Our Team
General Director, AOP, 2002 to 2019, and previously held positions at The Santa Fe and Philadelphia Opera Companies and has worked internationally including Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Hong Kong May Festival and The Drottningholm Palace Theatre.
Charles guided AOP’s innovative collaborations with institutions such as Lincoln Center Festival, BAM, The Spoleto Festival USA, and with producers in Germany, Austria, Poland and the UK.
Charles and AOP awards: OPERA America for “dynamic leadership,” and The New York City Arts and Business Council’s Encore! Award, recognizing collaborations that bridge profit and nonprofit worlds.
Charles Jarden
Interim General Director
cjarden@aopopera.org
Topics of conversation: Historic Fort Greene, Brooklyn, US National Parks, all things French
Joel Kalow is the General Manager at The American Opera Project. With a background in cinema studies, he has worked with AOP since July 2018, first as an intern, and later as a full employee. In addition to his work, Joel is the guitarist of local-Bushwick heartthrob band My Son the Doctor.
Joel Kalow
General Manager
jkalow@aopopera.org
Topics of conversation: Steph Curry’s shoes, Lupin III, Big Dogs, Little Dogs, Reverend Guitars, Flying Nun Records, Barbara Stanwyck
Caitlin Mead is an accomplished vocalist and new music performer. A native of Madison, WI, she made her debut as Third Spirit in the Madison Opera's production of The Magic Flute at age 15. Most recently, Ms. Mead’s performance with award-winning exhibition, Bury the Hatchet, was on display at the Portland Art Museum and the Chazen Art Museum. Previously, the exhibit was displayed at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the Missoula Art Museum. Other recent performances include Rava in Evan Kassof’s sci-fi opera Ganymede 5, Lisa in La Sonnambula, Giannetta in L’Elisir d’Amore, the iSING International Festival, singing Chinese language concert repertoire in the Jiangsu province of China, and Center for Contemporary Opera's world premieres of Hester by Richard Alan White and Jane Eyre by Louis Karchin, the recording of which was recently released by Naxos.
In 2015, Ms. Mead won the Alsop Entrepreneurship Award for her combination art gallery and recital entitled "Utopian Dream," which centered around Luciano Berio's Folk songs. This award sparked her passion for creative programming and she has since assisted in development for the Mannes Entrepreneurship Program. Caitlin is Co-Artistic Director of the Madison New Music Festival.
She is a graduate of Mannes School of Music- The New School (MM) and Northwestern University (BM) where she holds a degree in music and anthropology.
Caitlin Mead
Grant Writer
cmead@aopopera.org
Topics of conversation: Your book suggestions to add to my list, cheese, contemporary art exhibits, loop pedals, and Settlers of Catan
Naomi Ramirez has over twenty years of experience in financial management and oversight. She has worked with many organizations and companies over the years creating systems to track financial data in accordance with accounting standards and specific organizational needs. Once implemented these systems allow for ease in reporting for financial planning. Her perspective encompasses the day-to-day minutia of data entry and bigger picture concerns of budgets, cashflow, and audits. She has put together board governance manuals and financial procedure manuals. She has worked with theater and dance companies, scholarly associations, theatrical production companies, theatrical agents, artists, and various other nonprofits and companies. She taught Finance for the Arts at S.U.N.Y. Purchase NY and believes anyone can learn the ins and outs of financial data management and how to read financial reports. She is also an artist, creating and producing her own artwork and curatorial projects. She brings this passion to her consulting. She wants to see organizations thrive!
Naomi Ramirez
Accounting Consultant
Topics of conversation: contemporary dance, murder mysteries, cats, gardening, mexican food, and all things spicy
W.Wilson Jones, having retired from the NYU Library Faculty, continues his stage management career with The American Opera Project. In addition to many workshop performanes, including Paul's Case, Independence Eve, Threeway, Heart of Darkness, Darkling, Summer King, Scarlet Ibis, Séance on a Wet Afternoon, are the world premieres of Patience and Sarah, Out Cold, Harriet Tubman: When I crossed that line to freedom, As One, and Six. Twenty. Outrageous. He also serves as Governance Chair of the AOP Board and Database Administrator.
W. Wilson Jones
Resident Production Stage Manager; Database Administrator.
In 2026 Bill received the Special Recognition Award from the Stage Managers’ Association (a national organization) for his long association with AOP and for mentoring young & rising opera stage managers.
Topics of conversation: Semantic Web technologies, playing the pipe organ.
Stefanos Kemanetzis is a composer, arranger, orchestrator, cellist, and educator who writes music that refuses to stay in one lane—because the most interesting stories rarely do either. His projects range from musicals and operas to concert works and interdisciplinary performance pieces, often drawing on history, philosophy, literature, and the collaborative process of creating narrative art.
A graduate of NYU Tisch (MFA, Graduate Musical Theatre Writing) and the University of Macedonia (BMus & MSc, Composition), his work has been performed in concert halls and theatres alike, from symphonic pieces presented by the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra to theatrical scores for productions of Chekhov, Aristophanes, Shelley, and Bond. He also holds a Diploma in Violoncello Performance from the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki and has been a member of multiple symphony orchestras and string ensembles throughout Greece.
Past works include the opera LOVE, GEORGE (libretto by Chenyue Hu), the operetta ATHANATOS! (book, music, and lyrics), and the intermedial music-theatre piece A SKY DRIPPING WITH STARS (on the writings of Albert Camus). He brought the latter to life while teaching music at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Northern Greece. Currently in development is the new musical STRINGS, with bookwriter/lyricist Jenna Christine.
Stefanos Kemanetzis
Program Associate
stefanos@aopopera.org
Randall Eng founded and leads the AOP-NYU/Tisch Opera Lab with Sam Helfrich. Under their guidance, students from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program have created more than 80 short operas. As a composer, Randall’s music lies at the intersection of opera, music-theatre, and jazz. His operas Florida, Before the Night Sky, Norfolk, and Henry’s Wife have been performed at UrbanArias, Lyric Opera Cleveland, New York City Opera’s VOX Festival, American Opera Projects, the Virginia Arts Festival, White Snake Projects, OPERA America, and the Center for Contemporary Opera. Non-theatrical works include Song, a song cycle for Mirror Visions Ensemble; Harbor, a song for soprano and orchestra created with U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith for the Boston Pops; the choral work Remain, a setting of an immigration rights pamphlet for MasterVoices Chorale; and Fractured Mosaics Interludes, composed in collaboration with the hip hop artist Jason Chu.. Randall is a graduate of Harvard University, Cambridge University, and NYU/Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.
Randall Eng
AOP/NYU-Tisch Opera Lab Co-Director
Sam Helfrich BA (Russian Literature), M.F.A. (Theatre Arts) Columbia University. Sam Helfrich is an Arts Professor in the department of design for stage and fillm at NYU/Tisch School of the arts, and opera and theater director based in New York. He has directed opera productions at New York City Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Portland Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Spoleto Festival/USA, Virginia Opera, Opera Boston, Pittsburgh Opera, and Wolf Trap, among others. Theater credits include various off-broadway and regional productions. His recent production of Péter Eötvös’ operatic adaptation of Angels in America for New York City Opera was recently remounted at the Salzburg Landestheater, and received the Austrian Music Theater Prize for best contemporary opera production.
Sam Helfrich
AOP/NYU-Tisch Opera Lab Co-Director
Steven Osgood recently completed his fourth season as General and Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Opera Company, which featured new productions of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, ¡Figaro! (90210) adapted by Vid Guerrerio from Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, and The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano, including a festival weekend (July 25, 26 & 27) when one could experience the entire Beaumarchais Trilogy on three consecutive nights. Chautauqua Opera recently announced its 2020 season, celebrating the centenary of the 19th Amendment with new productions of Puccini's Tosca, Thumbprint (Kamala Sankaram & Susan Yankowitz), and The Mother Of Us All. A festival weekend (July 30 - August 1) will include performances of all three productions. srosgood.com
Steven Osgood
Composers & the Voice Artistic Director
Mila Henry is a New York-based conductor, pianist and music director who maintains a versatile career, spanning folk operas to rock musicals to reimagined classics. Hailed “a stalwart contributor to the contemporary opera scene” (Opera Ithaca), she has collaborated extensively with AOP (Artistic Director, 2019-2023), American Lyric Theater, Beth Morrison Projects, Experiments in Opera, HERE, OPERA America, Opera Philadelphia, Opera on Tap, PROTOTYPE and VisionIntoArt. She has performed at venues such as The Apollo, BAM, Circle in the Square, Dutch National Opera, LA Opera, Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, McCarter Theatre Center and Pittsburgh CLO, with recital work taking her to Brooklyn Art Song Society (serving on their New Music Advisory Board), Kaufman Music Center, Library of Congress, New York Festival of Song, Feinstein’s/54 Below and Café Sabarsky. Mila holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Elizabethtown College, and was nicknamed a “Jill of all trades” (Sullivan County Democrat) for her multi-instrumentalist work with the band Opera Cowgirls. milahenry.com
Mila Henry
Composers & the Voice Head of Music
AOP board of directors
Anthony Roth Costanzo
Sarah Moulton Faux
David Gordon
J. David Jackson
Charles Jarden
W. Wilson Jones
Cassondra E. Joseph
Mark Kalow
Norman Ryan