Making New Opera: A Conversation with Ben Krywosz and Mark Campbell

Join us for what promises to be an amazing meeting of two creative minds: Mark Campell, renowned librettist and lyricist, and Ben Krywosz, artistic director and cofounder of St. Paul, Minnesota’s Nautilus Music-Theater.

The Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning operas of librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell are among the most successful in the contemporary canon. Campbell has written 41 opera librettos, lyrics for seven musicals, and text  for nine song cycles and five oratorios. His works include Silent Night, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, The Shining, Elizabeth Cree, Sanctuary Road, As One, The Manchurian Candidate, Stonewall, Burke & Hare, A Thousand  Acres, Edward Tulane, Unruly Sun, Later the Same Evening, The Cook-Off, and Songs from an Unmade Bed. Campbell mentors future generations of librettists and composers at the American Opera Project, American Lyric Theatre, and the American Opera Initiative. He created and funds the Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, the first award for opera librettists in the history of the art form, and co-created the True Voice Award to help support transgender singers. 

Ben Krywosz serves as artistic director of Nautilus Music-Theater, cofounding it as the New Music-Theater Ensemble in 1986, when it was a program of the Minnesota Opera. Serving as producer, director, and dramaturg, his work with Nautilus includes directing world-premiere productions of such works as Answered Prayers, Joan of Arc, and the revised version of Snow Leopard, as well as new productions of Into the Woods, The Last Five Years, Man of La Mancha, Carousel, Ordinary Days, Orpheus and Euridice, The Fantasticks, Alice Unwrapped, The View from Here, John and Jen, and From the Diary of Virginia Woolf. His productions for Nautilus have won three Iveys, the Twin Cities’ awards program for theatrical excellence. Krywosz also has staged full productions for the Minnesota Opera, San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, Opera Roanoke, Midwest Opera Theater, West Bay Opera, Dorian Opera Theater, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and the Lake George Opera’s Apprentice Program.