Michelle Rofrano is an Italian American conductor with a keen interest in the intersection of art and social activism. An avid opera conductor, she is the Music and Artistic Director of City Lyric Opera, a women-led company in NYC. She has led productions of The Queen of Spades and Trouble in Tahiti with The Glimmerglass Festival; Telemann’s comic opera Don Quichotte at Camacho’s Wedding with Opera Saratoga; the New York premiere of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon with City Lyric Opera; Le nozze di Figaro with the Crane School of Music; Trouble in Tahiti, Service Provider, Avow, and A Flourish of Green with Westminster Choir College; Così fan tutte and The Turn of the Screw with DC Public Opera; Così fan tutte with the Oberlin in Italy opera festival; and Suor Angelica with New Jersey Opera Project. She has served as assistant conductor for productions of La bohème and Le nozze di Figaro with Florida Grand Opera; The Cunning Little Vixen, La Traviata, Blue, and Silent Night with The Glimmerglass Festival; Eugene Onegin and Salome with Spoleto Festival USA; The Merry Wives of Windsor and L’elisir d’amore with Juilliard Opera; Man of La Mancha with Opera Saratoga; and La bohème with Opera Birmingham.
Upcoming projects include conducting La Cenerentola in her debut at Toledo Opera, The Anonymous Lover in her debut at Madison Opera, and a return to Curtis Institute of Music to conduct a double bill of Les Mamelles de Tirésias/Seven Deadly Sins at Curtis Institute of Music. Recent highlights for Rofrano have included conducting Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher with Orpheus PDX, covering Dream of the Red Chamber with San Francisco Opera and the world premiere of Proximity with Lyric Opera of Chicago, leading Menotti’s Amelia al Ballo with Juilliard Opera, leading The Turn of the Screw at Curtis Institute of Music, conducting No One is Forgotten: An Operatic Radio Play by composers Paola Prestini and Sxip Shirey, and conducting La Traviata with City Lyric Opera. Previous engagements include leading The Queen of Spades and Trouble in Tahiti with The Glimmerglass Festival; Telemann’s Don Quichotte at Comacho’s Wedding with Opera Saratoga; the New York premiere of Viardot’s Cendrillon with City Lyric Opera; and Così fan tutte and The Turn of the Screw with DC Public Opera.
A Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship Mentee, Rofrano enjoys performing orchestral repertoire in addition to opera and has led concerts with the Spoleto Festival USA orchestra, CJMEA youth orchestra, and The Little Orchestra Society. Her recording of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C from the Spoleto Festival’s Classical Showcase in 2019 has been featured multiple times on classical music radio program Performance Today, reaching a national audience.
In response to the US federal immigration ban of 2017, Michelle organized and led #NoBan: an orchestral protest concert with an aptly named ad-hoc ensemble PROTESTRA to raise donations for refugee aid organizations. In 2020, PROTESTRA formally incorporated with the mission of raising awareness about social justice and societal issues through classical music. The group has since held multiple orchestral concerts raising awareness and donations for important causes: A Concert for Black Lives (virtual, 2020), A Concert for Climate Action (2021), A Concert Against Gun Violence (2022), and most recently, A Concert for Mental Health in February 2023. The group has additionally held chamber concerts and fundraising throughout NYC, and their recordings of repertoire by under-represented composers and social media presence advocating for social justice have reached tens of thousands of viewers online.
Michelle completed graduate conducting studies at the Peabody Conservatory and counts Marin Alsop, Joseph Colaneri, Gustav Meier, and Markand Thakar among her mentors.