UW Opera Workshop presents Melissa Dunphy's 2023 opera Alice Tierney. Stage direction by Kelly Kitchens; music direction by Andrew Romanick. With Ryan Farris, conductor, and Chris Powell, pianist.
Cast
Quinn.....................................Mallory McCollum
Lyra........................................Lainey Graham
Zandra....................................Isabelle Villanueva
John........................................Jesse Cooper
Alice 1 (John's Alice)………...............Soledad Mayorga-Maldonado
Alice 2 (Quinn's Alice)………………...Yuhao Zhang
Alice 3 (Zandra’s and Lyra's Alice).... Lameya Appling
Alice Chorus:
Kaelyn Barnes
Jane Blythe
Charlotte Christie
Lily Gebs
Britta Jorgensen
Chloe Lian
Shriya Prasanna
John cover: Zayn Mir
Composer: Melissa Dunphy
Librettist: Jacqueline Goldfinger
Director: Kelly Kitchens
Music Director: Andrew Romanick
Conductor: Ryan Farris
Pianist: Chris Powell
Synopsis
Alice Tierney features four modern-day archaeology students as they excavate the site of a 19th-century boarding house and the possible history of its owner, an infamous woman in 1880s Philadelphia named Alice Tierney. They uncover not just artifacts but competing ideas of the woman who once lived there and died under mysterious circumstances.
Featuring a genre-blending score of opera, musical theatre, and pop, Alice Tierney invites you to question how stories are told, who gets to tell them, and how we shape the past through the lens of the present.
Program Background
Commissioned by the Oberlin Opera Commissioning Program through the generosity of Elizabeth and Justus '71 Schlichting, Melissa Dunphy's opera Alice Tierney was premiered at Oberlin Conservatory in 2023, and at Opera Columbus in April 2023. Dunphy was one of seven winners of a 2020 OPERA America Discovery Grant, presented to female composers with the intention of increasing gender parity across the opera industry. That grant supported the development of Alice Tierney at Oberlin.
Composer's Notes
"A few years ago, while researching the history of my home in Philadelphia, I uncovered newspaper reports of a 45-year-old “dissipated woman” named Alice Tierney who was found strangled and strung up on a fence on my property on a cold January night in 1880. Shockingly, Tierney’s death was written up by contemporary police and the press as an accident. I pledged to find a way to tell Alice’s story, which resonates in the 21st century when our culture is actively grappling with the ways in which women’s stories of trauma are silenced or minimized, especially those of vulnerable and poor women.
"What little we know about Alice is dimmed by the passage of 140 years and hampered by a lack of written records about those who lived on the fringes of society. Librettist Jacqueline Goldfinger and I opted to tell Alice’s story from the perspectives of four modern-day archeologists who piece together Alice Tierney’s life while excavating the place where she lived and died. Their different perspectives show that the telling of history says just as much about the narrator as the narrative. What assumptions, experiences, prejudices, knowledge, and personalities do these four archeologists bring to their research, which affect the way they see and conceive of Alice Tierney? Attempting to answer this question delves into big issues like truth, justice, and equality. For hundreds of years, American history (and indeed, opera) has been primarily told by one demographic. Including marginalized perspectives is a challenge, but gives us a fuller picture of the past and ourselves."
—Melissa Dunphy
Biographies
Melissa Dunphy
Born in Australia and raised in an immigrant family, Melissa Dunphy herself immigrated to the United States in 2003 and has since become an acclaimed composer specializing in vocal, political, and theatrical music. She first came to national attention in 2009 when her large-scale work the Gonzales Cantata was featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, National Review, Fox News, and on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, where host Rachel Maddow described it as “the coolest thing you’ve ever seen on this show.” Other notable works include Totality, commissioned by The King’s Singers and VOCES8 and premiered at the BBC Proms 2024, song cycle Tesla's Pigeon, which won first place in the NATS Art Song Composition Award, and What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? which won the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Competition and has been performed around the country by choral ensembles including Chanticleer, Cantus, and the St. Louis Chamber Chorus.
In 2024, Dunphy was awarded an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. She received a 2020 Opera America Discovery Grant for Alice Tierney, a commission for Oberlin Opera Theater that premiered in 2023 and received its professional debut at Opera Columbus. She has been composer-in-residence for the Immaculata Symphony Orchestra, Volti, and the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus, and her commissions include works for the BBC Singers, VOCES8, Cantus, Mendelssohn Chorus, Seattle Pro Musica, Chor Leoni, La Caccina, Skylark, Experiments in Opera, and the Kennett Symphony. Dunphy is also a Barrymore Award-nominated theater composer and sound designer, and served from 2014-2024 as Director of Music Composition for the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut.
Dunphy has a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.M. from West Chester University and is on faculty at Rutgers University. She is president of the boards of directors for Wildflower Composers and Lyric Fest. Melissa and her husband Matt are also avid citizen archaeologists and co-hosts of the popular podcast The Boghouse about their adventures in Philadelphia colonial archaeology; they are currently developing the Necessary Museum, which they hope to open in 2026 to showcase their local discoveries.
Kelly Kitchens is a professional director, actor, adaptor, and arts educator based out of Seattle Washington. Her passion for storytelling is anchored in the practice of fierce collaboration and her thirst for art-making excellence is in service to her vision of a more engaged, inclusive, curious world.
Kelly is an omnivore of theatrical genres, forms, and styles; and whether she is directing an opera, a musical, a contemporary work, or a classic play, she is well- known for her powerful staging, razor-sharp pacing, illuminating the pulsing heart of characters, and finding the edges without losing the center. In addition to creating compelling theater, Kelly is also well-known for cultivating courageous and compassionate spaces in the rehearsal hall, the conference room, and the classroom alike.
Her honors include: Two time recipient of and four time nominee for the Gregory Falls Award for Outstanding Director; recipient of and two time nominee for the Gregory Falls Award for Outstanding Production; Seattle Weekly Readers Poll Best Director; recipient of the Broadway World Critics Choice Award for Best Direction of a Play; two time recipient of the R.A.D. (Recognizing Artistic Diversity in Seattle) awards; two time recipient of Seattle Theater Writers Awards for Best Direction of a Play; named in Seattle Magazine’s inaugural list of “Top 20 Most Talented People in Seattle”; and was a nominee for the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Mayor's Arts Award.
Kelly serves as an Artist in Residence for the University of Washington’s School of Music; she is also guest instructor in acting and directing for both undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Washington School of Drama and for Cornish College of the Arts. Kelly served as the Associate Artistic Director and then as the Co-Artistic Director at Seattle Public Theater, garnering many awards with that organization which also includes the Gregory Falls Award for Theatre of the Year.
Kelly earned her B.A. from Vanderbilt University and her M.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a member of the Sandbox Artists Collective, a member of Actor's Equity Association, and a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
Andrew Romanick performs in the Seattle area and beyond as a collaborative pianist and opera coach. On faculty at the University of Washington School of Music, he instructs Opera Workshop and Collaborative Piano. This year Romanick has performed and premiered with soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw a number of pieces in Seattle and St. Paul by contemporary composers: Linda Tutas Haugen, Kate Soper, Jocelyn Hagen, Juliana Hall, and Karen P. Thomas. In January, Romanick also contributed to the reconstruction and performance by UW Opera of Joseph Haydn's Philemon and Baucis, or Jupiter comes to Earth. Previous professional performances have taken place virtually with Seattle soprano Chérie Hughes in the Barcelona Festival of Song; with Broadway and Metropolitan Opera Baritone Zachary James in the Hoku concert series in Kona, Hawaii; in the Canto Opera Festival in Louisville, Kentucky; in the Music in the Marche Opera Festival in Mondavio and Fano, Italy; and solo in the Gijón Piano Festival in Spain. Romanick earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts from University of Washington in 2018 in the studio of Robin McCabe.
Ryan Dakota Farris has quickly become one of the most exciting and in-demand conductors in the Pacific Northwest. Ryan was recently appointed as Music Director of both the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra and the Bainbridge Island Youth Orchestra. He also serves as assistant conductor for Lake Union Civic Orchestra and frequently guest conducts groups across the region, including the Issaquah Philharmonic, Octava Chamber Orchestra, and Seattle Festival Orchestra. This past summer Ryan was one of two conductors from across the country invited to be a fellow at the Bellingham Festival of Music’s inaugural conducting institute.
Currently pursuing his doctorate in Orchestral Conducting at the University of Washington in Seattle, Ryan serves as conductor of the Campus Philharmonia Orchestras and assistant conductor of the University of Washington Symphony. In recent years Ryan has worked as cover conductor for professional orchestras across the country, including the Auburn Symphony in Washington and the Boulder Philharmonic in Colorado. He has also served as assistant conductor for Colorado MahlerFest and the Greater Boulder Youth Orchestras, and as a sectional conductor for Seattle’s Harmonia Orchestra & Chorus.
Ryan was a proud student of the late maestro Michael Jinbo at the Pierre Monteux School and Music Festival in Maine for five summers. He has studied with many notable conductors including Ludovic Morlot, Mercelo Lehninger, David Alexander Rahbee, Donald Schleicher, Kensho Watanabe, and Tiffany Lu.
Off the podium, Ryan has performed as principal cellist with the Boulder Opera Company, Seattle Philharmonic Strings, and the University of Washington Symphony. He appeared as a featured concerto soloist with the South Puget Sound College Orchestra in 2019, and regularly performs in chamber music groups across the region. Before moving to the Pacific Northwest, he played regularly with some of Colorado’s best orchestras, including the Boulder Philharmonic, Fort Collins Symphony, and Colorado MahlerFest. Ryan also composes his own music, performs regularly on period instruments such as baroque cello & viola da gamba, and busts out the traditional Irish fiddle with acclaimed Seattle-based Celtic band Cavort.