Glimmerglass Festival

That's actually on October 17th.

And then she, uh, jets over to Detroit, where she will direct or remount her production of Tosca, uh, originally seen at the Glimmerglass Festival.

I have to be honest with you, I didn't know that much about Louisa Proske, and so I had to prepare for this interview.

And in doing so, I, I found out that she is one of the co-founders of, uh, Heartbeat Opera in New York City, uh, which you can go to their website, and we'll link it definitely to the show notes today, where you can see the type of sort of scrappy, um, storefront opera that, that's their brand.

Well, we're only talking now about five years of this type of experience, uh, from, I guess, the mother of us all to being asked to direct Macbeth at the Met.

[laughs]

And I don't know how much of a difference there is between, you know, Halle, uh, and let's say Glimmerglass, and, you know, the Metropolitan Opera, and what their technical ability is, and how big is your team, and, uh, all of these things.

I, I'd love to hear a little bit about, um, you know, is it like a big candy store for you to have all those things, or is it maybe even scary that you have too much, that like, "Oh, I'm just used to having whatever, my, my black box and tailor ward," you know?

I've staged pieces of it with young artists, and I've watched different mimis and musetas find completely different women inside the same notes.

I've even watched directors move the whole story somewhere else, including a production at Glimmerglass Opera set against the backdrop of World War I.

And of course, even people who don't think they know La Boheme may already know something of its story through Rent.

The clothes change.

Later in my performing career, I started assisting more and being an associate choreographer on different productions, which is kind of how I started to find my way into opera.

I started assisting at Glimmerglass on a few different productions.

The first one being Annie Get Your Gun, where they would sort of have a crossover between musical theater and opera.

And with that, I started making different connections in opera.