Opera UCLA - Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride

Stefano Flavoni is a young conductor hailing from New York. Since the 2023-24 season, he has served as the assistant conductor of Staatsoper Hamburg. He has also served as assistant conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, cover conductor for the New York Philharmonic and Baltimore Symphony, associate conductor of both the Lakes Area Music Festival and American Modern Opera Company, as well as assistant conductor on Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre with the Bayerische Staatsoper.

He was a 2025 candidate for the German Conducting Award, for which he debuted with the WDR Symphony Orchestra and Gürzenich-Orchester Köln.

He has been described by famed harpsichordist Davitt Moroney as someone who “digests all new sounds he has heard and turns them into something different, something that is uniquely Stefano Flavoni and is stamped by a kind of hallmark of musical intensity.”

His 2025-26 season included such works as Tosca, Madama Butterfly, il Trovatore, La traviata, and the Da Ponte operas of Mozart. He has collaborated with such acclaimed vocalists as Stuart Skelton, Violeta Urmana, Simon O’Neill, Iréne Theorin, Alexander Tsymbalyuk, Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, and Anthony Roth Costanzo. He has assisted such conductors as Kent Nagano, Manfred Honeck, Jane Glover, Michael Tilson Thomas, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Herbert Blomstedt.

Stefano Flavoni is also lifelong advocate for contemporary music. In 2019, he served as music director for the world premiere of Aleksandra Vrebalov’s critically-acclaimed opera Abraham in Flames. In Hamburg, he has served as co-conductor on two notable world premieres: Unsuk Chin’s new opera Die dunkle Seite des Mondes, and Jörg Widmann’s new work Cantata in tempore belli. Among his other notable performance credits are: music director on a sensory-deprivation double-bill of Pauline Oliveros’ Thirteen Changes and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen, as well as a 17 hour-long live-streamed performance of the complete Vexations by Satie.

As a pianist, he has performed in recital with such vocalists as David Portillo, Dashon Burton, and Avery Amereau, as well as on harpsichord at the Bayerische Staatsoper with John Holiday at their 2024 summer opera festival.

He has been honored by the Solti Foundation with the Career Assistance Award in 2023, 2024, and 2025, as well as the 2025 Elizabeth Buccheri Opera Prize in partnership with the Washington National Opera.

James Darrah joined The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music faculty as the director of Opera UCLA in 2024. Darrah is a GRAMMY Award-nominated director and of opera, theater and film who has become known for a singular cinematic elegance that is “experimenting and forging a new art form.” (The Wall Street Journal)

His recent work as a director, screenwriter, producer includes projects that continue to explore the merging of film, television and opera. He is the artistic director and chief creative officer of Long Beach Opera and was the creative director for Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s digital content in 2020/21. In 2021/22 he also completed two cinematic opera projects with Boston Lyric Opera: a new stop motion animated feature-length film of Philip Glass’ Edgar Allan Poe adaptation The Fall of the House of Usher and the acclaimed world premiere of Desert In, an original operatic miniseries.

With Opera Philadelphia, he has made numerous new productions including the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves and was the producer, production designer and screenwriter for the  GRAMMY-nominated film adaptation of Soldier Songs by composer David T. Little. He wrote, directed, produced a film adaptation of Poulenc’s La voix humaine starring the soprano Patricia Racette.

His track record developing and directing acclaimed stage world premieres includes Kate Soper’s The Romance of the Rose (Long Beach Opera) in 2023, Reid’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera p r i s m (LA Opera/Prototype), Missy Mazzoli’s operas Breaking the Waves (Opera Philadelphia) and Proving Up (Opera Omaha/Miller Theater New York), Michael Tilson Thomas’ Four Preludes on Playthings on the Wind (SF Symphony, LA Phil, New World Symphony), The Brightness of Light by Kevin Puts with Reneé Fleming at Tanglewood ( Boston Symphony Orchestra),  and Academy Award-winner John Corigliano’s The Lord of Cries (Santa Fe Opera). He also has crafted the U.S. West Coast premieres of Jennifer Higdon’s opera Cold Mountain and Jonathan Dove’s The Other Euridice and Flight. Darrah’s music videos for opera artists including Joyce DiDonato and Jakub Józef Orlinski are known for “enigmatic twists” (NPR) and have been distributed by the Warner Music and Erato record labels. Darrah was previously artistic director of Opera Omaha’s ONE Festival from 2016-2021, where he was praised for “expanding the boundaries of the operatic form” (The Wall Street Journal) by establishing a first-of-its-kind residency for artists in the operatic genre.

James Darrah is a native of San Antonio, Texas and lives in Los Angeles, California.