MARTIN OTAVA, Stage Director (A Masked Ball, Faust).
Martin Otava was born in 1963 in Prague and graduated from the State Conservatory in Prague with degrees in acting and opera singing. He has been successful as an operatic stage director at the Prague State Opera, where he has been directing since 1991, as well as in opera houses and festivals around the world. He has directed in Japan (Tokyo, Osaka), Germany (Bayreuth and Munich), Spain (San Sebastian and Majorca), Sicily’s Teatro Massimo Bellini, and Cannes, as well as a production of Die Walküre at Wagner Festival 2000 in Wels, Austria. Currently Mr. Otava works as the principal stage director of Prague State Opera; he is also the intendant of Chamber Opera Prague, which is well known all over Europe.

DALE MOREHOUSE, Stage Director (La Bohème)
Mr. Morehouse, baritone, has sung 80 leading baritone roles in opera, operetta, and musical theatre; performed recitals, concerts, and oratorios with orchestras, choruses, and ballet companies; and directed over 50 stage productions and 35 different scenes programs for theaters, universities, and opera companies throughout the USA and western Europe. In summers, he teaches at the American Institute of Musical Studies (AIMS) in Graz, Austria, and performs as bass soloist at the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria. During the 2006-7 academic year, he directed the national premieres of Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi at Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk State Opera; Verdi’s La Traviata for Wichita Grand Opera, and Floyd’s Susannah at UMKC, as well as collaborating in directing a joint production of Puccini’s Tosca that starred Samuel Ramey with Wichita Grand Opera and the Bulgarian State Opera.

This summer in Europe, he will sing Barber’s Dover Beach with the Cassat Quartet at Italy’s Orvieto Musica chamber music festival, Haydn’s Creation at the Esterhazy Palace (in the concert hall where Haydn worked for 33 years), Haydn’s Harmoniemesse at Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral and Eisenstadt’s Bergkirche (where Haydn conducted the first performances of his last six masses and where he is now buried) and Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnets at the new concert hall at Liszt’s birth house in Raiding, Austria (formerly Hungary).

JOHN STEPHENS, Stage Director (Pirates).
John Stephens has sung with numerous opera companies and symphonies over the past 30-plus years, and has had a particular affinity for character roles, both comic and dramatic. This, plus more than 25 years on the faculty of the University of Kansas, led him into the field of stage directing. He has become a particular devotee of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, and has either directed or sung in hundreds of productions of their operas. In addition, he has directed Benjamin Britten’s operas Albert Herring, The Turn of the Screw, and The Rape of Lucretia, Carlyle Floyd’s Susannah and Of Mice and Men, and many other works which place an emphasis on opera as music-theater. This production of The Pirates of Penzance marks his second Gilbert & Sullivan directorial engagement with the Wichita Grand Opera, having directed and sung in WGO’s 2004 production of The Mikado.