Richard Kind (narrator)
American actor Richard Kind is known for his roles in the sitcoms Mad About You and Spin City.  Kind has also appeared in Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as creating the role of Addison Mizner in Stephen Sondheim’s Bounce. On Broadway he has appeared in The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, The Producers, and Sly Fox. Kind has a recurring role in Scrubs as Mr. Harvey Corman, and has also played a notable role on USA’s crime comedy Psych as Hugo. Actor/director George Clooney is a close friend, and was best man at Kind’s wedding. Kind later went on to play the part of a casting director in Clooney’s directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Kind has performed in radio/audio plays for the LA Theatre works and the Hollywood Theater of the Ear, and served as a guest panelist on the revival of the television game show To Tell the Truth. He has also appeared in an episode of CBS’ Two and a Half Men and played Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts. Mr. Kind appeared in the role of the narrator in New York City Opera’s recent production of Candide.

Benjamin Warschawski, tenor (Governor / Vanderdendur / Ragotski)
Career highlights have included Alfredo in La traviata with New York City Opera, OperaDelaware, Bohème Opera New Jersey, and Opera Naples, Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor with Sarasota Opera and Nashville Opera, Jacopo Foscari in I due Foscari and Jontek in Moniuszko's Halka with Sarasota Opera, Calaf in Turandot with Bohème Opera New Jersey, Manrico in Il trovatore and Don José in Carmen with Washington D.C.'s Summer Opera Theatre, the Duke in Rigoletto with Opera Illinois, Austin Lyric Opera, Augusta Opera, and Annapolis Opera, the title roles in Werther and in Puccini's Edgar with Dicapo Opera Theatre, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly with Augusta Opera and Capitol City Opera, and Don José in Carmen with Tri-Cities Opera. He has sung at cantorial concerts in New York, Miami, Montreal, and Toronto, and was invited to sing a holiday concert at the White House for President and Mrs. Clinton. His discography includes three CDs with XLNC Records.

Marco Nisticò, baritone (Pangloss / Martin)
Marco is known for his beautiful voice and compelling acting. Career highlights have included Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Pallante in Handel's Agrippina, Prudenzio in Il viaggio a Reims, Schaunard in La bohème, and Dancaïro in Carmen with New York City Opera; Francesco Foscari in Verdi's I due Foscari with Sarasota Opera; Antonio in Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix with the Caramoor Festival; Buffo in Mozart's The Impresario with L'Opéra de Monte Carlo; Figaro in il barbiere di Siviglia with Toledo Opera, in Bologna, in Amsterdam, and on tour throughout the Netherlands with Eurostage Productions; Figaro in il barbiere di Siviglia and both Durozeau and Renaud in Auber's Manon Lescaut with Ireland's Wexford Festival; Malatesta in Don Pasquale with Connecticut Grand Opera, and Tarquinius in Lucretia. Concert highlights have included Fra Melitone in La forza del destino with the Caramoor Festival; Schaunard in La bohème with the Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra; and a Carnegie Hall debut as baritone soloist in the Fauré Requiem.

David Giuliano, baritone (Junkman / Herman Augustus / Senor / Judge)
Praised by the San Francisco Classical Voice as “…a highly impressive performer…ready for any major operatic stage in the world”, David Giuliano is an exciting singing actor blessed with an artful, warm and colorful baritone voice. He has appeared with such notable companies as Santa Fe Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Boston Lyric Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera. He has participated as a Young Artist with the San Francisco Opera Center, Berkshire Opera, Central City Opera and Santa Fe Opera. Mr. Giuliano received his Master’s in Opera Performance at the New England Conservatory and a postgraduate Artist’s Diploma at The Opera Institute at Boston University.

Cory Clines, bass-baritone (Doctor / Inquisitor / Croupier / Stanislaus / Senor / Judge)
Bass-baritone Cory Clines recently appeared with the Pine Mountain Music Festival as Pangloss/Voltaire/Governor in Bernstein's Candide and as Le Podestat in Bizet's Le Docteur Miracle. Other credits include Count Ceprano in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Conspirator in Un Ballo in Maschera with Boston Lyric Opera, Dick Deadeye in Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, and Gaston in Disney's Beauty & The Beast. Mr. Clines completed his graduate work at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also holds degrees from the University of Rochester, New York, and Eastman School of Music. Mr. Clines recently made his debut with Toledo Opera in Salome, and is also a part of our Young Artist Program.

Marc Verzatt, Stage Director
Stage Director Marc Verzatt maintains an active career directing opera, operetta and musical theater throughout the United States and Europe, as well as serving on the faculty of Westminster Choir College, and as lecturer on opera and stage movement at Yale University's Opera Program. Mr. Verzatt began as an assistant stage director for the Lyric Opera of Chicago and was soon appointed as acting coach and stage director with the Lyric Opera of Chicago's prestigious young artist program Lyric Opera Center for American Artists. There he staged Le Nozze di Figaro, Così fan Tutte, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Tchaikovsky's Iolanta. For the Lyric Opera of Chicago he directed Massenet's Le Cid with Placido Domingo and was the Assistant Director and Movement Coordinator for their acclaimed Ring cycle. He was also the Co-Artistic Director and director of the Young Artists Program at the Lake George Opera Festival where, in addition, he staged productions of Otello, La Traviata, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, Madama Butterfly, and Ariadne auf Naxos.

Engagements in past seasons have included Romeo et Juliette at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Nabucco with Opera Carolina, and The Mikado for Arizona Opera. He directed a double bill of Suor Angelica/Giannia Schicchi as well as Gounod's Le Médecin Malgré Lui, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Katya Kabanova at Yale, Carmen at Atlanta Opera, Hansel and Gretel for Palm Beach Opera, Chérubin with New Jersey Opera Theater, Elisabetta Regina D'Inghilterra in his début with the Teatro Colon, L'Italiana in Algeri with Arizona Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City's Lucia di Lammermoor and Tosca starring Aprile Millo which opened the season for Cincinnati Opera Festival. In Europe, Mr. Verzatt has stage Mozart's Bastine und Bastienne for the Gürzenich Oper, Cologne and La Serva Padrona with Sinfonia Stuttgart. Mr. Verzatt served as staff director to the new opera house in Aachen, Germany where he directed Der Graf von Luxemburg, and spent a year as Resident Director for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express in Bochum, Germany. He was assistant to Jean-Pierre Ponnelle on his production of Die Zauberflöte for the Salzburg Festival.

Mr. Verzatt studied drama at Rutgers University and ballet on scholarship with New Jersey's Garden State Ballet. He made his professional début as a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera. After several seasons as a soloist with the MET Ballet, he left to continue his education in production as a stage manager with the Cincinnati Opera. Marc Verzatt was the recipient of Classical Singer Magazine's award for "Stage Director of the Year" in 2006.

Thomas Conlin, Conductor
Thomas Conlin is a regular guest conductor with symphony orchestras, ballet companies and opera companies on five continents, most recently in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Egypt, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Turkey and throughout the United States. Many of Conlin’s programs feature works by Barber, Bernstein, Copland, Gershwin and other fellow Americans, and he is a champion of music of our time, but his international career includes conducting Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia, Beethoven and Brahms in Germany, Mozart and Mahler in Austria, Debussy and Ravel in France, Verdi and Puccini in Italy, Grieg in Norway and Sibelius in Finland. Last season he led the Eastern European premiere of Bernstein’s West Side Story at the National Opera of Croatia, in Zagreb.  

Maestro Conlin’s recording of George Crumb’s Star-Child, on which he conducts the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. His music video, Symphonic Wonderworks, won the Gold Award (1st Prize) at the 1992 Houston International Film Festival and was nominated for a Telly Award. His CD of Crumb’s A Haunted Landscape was nominated for an Indie Award as Best Orchestral Recording of 2002, and his latest CD on the Bridge label, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Echoes of Time and the River, was released in 2004 to great acclaim. The first in a series of recordings of works by the Brazilian composer Camargo Guarnieri was released on the Naxos label last Year.

Conlin has collaborated in opera and concert with renowned vocalists Kathleen Battle, Marilyn Horne, Robert Merrill, Sherrill Milnes, Roberta Peters, Giorgio Tozzi and Frederica von Stade, in ballet with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Edward Villella and Violette Verdi, and with instrumentalists Emanuel Ax, Alicia de Larrocha, James Galway, Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern. For Toledo Opera he has conducted recent productions of Romeo and Juliet, Don Pasquale, The Turn of the Screw, La traviata, Sweeney Todd, Don Giovanni, La bohème, The Crucible, The Barber of Seville, Faust, Madama Butterfly, Pagliacci, Cavalleria Rusticana, Il trovatore, Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Marriage of Figaro, Tosca, Così fan tutte, Rigoletto and Salome, and eight of TO’s Opera Galas: Three Tenors! – the Next Generation, A Night in Old Vienna, The Greatest Wagner Concert Ever!, Opera Goes to the Movies, From Russia with Love, Richard Strauss: the Last Great Romantic, From Broadway to the Met and Viva Verdi!.