Programs and the Evolution of the OperaWorks Approach
OperaWorks began as small summer intensive programs and grew into a nationally recognized influence in artist development and education, with residencies and workshops serving singers and teachers across the United States and internationally.
Singers were selected through national auditions and recordings, ranging from exceptionally talented undergraduate students to professional artists performing with major opera companies internationally. Participants arrived with strong vocal technique already in place; rather than offering voice lessons, OperaWorks focused on the development of the performer as a whole. Within the programs, each artist was met where they were in their development and encouraged to recognize and cultivate capacities they might not yet have fully realized.
The curriculum reflected this philosophy. Core OperaWorks™ techniques—including Performance Techniques, Musical Improvisation, Physical Theatre, and Career Development—were designed to help singers explore how voice, body, and imagination function together in performance. This approach reflected OperaWorks’ central belief that singers develop most fully when voice, body, and imagination are cultivated together as aspects of the whole performer.
Just as important as the curriculum itself was the environment in which the work took place. OperaWorks programs were intentionally structured as collaborative environments where singers and faculty worked closely together over time, allowing exploration, experimentation, and artistic discovery to occur within a supportive professional community.
Over time, the residency programs evolved to include three primary tracks—Emerging Artist, Advanced Artist, and Teaching Artist—allowing singers and educators at different stages of their professional lives to engage with the OperaWorks approach. While Los Angeles became the long-standing home of the core residency programs, OperaWorks’ reach extended through national workshops, institutional partnerships, and touring projects, engaging artists in diverse educational and professional settings.
Within these programs, singers experienced their development as an integrated process in which voice, body, and imagination evolved together through collaborative exploration and performance.
Residency Tracks
Emerging Artist
Designed for exceptionally talented undergraduate singers and recent graduates at the beginning of their professional development. The program introduced OperaWorks’ integrated approach to performance, encouraging singers to explore voice, movement, imagination, and collaboration as interconnected aspects of performance.
Advanced Artist
Created for pre-professional and professional singers seeking to deepen their interpretive and performance skills. Participants engaged in intensive collaborative work integrating musical preparation, dramatic exploration, and physical awareness within a supportive and challenging environment.
Teaching Artist
Designed for voice teachers and experienced singers interested in exploring the OperaWorks pedagogical approach. Participants examined ways of teaching that address the whole performer, integrating musical, physical, psychological, and creative processes within vocal instruction.
The Discord Altar, 2015
The OperaWorks™ Experience
OperaWorks™ programs functioned as immersive laboratories for artistic development. Rather than separating vocal technique from dramatic, physical, and psychological work, the curriculum integrated multiple disciplines so singers could experience how voice, body, imagination, and musical interpretation interact in performance. Core classes included Performance Techniques, Musical Improvisation, Physical Theatre, and Career Development, alongside collaborative rehearsals and performances that encouraged singers to explore their own instincts and expressive choices.
These programs were designed not simply as training sessions but as environments in which singers could experience their development as integrated artists. Within this setting, participants were encouraged to experiment, take risks, and discover how their individuality could become a strength in performance.
As a culmination of each residency, singers collaborated with faculty to create pastiche productions—original performance works that wove operatic repertoire into newly devised narratives and staging. OperaWorks™ was the first training program to use this pastiche format as an alternative to traditional scene programs or standard opera productions, emphasizing collaborative storytelling, physical expression, and imaginative interpretation. Over time, these productions became a defining feature of the OperaWorks™ programs and form an important part of its artistic legacy.
For many participants, the experience reshaped not only their approach to singing but their understanding of themselves as artists.
"At OperaWorks I encountered, for the first time, a curriculum that utilized dramatic and musical improvisation as a tool to discover one’s deeply personal and distinctive gifts. I was given elements that are essential to being not only a professional artist, but more than that, one with a unique artistic voice."
RANDALL SCOTTING
“[OperaWorks™] gave me what I never learned anywhere else. We live in a world of recordings and a wealth of knowledge on what is right and wrong. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of what we don’t know. OperaWorks™ taught me the best answers lie within each of us as an individual. We are all unique and it is through that unique perspective that our best art will be created.”
CLINTON STOFFBERG
“OperaWorks™ was a truly life-changing experience. I left feeling invigorated and excited about being a singer. I felt freer as a performer and more confident to ‘do my thing’ with pride rather than focusing on pleasing an audition panel. I gained new tools for practice and performance and a clearer sense of my own goals — and I had a blast.”
SARAH NELSON CRAFT
Since OperaWorks™, I experience music in a whole new way. I realized that singing is not about getting it right. It’s about finding something beautiful and honest in the moment and accepting it. I learned not to be afraid of my instincts — in fact, I learned to love them.”
FELICIA MOORE
“My experience at OperaWorks™ was truly life changing. Striving to strengthen the whole person, not just the singing voice, opens up creativity and expression I never knew existed.”
LORALEE SONGER
"The most important part of OperaWorks™ for me was that you and your team of faculty taught us that who we are as artists — our personality, the choices we make — is not only good enough, but far more real, interesting, and exciting than trying to be something we are not.”
AUSTIN THOMPSON
Timeline of Program Growth
Over nearly four decades, OperaWorks™ programs expanded from small summer intensives into a network of residencies and workshops that reached singers and teachers across North America and internationally.
Summer programs established in Tampa and Pittsburgh, introducing the core OperaWorks approach of integrating musical preparation with movement, improvisation, and performance techniques.
A winter program in Phoenix expanded the model beyond the original summer intensives.
Residency programs established their long-term home in Los Angeles at California State University, Northridge, where immersive summer programs brought singers and faculty together for collaborative study and performance.
National workshops began in New York City and expanded to conservatories, universities, and professional training programs throughout the United States and abroad.
Summer and winter residencies, workshops, and institutional partnerships continued to engage singers and teachers across North America and internationally.
Empirical Evidence
During this period, the OperaWorks™ training environment became the subject of a two-year psychological study initiated to examine, in measurable terms, the effects of holistic, non-competitive approach to performer development that the faculty had observed for many years.
The findings, later published in the International Journal of Music Education, documented increased optimal performance and self-esteem among participants, together with measurable decreases in shame, perfectionism, and performance anxiety.