and behind the scenes, they took on this independent project because they believed in the educational value of The Magic Flute, told through an African lens. To assist the professional animators, San Francisco State University (and professor Martha Gorzycki) created a class called Animating Opera. SFSU provides a top education at an affordable price, and the creative talent in their animation department contributed to the piece by animating smaller elements like animals and props. To create the live-action sequences, Pocket Opera teamed as coproducer with the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, San Francisco’s premier African American theater company. Led by renowned actor/director Margo Hall (recipient of an Opera Grant for Women Stage Directors and Conductors from OPERA America), the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre sourced all of the live-action talent that is seen on the screen.

Everest: An Immersive Experience
Produced by Brian Staufenbiel and Nicole Paiement
Winner: Noteworthy Projects

San Francisco-based contemporary opera company Opera Parallèle invites you to the top of the world with Everest: An Immersive Experience. Inspired by the true events of a 1996 expedition, Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer’s masterful opera follows climbers as they confront their physical and emotional limits in their quest to conquer the mountain. Building on the success of OP’s award-winning film Everest: A Graphic Novel Opera, this production combines the vividness of graphic novels with the visceral power of opera in a unique immersive environment. With a rich recording of a renowned cast and orchestra led by Maestro Nicole Paiement, the animations come to life through facial tracking technology that transforms the singers’ movements (at the time of recording) into animated graphics that follow their voices. Everest offers an entirely new way to experience opera, placing you directly into the action and immersing you in the intricate imagery and soaring soundscape of an incredible story.

Nicole Paiement is the founder and general and artistic director of Opera Parallèle, and Brian Staufenbiel is the company’s creative director. For the past 15 years, they have led OP’s innovative productions, including recent collaborations on Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell’s The Shining, Philip Glass’ La Belle et la Bête, David Little and Laura Karpman’s Birds & Balls (librettos by Royce Vavrek and Gail Collins), and Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer’s Everest: An Immersive Experience, a work that originally premiered at The Dallas Opera, where Paiement is principal guest conductor. An active guest conductor, Paiement has also conducted with companies across the U.S., including Washington National Opera, Seattle Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and The Atlanta Opera. In 2022, she debuted with the English National Opera conducting Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s It’s a Wonderful Life, returning in 2023 to conduct Everest with the BBC Symphony at the Barbican Centre. In 2024, she debuted with the Vienna Volksoper, conducting both a symphonic concert and John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary.

Specializing in multimedia, immersive, and interdisciplinary productions, Brian Staufenbiel works across a range of disciplines, collaborating with film and media designers, choreographers and dancers, circus artists, and designer fabricators. His progressive approach to stagecraft has garnered critical acclaim for many of OP’s productions, including Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking, Philip Glass’ Orphée and Les Enfants Terribles, Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang’s Ainadamar, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, Terence Blanchard and Michael Cristofer’s Champion, and Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis’ Flight. Staufenbiel’s other recent credits include Elektra with Minnesota Opera, productions for the online festival season of the Sun Valley Music Festival, Ainadamar at Pacific Opera Victoria, and Das Rheingold at Calgary Opera. Film work includes Flight for Seattle Opera, the award-winning graphic novel film of Everest for OP, a feature-length version of Gordon Getty’s opera Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and a new documentary about Frederica von Stade.

Threepenny Submarine Season 1
Produced by Opera 5 and Gazelle Automations
Winner: Noteworthy Projects

Threepenny Submarine is an exciting new operatic format designed to be a starting point for families and children to interact with the beautiful art form that is opera. Combining practical puppetry, animation, an engaging original story, and the online web series format, Threepenny Submarine tells the story of two junior officers in the Trifecta Fleet — Iona the cockatiel and Lydian the vixen — as they explore the deep sea in Threepenny Submarine near the mysterious Salieri sector. After a scare, they accidentally come across a strange sea creature who sounds like a flute, and their adventure begins. Much like Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry, Threepenny Submarine uses opera to allow characters to explore emotions and introduces the sound world of opera to children and families as a seamless part of the storytelling. Threepenny Submarine also embraces new Canadian composition with the final two episodes featuring entirely original music by composers Cecilia Livingston and Ryan Trew.

Opera 5 is passionate about sharing accessible and diverse performances for the Toronto community, creating digital programming across Canada and offering unique training opportunities for the next generation of Canadian opera artists. The company’s dynamic programming aims to seek out and nurture the next generation of opera audiences, ranging from educational shows for children through mainstage works, all of which aim to welcome opera fans and new operagoers. Opera 5’s training programs, specifically the Portfolio Artist Internship (a new program that the company intends to expand), support the next generation of artists through varied well-rounded learning and professional opportunities. Opera 5 is led by General Director Rachel Krehm, Artistic Director Jessica Derventzis, Music Director Evan Mitchell, and Programs Manager Jaclyn Grossman. Based in Toronto, Canada, Opera 5 has been producing since 2012. The company’s most recent production was Benjamin Britten and Myfanwy Piper’s The Turn of the Screw (2024), which marked Opera 5’s return to the stage after COVID-19 and the introduction of the Portfolio Artist Internship Program. Opera 5 is known for its web series Opera Cheats, Opera Cats, and Threepenny Submarine, all of which can be viewed on YouTube.

Gazelle Automations is an award-winning film production company specializing in puppets, model miniatures, and animation. They are currently in production on Go Togo, a brand-new preschool TV series for CBC Kids. Wife-and-husband team Lindsay and Justin Lee formed Gazelle Automations to tell stories through the magic of handmade puppets and models. From humble beginnings in the back room of a pizza shop (where pizza orders were literally passing through the shots), Gazelle Automations now sees projects through from concept and fabrication to production, VFX, and finishing. Their clients and production partners include Anderson Entertainment, the BBC, CBC Kids, Century 21 Films, Decently Creative, ITV, Publicis NA, Shaftesbury, TVOKids, and the University of Tokyo.

The Boy Who Drew Cats
Produced by Asako Hirabayashi
Finalist: Education/Enrichment Materials 

The Boy Who Drew Cats was created by award-winning composer Asako Hirabayashi in collaboration with award-winning visual artist Mayumi Amada. Based on an ancient Japanese folktale, rewritten by Asako Hirabayashi, the story is about how children’s perceived shortcomings can end up being strengths, leading to success in their lives. Instead of a realistic stage set for the opera, Mayumi creates imaginary, spiritual, and abstract images on the stage to enhance the opera's message. Influenced by the spirit and ideologies of Buddhism, Mayumi draws upon the philosophy of Zen to give direction to the creation of her work.

About the Producer

Asako Hirabayashi is a composer who has written five operas and 33 chamber pieces, which have been played in 15 countries, and a harpsichordist who has performed as a soloist in seven countries since her New York debut recital at Carnegie Hall in New York. Hirabayashi's compositions have been recorded on three commercial CDs. Her first commercial CD, for which she composed and played all the music, received seven favorable reviews internationally. It was named one of the top 10 albums of the year 2018 and won the Gold Medal Award by the Global Music Awards. Fanfare reviewed the album, saying, "Twenty-four tracks of passionate, sparkling, lyrical, even poignant music to help secure the harpsichord’s presence in the new millennium. ... Her contemporary harpsichord music is ingenious, fanciful, diverse, and unpretentious. ... I admit I’ve never been a fan of the harpsichord, she has changed all that for me and awakened me to the idea that a composer can reinvent an instrument." Hirabayashi has received numerous awards, including two McKnight fellowships, two first prizes at the Alienor International Harpsichord Composition Competition, first prize at the NHK International Song Writing Competition in Japan, a 2021 OPERA America Discovery Grant, MNiatures:Tiny Operas, Big Ideas by MN Opera, 2019 Schubert Club Composer Award, 2012 Jerome Fund for New Music, and 2008 Subito grant. Hirabayashi earned her D.M.A. from The Juilliard School. 

Don't Look Under the Wig
Produced by The Dallas Opera
Finalist: Education/Enrichment Materials 

Don't Look Under the Wig is The Dallas Opera’s groundbreaking digital series produced with and hosted by Amy O'Neil. In this engaging program, O'Neil reveals some of opera's biggest secrets while seamlessly transforming into iconic figures from classical music.

The series offers in-depth explorations of The Dallas Opera's mainstage season productions, including Così fan tutte, Rigoletto, and Das Rheingold. Each episode dives into the rich history of opera and the works of legendary composers like Mozart and Verdi, providing viewers with valuable insights into the evolution and significance of the art form. With creative storytelling, captivating visuals, and O'Neil's charismatic presence, Don't Look Under the Wig bridges the gap between classical music and modern audiences. This series reflects The Dallas Opera’s commitment to innovation and accessibility, inspiring a new generation of fans and ensuring the continued relevance of opera in today’s cultural landscape.

About the Producer

As one of the leading opera companies in the country, The Dallas Opera boasts an extraordinary legacy of world-class productions and thrilling premieres, featuring some of the greatest operatic artists of our time. Founded in 1957 with a concert starring the incomparable Maria Callas, The Dallas Opera is renowned for the U.S. debuts of legendary artists such as Plácido Domingo, Dame Joan Sutherland, Jon Vickers, Franco Zeffirelli, and Sir David McVicar.

Committed to innovation and the development of new works, The Dallas Opera exemplifies this focus through recent initiatives like the world premiere of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. The company has long been an industry leader, pioneering programs to engage new audiences with opera. These include the Hart Institute for Women Conductors, free digital streaming, public simulcasts, art song recitals, a national vocal competition, and award-winning educational programs for families.

Amy O'Neil, digital content marketing manager at The Dallas Opera, has been with the company for over five years. The creator, writer, producer, and host of Don't Look Under the Wig, O’Neil brings an extensive background in music, history, storytelling, and comedy. Through this series, she brings humor and accessibility to opera and classical music. O’Neil is passionate about making opera relatable to all audiences and is proud to create content that is both educational and entertaining.

Emily & Sue: An A Cappella Pop Opera
Produced by Dana Kaufman and Aiden K. Feltkamp
Finalist: Noteworthy Projects

Emily & Sue, an a cappella pop opera by composer Dana Kaufman and librettist Aiden K. Feltkamp, explores the romantic relationship between Emily Dickinson and her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. It exists in album, live performance, and film formats and stars Jasmine Muhammad and the Iris Vocal Trio. The opera was commissioned by Amherst College, which owns Emily's house/The Emily Dickinson Museum.

Emily spent much of her life in seclusion and particularly in her room, where the entirety of Emily & Sue takes place. Letters between Emily and Sue, as well as Emily’s poetry, document a deeply intimate relationship that was not socially acceptable or legally recognized in 19th-century Massachusetts; the plot of Emily & Sue extrapolates from their correspondences. These letters and poetry explore queerness, isolation, and forbidden love.

About the Producer

The work of Los Angeles-based composer-librettist Dana Kaufman centers disruptive opera and vocal music, accessible and inclusive stages, and the intersection of pop culture and classical music. Hailed as “whirlwind” (Gramophone), “ingeniously derived” (Sequenza21), and “dramatic…and powerfully funny” (Observer), Kaufman’s music has been heard in North America, Europe, and Asia. Her works have been featured at venues and festivals such as Carnegie Hall, New York Opera Fest, Contemporary Music Center of Milan, the National Gugak Center (South Korea), Seattle Opera's Tagney Jones Hall, The Tank, Jordan Hall, Boston New Music Festival, National Opera Week, Hartford Opera Theater, Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall (Croatia), Ravinia Festival, Lowbrow Opera Collective, and Opera on Tap Chicago; they have been commissioned by GRAMMY-winning pianist Nadia Shpachenko, the Louisville Ballet, Carlow Arts Festival (Ireland), Synchromy, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, Paradox Opera, and many others.

Kaufman has been a Fulbright Research Fellow in Estonia, National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, winner of an OPERA America Opera Grants for Women Composers: Discovery Grant (supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation), and four-time American Prize honoree. She has given lectures at the LA Opera, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, Leuphana Universität Lüneberg, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and the Music by Women Festival as a frequent speaker on gender diversity in composition and composing for trans voices. Kaufman received her Bachelor of Arts in music and Russian (magna cum laude) from Amherst College, her Master of Music in composition from New England Conservatory, and her Doctor of Musical Arts in composition from University of Miami Frost School of Music as the first Frost student to be a Dean’s Fellow. She is an Associate Professor in Music Composition at the University of California, Riverside. danakaufmanmusic.com

The Factotum on Film
Produced by Opera 5 and Gazelle Automations
Finalist: Artistic Creation

The Factotum on Film features the full stage performance with the original cast of the groundbreaking original opera The Factotum, along with behind-the-scenes glimpses of the opera's journey from page to stage and never-before-seen cast and creative team interviews from Chicago filmmaker Raphael Nash and Endangered Peace Productions.

Regarded by the Chicago Tribune as "an extraordinary event in Chicago’s cultural history, reimagining the definition of opera," and hailed by the Chicago Sun-Times for being among the "first anywhere to have an entirely Black and BIPOC cast and creative team," The Factotum has left a lasting impact on the art form and the city of Chicago. The film now extends the work's reach to a global audience, spreading the opera's powerful celebrations of Black joy and deep-rooted connections to Chicago far and wide.

About the Producers

Lyric Opera of Chicago is committed to redefining what it means to experience great opera. The company is driven to deliver consistently excellent artistry through innovative, relevant, celebratory programming that engages and energizes new and traditional audiences. Under the leadership of General Director, President, and CEO John Mangum and Music Director Enrique Mazzola, Lyric is dedicated to reflecting, and drawing strength from, the diversity of Chicago. Lyric offers, through innovation, collaboration, and evolving learning opportunities, ever-more exciting, accessible, and thought-provoking audience and community experiences. We also stand committed to training the artists of the future, through The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center; and to becoming increasingly diverse across our audiences, staff, programming, and artists — magnifying the welcoming pull of our art form, our company, and our city. Through the timeless power of voice, the splendor of a great orchestra and chorus, theater, dance, design, and truly magnificent stagecraft, Lyric is devoted to immersing audiences in worlds both familiar and unexpected, creating shared experiences that resonate long after the curtain comes down.

Histories Naturelles: An Animated Adaptation
Produced by Máiri Demings, Zain Solinski, and Emily Ellis
Finalist: Noteworthy Projects

Our project, a collaboration between mezzopiano and animator Emily Ellis, is an animated adaptation of Ravel’s song cycle Histoires Naturelles. Ravel set the songs as distinct narratives unified by a common theme. Our approach created further unity by establishing a common setting for the animals: a small farm. We thus used the cycle to explore how these creatures share their ecosystem. The film represents a continuation of Ravel’s impetus in setting it to music; interpreting the poetic images of Jules Renard in a new artistic form. Our goal to create a film that is accessible to a diverse public was achieved through our combination of mediums. Audiences who might otherwise be disengaged from classical music were compelled by the animation, while classical music fans saw merit in a new presentation of a classic work. The film was accepted into the 2023 Albuquerque Film and Music Experience, and we have presented the film for various classical music organizations in live performance.

About the Producers

Classical music duo mezzopiano (Máiri Demings and Zain Solinski) and filmmaker Emily Ellis bond over the wonderful and whimsical. Demings and Ellis met while studying at Acadia University and let Solinski join the friend group when he had the brilliant idea of collaborating on an animated feature. They all share a passion for music, film, and the art of not taking yourself too seriously.

Natalya with a Y
Produced by Natalya Gennadi
Finalist: Noteworthy Projects

What does success mean when dreams collide with reality? And how much Life can you pack in a suitcase? Natalya with a Y is a multimedia portrayal of a young immigrant mother and aspiring opera singer, navigating identity, ambition, and belonging within the Western classical music industry. This eclectic surreal short film weaves together memories, aspirations, and disillusionment, ultimately arriving at a peaceful acceptance of life’s complexities.

The narrative confronts themes of ageism, body image, financial hardship, and artistic reinvention, inspiring audiences with humor and empathy to reflect on their own paths.

Produced during the 2023 CEAR with Pacific Opera Victoria, the project features original puppetry, archival footage, AI animation, stop motion, CGI, and sound design — all created by Gennadi. Music selections by Verdi, Handel, Cecilia Livingston, and Stanyslav Lyudkevych underscore the narrative, performed by pianist Trevor Chartrand and Natalya Gennadi, soprano.

About the Producer

Ukrainian-Canadian Natalya Gennadi is a versatile vocalist and multimedia creator. She earned critical acclaim and a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for her debut in Tapestry Opera’s Oksana G. Recent performances include the title role in Cherubini’s Médée with Voicebox: Opera in Concert, Gerhilde in Die Walküre with Pacific Opera Victoria, and scenes from Here Be Sirens with Slowrise Music in Toronto. In 2024, Gennadi will present a recital of Irish, Canadian, and Ukrainian music at the Ukrainian Lights Festival in Vancouver.

Her operatic repertoire includes roles such as Adriana (Adriana Lecouvreur), Violetta (La traviata), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Countess Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Suor Angelica, and Mimì (La bohème). In 2024, Gennadi was awarded the New Voices curatorial grant from Soundstreams Theatre to produce Grandma’s Shawl, a project exploring cultural ties between Ukrainian and Indigenous communities in early 20th-century Canada.

As a 2023 Civic Engagement Artist in Residence at Pacific Opera Victoria (POV), she developed several multimedia projects, including her autobiographical short film Natalya with a Y, a live installation with Cree-Irish visual artist Natalie Rollins, and Letters Home, a recital showcasing newcomer musicians. This residency, led by Rebecca Hass, provided mentorship in project management, community engagement, and storytelling, enhancing Gennadi’s exploration of digital media and socially engaged art.

As an emerging producer, she participated in Tapestry Opera’s Opera Artist Resilience Program, apprenticing on the Of the Sea production. In 2021, she co-founded the HBD! Project with Catharin Carew, celebrating diverse composers and fostering an inclusive performance space. Gennadi is a recipient of the REACH Development Grant from the Shevchenko Foundation.

Swann
Produced by Catapult Opera, Tamar-kali Brown, Cynthia Marino, and James Blaszko
Finalist: Artistic Creation

In her sophomore opera release, Tamar-kali pays homage to William Dorsey Swann, the first person known to dub himself a “queen of drag” and the first American on record to pursue legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community's right to gather. In this imagining of the early 19th-century drag ball scene, impressionistic imagery and chamber composition depict an intimate evening at Swann's abode ahead of his detention and conviction in 1896 for "keeping a disorderly house."

About the Producers

Catapult is a community of artists, producers, business leaders, and opera lovers with a passion for the stage and a shared goal: creating high-quality, transformative, and lasting opera experiences. From our base in New York City, we collaborate with artists, musicians, and composers from across musical genres and throughout the world.