| Paul O’Dette, Musical Director, baroque guitar, & archlute
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 Paul O’Dette has been called “the clearest case of genius ever to touch his
instrument” (Toronto Globe and Mail).
He has given solo concerts at dozens of major international festivals across
the world while maintaining an active international career as an ensemble
musician. Best known for his recitals and recordings of virtuoso solo lute
music, Mr. O’Dette has made more than 130 recordings, many of which have been
nominated for Gramophone’s “Record of the Year” Award; The Bachelar’s Delight: Lute Music of Daniel Bacheler was nominated
for a Grammy as “Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without Orchestra)” in
2006. Mr. O’Dette is also active conducting Baroque operas. In 1997, he
directed performances of Luigi Rossi’s L’Orfeo with Stephen Stubbs at Tanglewood, the Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF), and
the Drottningholm Court Theatre in Sweden. They have since co-directed all BEMF
operatic performances, including Cavalli’s Ercole
Amante (1999), Lully’s Thésée (2001) and Psyché (2007), Conradi’s Ariadne (2003), Mattheson’s Boris Goudenow (2005), and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (2009). Three
of these operas have been recorded on the CPO label, and all three were
nominated for a Grammy in the “Best Opera Recording” category: Ariadne in 2005, Thésée in 2007, and Psyché in 2008. Mr. O’Dette has also conducted performances of Cavalli’s Apollo e Dafne and La Virtù de’ Strali d’Amore, Clarke’s Island Princess, and Franck’s Cecrops.
In addition to his activities as a performer, Paul O’Dette is an avid
researcher, having worked extensively on the performance and sources of
seventeenth-century Italian and English solo song, continuo practices, and lute
technique. He has published numerous articles on issues of historical
performance practice, and co-authored the John Dowland entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Paul O’Dette is Professor of Lute and Director of Early Music at the Eastman
School of Music and Artistic Co-Director of the Boston Early Music Festival.
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| Stephen Stubbs, Musical Director, baroque guitar, & theorbo
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 After a thirty-year career in Europe, musical director and
lutenist Stephen Stubbs recently
returned to his native Seattle to establish his new production company, Pacific
Musicworks. The
company received rave reviews in the national press for its inaugural
production of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno
d’Ulisse a patria in March 2009, which was designed and stage-directed by South African artist William
Kentridge with the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa. In the coming Pacific Musicworks season, Stubbs will conduct
Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers and
Handel’s Esther. With his direction of Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival, he began his career
as opera director and founded the ensemble Tragicomedia. Stubbs has been invited
to direct opera productions in Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Scandinavia. Since
1997, he has co-directed the biennial Boston Early Music Festival opera, and
was named permanent artistic co-director in 2003. The Festival’s recordings of
Conradi’s Ariadne, Lully’s Thésée, and Lully’s Psyché, have been nominated for Grammy awards in 2005, 2007, and
2008 respectively. In the 2010–2011 season, he will co-direct
performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas,
Handel’s Acis and Galatea, and
Steffani’s Niobe. Stephen Stubbs
created the ensemble Teatro Lirico, who made their recording début in 1996 with
the CD Love and Death in Venice.
Their début CD on ECM was a New York Times “pick of the year” for 2006.
Stubbs’s solo lute recordings include the music of J. S. Bach, S. L. Weiss,
David Kellner, and Jaques St. Luc. With Baroque harpist Maxine Eilander he has
recorded Sonate al Pizzico, released
on ATMA in 2004. He also appears on ECM with the Dowland Project. To cultivate
the singers and players of the next generation he founded an early opera course
called the Accademia d’Amore in 1997; it is now in Seattle under the auspices
of the Seattle Academy of Opera. He
will also head a new program in early music at
the Cornish College of the Arts.
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| Gilbert
Blin, Stage Director
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 Gilbert Blin graduated from the
Sorbonne with a concentration in Rameau’s operas and their relation with the
stage, an interest that he has since broadened to encompass French opera and
its relation to European Baroque theater, his fields of expertise as historian,
stage director, and designer. He was the first French stage director invited by
the Drottningholm Theatre in Sweden: his production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed
Euridice, with Arnold Östman conducting, was performed in 1998. Gilbert
Blin designed and directed Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso for the Prague
State Opera in 2001, and a staged reconstruction of Vivaldi’s Rosmira fedele for Opéra de Nice in 2003. His productions also include a historically staged
and designed presentation of Handel’s Teseo in 2007, and a staged
version of Alessandro Scarlatti’s oratorio La Giuditta in 2008 with
Ensemble Baroque de Nice, conducted by Gilbert Bezzina. An avid researcher, Mr.
Blin dedicates much of his time to the history of performance, most notably of
stage sets. His reconstruction of the original sets for Mozart’s Don
Giovanni was presented at the Estates Theatre in Prague from 2006 to 2008.
For the Boston Early Music Festival, Gilbert Blin directed Lully’s Thésée and
Lully’s Psyché in 2001 and 2007
respectively. In 2008, he was appointed the Festival’s Stage Director in
Residence and opened his residency with a production of the chamber operas Venus
and Adonis by Blow and Actéon by Charpentier. In 2009,
Gilbert Blin staged Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and Handel’s Acis and Galatea for BEMF.
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Anna
Watkins, Costume
Designer
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 Anna Watkins has been involved with
costumes for the Boston Early Music Festival for eleven years, and has been in
charge of every facet of the costuming for all three Chamber Opera Series productions.
She studied textile design at college in London, and then went to the Slade at
University College to study theater design. She has over thirty years
experience organizing the production of costumes for theater, opera, and
ballet, and has recently been working on productions at the Royal Opera House
Covent Garden, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Opera in New
York. She lives in South London, and when not busy enjoys pottering in the
garden and feeding the birds.
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| Melinda
Sullivan, Choreographer
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 Melinda Sullivan has danced in several
Boston Early Music Festival productions, adding ballet mistress
and choreography duties over the years. She graduated
from Boston Conservatory and quickly established herself as a dynamic
performer in Boston’s contemporary dance scene. At the same time, she developed
a unique movement program for singers at New England Conservatory, where she
has taught since 1989. She also teaches body fundamentals and dance
styles at Boston University Opera Institute and Boston Conservatory. This
summer, Melinda will return to Central City Opera as resident choreographer and
movement coach. Her recent choreographies include ones for Central City Opera’s
Young Artist Program, Molière and his Musicians for the Yale Collegium,
and Hansel and Gretel and The Magic Flute at New England Conservatory. Her
upcoming choreographies include new productions of Ariadne auf Naxos and Dido and Aeneas at NEC, and she will be Ballet Mistress for
BEMF’s Niobe.
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| Abbie
H. Katz, Associate Producer
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| Abbie H. Katz has worked extensively in the arts and has toured with artsits such as
Robert Wilson, Lucinda Childs, and Merdith Monk throughout the U.S., Europe,
and Asia. Ms. Katz was General Manager for Anna Deavere Smith’s Institute on
the Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University, and General Manager of The
Market Theater in Cambridge. She teaches Stage and Arts Management at Suffolk University,
and has been Associate Producer for the Boston Early Music Festival since 2002.
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