Opera Fusion: New Works (OF:NW) is a dynamic partnership between Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). With support of the Mellon Foundation, OF:NW was created in 2011 to foster the development of new American operas, and has grown into a nationally recognized collaboration that is not only advancing in repertoire, but also serving as an inspiring example of a successful joint venture between an educational institution and a professional performing arts organization. 

Photos: Alyssa Weinberg; Stephanie Fleischmann; Elkhanah Pulitzer by Dario Acosta; Jonathan Khuner

Claude & Marcel

Thursday, November 19, 2026 | 7:30 p.m.
Music Hall • Wilks Studio

Music by Alyssa Weinberg
Libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann
Stage Direction by Elkhanah Pulitzer
Conducted by Jonathan Khuner

Claude & Marcel tells the story of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who formed one of the most daring creative partnerships of the avant-garde in the early 20th century. Romantic partners, collaborators, and radical thinkers, the two women created surrealist photographs that challenged gender, identity, and power decades before those conversations entered the mainstream. Living on the island of Jersey during World War II, the pair transformed their artistic imagination into acts of resistance against Nazi Germany. Disguised and working in secret, they produced subversive propaganda—poems, pamphlets, and messages designed to demoralize German soldiers—slipping them into pockets, vehicles, and public spaces. Arrested and sentenced to death for their actions, they ultimately survived the war, leaving behind a legacy of courage, defiance, and boundary-breaking art. Their story is one of love, creativity, and resistance—two artists who proved that imagination itself can be a powerful act of rebellion.

The OF:NW workshop of Claude & Marcel will be led by director Elkhanah Pulitzer and conductor Jonathan Khuner. The opera will receive its world premiere at West Edge Opera in August 2027.

Tickets are Pay-What-You-Wish starting at $15/ticket for adults and free for full-time students (one ticket per valid student ID).

recent WORKSHOPS

Photos: Christopher Tin by Andy Wilkinson; Kelley Rourke by Brittany Lesavoy; Francesca Zambello by Magdalena Papaioan; Jessica Lang by Rosalie O’Connor

O’Keeffe: Kiss the Sky

Tuesday, March 31, 2026 | 7:30 p.m.
Sheakley Family Premier Studio • Cincinnati Ballet
1801 Gilbert Avenue • Cincinnati, OH 45202

Music by Christopher Tin
Libretto by Kelley Rourke
Stage Direction by Francesca Zambello
Choreography by Jessica Lang

With music by GRAMMY Award-winning composer Christopher Tin, libretto by Kelley Rourke, stage direction by Francesca Zambello, and choreography by Jessica Lang, O’Keeffe: Kiss the Sky traces the artist’s journey to becoming one of America’s most iconic creative forces, and the people who shaped her along the way. At its heart is the tension between her passionate but complicated marriage to art dealer and photographer Alfred Stieglitz—her greatest champion, but also controlling and unfaithful—and the liberating influence of Mabel Dodge Luhan, an intellectual and arts patron who brought artists to the Southwest and, in so doing, helped Georgia discover the vast desert landscape that would define her work. Through opera and ballet, O’Keeffe: Kiss the Sky explores not just the artist’s life but the unpredictable ways relationships shaped her voice and legacy. Commissioned by Washington National Opera, O’Keeffe: Kiss the Sky will receive its world premiere there at a date to be announced.

The week-long workshop culminated with a public performance of excerpts at Cincinnati Ballet on Tuesday, March 31, at 7:30 p.m. Internationally-renowned soprano Christine Goerke led the cast in the role of Mabel Dodge Luhan, with mezzo-soprano Natalie Corrigan as Georgia O’Keeffe and tenor Tristan Tournaud as Alfred Stieglitz. Also featured were dancers Sierra Armstrong, SunMi Park, and Tristan Brosnan from American Ballet Theatre, along with student singers and dancers from CCM.

Sleepers Awake

Saturday, November 8, 2025 | 2:00 p.m.
Wilks Studio • Music Hall
1241 Elm Street • Cincinnati, OH 45202

Music by Gregory Spears
Directed by Jenny Koons
Inspired by the writings of Robert Walser and others

Composer Gregory Spears, whose music has been called “astonishingly beautiful” (The New York Times), “coolly entrancing” (The New Yorker), and “some of the most beautifully unsettling music to appear in recent memory” (The Boston Globe), creates a labyrinthine soundscape to accompany a dream-like rendering of the fairytale “Sleeping Beauty,” inspired by modernist writer Robert Walser. As the work’s chorus sings itself in and out of slumber, the voices pull us into a liminal space where time is both fractured and cyclical. Conceived with and directed by Jenny Koons, this new work activates a collective voice to question the fragile line between waking and dreaming.

Commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, the complete work will receive its world premiere in April 2026. Details>>

A public performance of excerpts took place on Saturday, November 8, 2025, in the Wilks Studio at Music Hall.

John Lewis: Good Trouble

Saturday, October 11, 2025 | 2:00 p.m.
Wilks Studio • Music Hall
1241 Elm Street • Cincinnati, OH 45202

Music by Maria Thompson Corley
Libretto by Diana Solomon-Glover

Congressman John Lewis famously said, “Get into good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.” John Lewis: Good Trouble explores the Civil Rights Movement through the lens of the heroic activist and politician. The opera weaves together two perspectives—Lewis as a young man, serving as a catalyst in the 1960s fight for civil rights, and Lewis as an elder statesman in 2012, considered to be the conscience of Congress by many on both sides of the aisle. Lewis’s journey follows his embrace of nonviolent resistance through the sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and the historic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Through it all, Lewis charged his successors and colleagues to come together to create a more just world.

Commissioned by Cincinnati Opera as part of its groundbreaking Black Opera Project, the complete work will receive its world premiere at Music Hall in the summer of 2027.

A public performance of excerpts took place on Saturday, October 11, 2025, in the Wilks Studio at Music Hall.

Opera Fusion: New Works is generously funded by:

Anonymous donor

We express our deepest thanks to the Mellon Foundation for their generous support of Opera Fusion: New Works from 2011-2025.