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    Quodesia D. Johnson

    Quo Johnson
    Quodesia D. Johnson

    Quodesia “Quo” Johnson (she/her) is an equity specialist, racial equity coach, healing practitioner, speaker, and community facilitator recognized nationally for her unique approach to shaping spaces of collaboration and creativity in the nonprofit arts, culture, education, and social justice sectors. Quo’s original Company Culture Framework™ combines her experience in the arts, business, organizational culture, and trauma-informed healing practices to cultivate a transformational, human-centered approach to dismantling systems of oppression.

    Making history by developing and facilitating the first national Racial Justice Opera Forum in U.S. opera history, Quo continues to inspire creativity and courageous connection in her collaborations and speaking engagements throughout the United States and Canada. As the creator, content curator, and cohost of Taking the Stage with Kristian and Quo, she engages an international audience in meaningful conversations at the intersection of art, business, healing, social justice, and community.

    The Dallas local currently serves as founder and chief collaborative consultant (Quo Johnson Co Project, LLC); founder and space moderator (Black Administrators of Opera); company culture consultant (The Dallas Opera); social justice advisor (OPERA America); and racial equity coach and racial healing facilitator (Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation). Quo is a trained facilitator in Rx Racial Healing™ and The Storytelling Blanket™, a proud graduate of Prairie View A&M University, a Dallas Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project, and earned her MA in Arts Administration from Goucher College.

    Elizabeth Askren

    Conductor and HIWC Alumna & Faculty – The Dallas Opera

    Elizabeth Askren
    Elizabeth Askren

    Praised for “inspiring virtuosic achievements from the pit” (Opera Today) and “palpable happiness” (Le Monde) from the artists with whom she collaborates, Elizabeth Askren empowers musicians around the world as a conductor, educator, and cultural activist.

    An OPERA America 2024 Opera Grant winner, Askren performs regularly with leading opera houses and orchestras, including The Dallas Opera, with which she enjoys a privileged relationship, and Hawaii Opera Theatre, of which she is the company’s first ever Principal Guest Conductor. She is also the Music Director of Paola Prestini and Brenda Shaughnessey’s Sensorium Ex, a Ford Foundation-funded multi-modal opera exploring issues at the intersection of AI, disability, and the human voice. Askren is the Founder and Artistic Director of Transylvanian Opera Academy (TOA), Romania’s first opera studio. Created in 2017, TOA has been featured on national television, radio, and press while partnering with the Paris Opera’s Academy, TEDx, and Opera for Peace. She is also the creator and host of MaestraMagic!, a children’s edutainment series distributed by The Dallas Opera.

    A master teacher at both The Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute and at the Paris Opera’s Academy, Askren made history by judging the Paris Philharmonic’s inaugural La Maestra Competition for Women Conductors. She is invited regularly to speak about leading and entrepreneurship in the arts, mentoring young artists, and cultivating humanity in the age of AI through outlets including PBS Newshour, NPR, Radio France Internationale, and The Ford Foundation/How Institute.

    Serge Dorny

    Serge Dorny
    Serge Dorny

    Serge Dorny was born in Wevelgem in Belgium. He began his theatre career in the dramaturge team under Gerard Mortier at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, moving from here to the Festival of Flanders, where was appointed Artistic Director in 1987. He revitalised the festival programme with a new repertoire and an innovative offering of baroque and contemporary, invited big, significant orchestras and engaged a series of conductors starting out on their careers, among them Iván Fischer, Valery Gergiev, Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen, for example.

    He was appointed General Director and Artistic Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1996, where he corrected the financial situation and re-established the orchestra’s artistic excellence. Kurt Masur was made Principal Conductor and Vladimir Jurowski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor, and the cooperation with Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons and Wolfgang Sawallisch was intensified.

    Serge Dorny has pursued an innovative artistic policy since his appointment as General Director of the Opéra national de Lyon in 2003. His bills has combined major works of the repertoire with lesser-known operas, developed thematic festivals and afforded the music of the 20th century and contemporary works a truly special significance. He has invited outstanding conductors such as William Christie, Lothar Koenigs, Stefano Montanari, Kazushi Ono, Kirill Petrenko, Jérémie Rhorer and Daniele Rustioni, recruited film and theatre directors such as Christophe Honoré, David Marton and Wajdi Mouawad for the opera, and established a continuous cooperation with renowned stage artistes such as Romeo Castellucci, Robert Lepage, La Fura dels Baus (Àlex Ollé), Laurent Pelly, Olivier Py and Dmitri Tcherniakov.

    His initiative to make the opera house’s artistic offering accessible to audiences that previously had very few points of contact with musical theatre, and to bring them closer with special activities, such as the regular art and culture programme, now enjoys international renown here.

    In 2017, the Opéra national de Lyon was named Opera House of the Year by the British press’s International Opera Awards and also declared Opera House of the Year with the “Opernwelt” specialist opera journal’s critics’ vote.

    Louis Langrée

    Louis Langrée
    Louis Langrée

    Louis Langrée is celebrating his final season with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he has been music director since 2013; at the conclusion of the season, he will become music director laureate. He continues as director of Théâtre National de l’Opéra-Comique in Paris, an appointment that began in November 2021. He ended his 20-year tenure as music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in the summer of 2023. Known for imaginative programming, Maestro Langrée began his Cincinnati tenure with Jennifer Higdon’s On a Wire with Eighth Blackbird; Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait, narrated by Dr. Maya Angelou; and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Two of his Cincinnati recordings were Grammy-nominated for Best Orchestral Performance: Transatlantic, with works by Varèse, Gershwin, and Stravinsky; and Concertos for Orchestra, featuring world premieres by Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich, and Zhou Tian. His Pelléas et Mélisande trilogy contrasted settings by Fauré, Debussy, and Schoenberg. His multi-season Beethoven Revolution cycle has paired the symphonies with world premieres and 20th-century masterworks, as well as recreation of Beethoven’s legendary 1808 Akademie concert. By the time Maestro Langrée ends his tenure with CSO, he and the CSO will have commissioned 45 new orchestral works and he will have conducted 31 premieres from a wide range of composers, including the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6, the composer’s final opus. Maestro Langrée has conducted more than 200 performances and concerts at the Mostly Mozart Festival, Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, and on the Great Performers series, and has also conducted at the Vienna Staatsoper, La Scala, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Bavarian Staatsoper, and at festivals including Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, BBC Proms, Edinburgh International, and the Hong Kong Arts Festival. A native of Alsace, France, Maestro Langrée is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier des Arts et des Lettres.

    David Lomelí

    David Lomelí
    David Lomelí

    David Lomelí became the first Latino in US history to occupy a top artistic position at a Level 1 opera company when he was named the Director of Artistic Administration at The Dallas Opera in 2018. In September 2019, he joined the team at the historic Bavarian State Opera in Munich where he took part in casting more than 30 new productions and 50 revival productions for the 2021-2025 seasons, becoming the first Hispanic to hold the position of Head of Casting in a top 5 company in the world. In April 2021, he joined the Santa Fe Opera in a newly created position as Chief Artistic Officer, overseeing the company’s artistic output. After a full calendar year with the company and managing the 2021 and 2022 festival, Santa Fe Opera won “Festival of the Year” at the International Opera Awards in November 2022. During his time with The Dallas Opera, Lomelí was involved in the commissioning and producing of five world premieres and facilitated the debuts of major International and US stars. He is most proud of his work with The Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors (HIWC), where he and his team recruited over 400 conductors and 50 administrators with applications spanning more than 30 countries. During the pandemic, Lomelí and his team created the TDO Network for The Dallas Opera, which generated millions of views on the company’s social media channels. 

    Before joining TDO, Mr. Lomelí performed as a world-renoned tenor with many top leading companies. He is a recipient of the National Youth Prize in the Arts, presented by the Mexican government, and won first prize in both categories of opera and zarzuela in Plácido Domingo’s 2006 Operalia. Mr. Lomeli is an alumnus of some of the most prestigious training programs for opera artists, including the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program at LA Opera, the Merola Opera Program, and Adler Fellowship at the San Francisco Opera, as well as the International Society of Mexican Art and Values in Mexico City. 

     

    Emmanuel Villaume

    The Mrs. Eugene McDermott Music Director

    “Emmanuel Villaume’s conducting is intense, passionate, and detailed, yet always considerate of the singers…”—The Guardian (London)

    Emmanuel Villaume
    Emmanuel Villaume

    French conductor Emmanuel Villaume has served The Dallas Opera (TDO) as its Mrs. Eugene McDermott Music Director for more than a decade. Since assuming this position in 2013, he has led dozens of performances of both beloved classics and newer works with the company at the Winspear Opera House, including the world premiere of the TDO-commissioned and critically acclaimed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in 2023, Elektra, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, Hansel & Gretel, Rigoletto, Das Rheingold, The Magic Flute, The Golden Cockerel, Moby-Dick, Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, Le nozze di Figaro, Carmen and more, as well as the company premieres of Jonathan Dove’s Flight, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Der Ring des Polykrates, and Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta.

    In addition, he serves on the artistic faculty for TDO’s annual Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors, and often leads the People’s Choice and other annual concert performances with The Dallas Opera Orchestra. He will conduct Orpheus and Eurydice in the 2024/25 season.

    Recognized for his equally insightful and dramatic interpretations, Maestro Villaume has also served as Music Director of the PKF-Prague Philharmonia since 2015, and he regularly guest conducts with leading opera companies worldwide, such as the Royal Opera Covent Garden, Bayerische Staatsoper, Paris Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, the Mariinsky Opera, and Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in Europe, and the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and San Francisco, LA, St. Louis and Santa Fe operas in the U.S.  Widely regarded as one of today’s premier interpreters of 19th- and 20th-Century French repertoire, he is also known for the Italian operas of Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, and Menotti.

    In symphonic repertoire, Villaume has led some of the world’s most distinguished orchestras, including the Montreal Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and in Europe, the Royal Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Munich Radio Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Mariinsky Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. Further afield, Villaume has led performances in Australia with the Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane symphony orchestras, as well as the NHK Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra in Japan, China National Opera Orchestra (the latter for the 2008 Olympic Games), and the Royal Opera House Muscat. He has recorded regularly for major labels including Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, and Warner classics.

    Emmanuel Villaume is the past Music Director of Spoleto Festival USA (2001-2010) and former Chief Conductor of both the Slovenian (2008-2013) and Slovak Philharmonic (2009-2016). He studied music at the Conservatoire in his hometown of Strasbourg, France. He continued his education at the Sorbonne in Paris, receiving degrees in literature, philosophy, and musicology, before his appointment as Dramaturg of Strasbourg’s Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg at the age of 21. Maestro Villaume resides in Paris, Los Angeles, and Dallas.

     

    Updated May 2024

    Image: Kyle Flubacker