Emily Cuk

This talented young opera stage director has distinguished herself in a variety of creative productions in academic through community and professional venues. As artistic co-director of Eastman Opera Collective, Emily strives to expose the Rochester community to opera, and to develop ownership of the opera art form by those who may feel it is inaccessible.

In the summer of 2016, she staged an abridged production of Cosí fan tutte with Young Artists from Charlottesville Opera. Assistant Directing credits include Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Pegasus Early Music; Grétry’s Zémire et Azor with Opera Saratoga; Weill’s Die Sieben Todstünden with Tanglewood Music Festival; Strauss’s Capriccio with Pittsburgh Festival Opera; Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos with Utopia Opera; Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro with Bronx Opera; Handel’s Alcina with Whitebox Sound Lounge; Bizet’s Carmen with Wolf Trap Opera; Britten’s Turn of the Screw and the world premiere of Shawn Jaeger’s Payne Hollow with Bard College’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program; Sergey Taneyev’s Oresteia with Bard SummerScape; and John Corigiliano’s Ghost of Versailles with Manhattan School of Music.

In 2015 Emily directed and designed a semi-staged concert of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung with the American Symphony Orchestra, hailed as a “great presentation, so full of precious indications to guide the audience” (audience member).

Emily recently graduated with an M.M. in Opera Directing at the Eastman School of Music where she directed Hindemith’s Hin und Zurück, Vaughan Williams’s Riders to the Sea, and Barber’s Hand of Bridge. She has also assisted directed for Eastman’s main-stage productions of Philip Glass’s Hydrogen Jukebox, Puccini’s Sour Angelica, and Giordano’s Mese Mariano.

A graduate of Bard College, Emily studied music with an emphasis on opera production and vocal performance. As a guest Stage Director for Bard’s Undergraduate Opera Program, she directed Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice and a fully-staged performance of opera scenes. Additional Bard directing projects include Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, and La Migraine: an original pastiche of art songs.

Pegasus Early Music group

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