Founded in 1976, the New York Transit Museum is dedicated to preserving and sharing the stories of New York's mass transportation.

12 short operas inspired and dedicated to the New York Transit Museum will be put on stage of New York University and at the Museum!

A collaborative project of NYU Tisch School of the Arts' Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, Department of Design for Stage and Film, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, ITP and American Opera Projects

Somnambulance on the 4-Track Line

MUSIC BY Dan Gibson
LIBRETTO BY Chiara M.N.

STAGE DIRECTION by Britt Berke

COSTUME DESIGN by Matt Oxley

SET DESIGN by Yufan Hu; Yun Yen

LIGHTING by Jordan McAuliffe

A Triplex subway car: Brooklyn, 1924. A passenger with sleeping sickness ponders their ability to accept their uncertain future as they face the fears of their worsening symptoms.

Make Room

Music by Felipe Segovia Sanhueza
libretto by Kennen Butler

STAGE DIRECTION by Jerrica D. White

COSTUME DESIGN by Eryn Perkins

SET DESIGN by Matt Conte

LIGHTING by Jordan McAuliffe

As the brand new R33 makes its first trip towards Flushing Meadows and the World’s Fair, it is forced to grapple with the realization that they too may have to make room for the wonders of the future.

Empire Heights

Music by Zane Bridwell
Libretto by Simon Lansberg-Rodriguez

STAGE DIRECTION by Jerrica D. White

COSTUME DESIGN by Eryn Perkins

SET DESIGN by Matt Conte

LIGHTING by Jordan McAuliffe

Three candidates interview for a position at the newly-reopened Empire Heights Theater in post-war New York City.

Another Train, Another Time

Music by landon braverman
Libretto by susan C. li

STAGE DIRECTION by Jerrica D. White

COSTUME DESIGN by Eryn Perkins

SET DESIGN by Matt Conte

LIGHTING by Jordan McAuliffe

Another Train, Another Time is a time travel queer love story taking place in both the modern day and 1904. We follow the story of two souls drawn together against all odds, as human connection blossoms in the most unlikely of places of a subway car on the Six Avenue line.

Love, George

Music by stefanos kemanetzis
Libretto by chenyue hu

STAGE DIRECTION by Britt Berke

COSTUME DESIGN by Matt Oxley

SET DESIGN by Yufan Hu; Yun Yen

LIGHTING by Jordan McAuliffe

A 15-minute opera exploring the lives of early 20th-century Greek immigrants building the New York subway, through the perspectives of their letters sent back home to Greece.

It never stops

Music by gaurav mishra
Libretto by caleb conaway

STAGE DIRECTION by Britt Berke

COSTUME DESIGN by Matt Oxley

SET DESIGN by Yufan Hu; Yun Yen

LIGHTING by Jordan McAuliffe

It Never Stops is a short opera set on a 1980s R36 BQ train. Arthur, a recently-jobless mortuary man, has to confront his uncertain future with the aid of two living subway placard ads: HCA (a Hemorrhoids Cream advertisement) and THE INSTITUTE (A Business Institute advertisement). As the train barrels forward, Arthur faces a choice: reinvent his mortuary service with THE INSTITUTE, or help HCA escape to Coney Island. Darkly comedic and surreal, It Never Stops explores death, destination, and the inescapable grip of corporate messaging, setting the audience on a journey they can't get off.

Miss Subway

Music by sean stone
Libretto by Allie Lewis

STAGE DIRECTION by Miguel Bregante

COSTUME DESIGN by Lionella Darling; Oriana Lineweaver

SET DESIGN by Mara Zinky

LIGHTING by M Berry

Brenda Grant (a nanny and woman of color in her 20s), Carrie French (a secretary in her 30s), and Rosalind Warner (a maid in her 50s) commute to their jobs together every day. In 1939, when Miss America winner receives a $2000 hat deal, Brenda imagines what her version of a subway-based beauty pageant could be, and encourages her friends to share in the dream. This piece is inspired by and dedicated to three leading ladies who were the first Black women to win their respective beauty contests: 

Thelma Porter (Miss Subways, 1948) 
Audrey Smaltz (Miss Transit Queen, 1954) 
Vanessa Williams (Miss New York and Miss America, 1983)

Anabasis

Music by dawson atkin
Libretto by mel hornyak

STAGE DIRECTION by Martavius Parrish

COSTUME DESIGN by Christine DiJoseph; Alex Driessen

SET DESIGN by Woori Kim

LIGHTING by Sooji Kim

Anabasis is a 15-minute opera for three voices dramatizing the emotions - of terror, of elation, and of entry into the unrelenting machinery of ever-accelerating capitalist expansion - concurrent with the first time a subway ran under the East River through the Joralemon Street Tunnel in 1908, connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn. It is not intended to be strictly narrative. In 1908, the ride was exactly 15 minutes long.

Sick Passenger

Music by austin nuckols
Libretto by tia deshazor

STAGE DIRECTION by Miguel Bregante

COSTUME DESIGN by Lionella Darling; Oriana Lineweaver

SET DESIGN by Mara Zinky

LIGHTING by M Berry

It's 1979, and Latrice is having her first contraction on the A train. When her boss enters the subway car with her replacement, she must convince him to let her keep her job before it's too late.

The Wayward Subway

Music by tess edwards
Libretto by alexander ronneburg

STAGE DIRECTION by Miguel Bregante

COSTUME DESIGN by Lionella Darling; Oriana Lineweaver

SET DESIGN by Mara Zinky

LIGHTING by M Berry

Two young New Yorkers get trapped in a subway car, where they navigate less-than-helpful MTA employees, horrible exes, soup, and rats. NYC, am I right?

Waste

MUSIC BY commodore primous
LIBRETTO BY Danielle Keiko eyer

STAGE DIRECTION by Martavius Parrish

COSTUME DESIGN by Christine DiJospeh; Alex Driessen

SET DESIGN by Woori Kim

LIGHTING by Sooji Kim

Waste takes place on an MTA train car in the near future. A man waits impatiently on a stalled, delayed train. A 5-year-old girl wanders around the otherwise empty train car, unaccompanied. Somewhere, an ancient, ageless, godlike being (AKA Carol of the MTA) watches closely. As the years inexplicably pass, and as the world aboveground burns to ashes, can the last two humans left on Earth keep each other safe?

Sincerely

MUSIC BY krisk
LIBRETTO BY jacob cordas

STAGE DIRECTION by Martavius Parrish

COSTUME DESIGN by Christine DiJospeh; Alex Driessen

SET DESIGN by Woori Kim

LIGHTING by Sooji Kim

The Future Miss Subways must decide between the proposals of The Minotaur and The Siren.

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 30 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, and Henry's Wife have been performed at UrbanArias, Lyric Opera Cleveland, New York City Opera's VOX Festival, American Opera Projects, Town Hall, the Virginia Arts Festival, the Center for Contemporary Opera, and Manhattan School of Music. His choral work Remain (a setting of an immigration rights pamphlet) premiered in 2018 by the MasterVoices Chorus. Other dramatic works include The Dangers of Electric Lighting (Luna Stage), Usher, Falling (Opera Vindaloo Festival), and the video opera The Woman in the Green Coat (Edinburgh Fringe Festival); non-theatrical works include commissions for Albany Symphony Orchestra's Dogs of Desire, Mirror Visions Ensemble, and Composer's Voice. Randall is a graduate of Harvard University, Cambridge University, and NYU/Tisch's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, where he is now an Associate Arts Professor.

Sam Helfrich BA (Russian Literature), M.F.A. (Theatre Arts) Columbia University. Sam Helfrich is an 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. Recent opera highlights include the west coast premiere of Elizabeth Cree, by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell, at West Edge Opera, the world premiere of Permadeath, a CGI- based opera about video gaming with White Snake Productions in Boston, the world premiere of Jeffrey Smith's Why is Eartha Kitt Trying to Kill Me at Urban Arias in Washington DC, Mozart’s The Magic Flute with the Indianapolis Symphony, a staging of Haydn’s Creation with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the New York premiere of Angels in America at New York City Opera, the world premiere of Dan Sonenberg's The Summer King at Pittsburgh Opera (and, recently, at Michigan Opera Theater),  Bach's St. John Passion with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek at Boston Lyric Opera, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld at Virginia Opera, the world premiere of Enemies: A Love Story, by Ben Moore, at Palm Beach Opera, Embedded, by composer Patrick Soluri, at Fargo-Moorhead Opera and Ft. Worth Opera, Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos at Virginia Opera, Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking at Eugene Opera, Andre Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire at Virginia Opera, the American premiere of Philip Glass' Kepler at Spoleto Festival/USA, Adams' Nixon in China at Eugene Opera, a fully staged Messiah with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the world premiere of Michael Dellaira's The Secret Agent at Center for Contemporary Opera in New York, the Armel Opera Festival in Hungary, and Opera Avignon, The Turn of the Screw at Boston Lyric Opera, Philip Glass' Orphée at Pittsburgh Opera, Virginia Opera, Portland Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera, and Anthony Davis’ Amistad at Spoleto Festival/USA. Recent theater credits include Neil LaBute’s In a Dark Dark House with Knife Edge Productions, off-Broadway productions of Owned, a world premier play by Julian Sheppard, and Tape, by Stephen Belber, a double bill of plays by Shaw and De Musset at the Franklin Stage Company, and Arthur Miller’s After The Fall at NYU/Tisch Grad Acting.

TJ Rubin (Production Manager) is a composer and music educator who tells stories onstage that reflect the wide variety of queer experiences and narratives the world holds. TJ’s music lives at the intersection of opera and musical theater, with melodies that are “torquing, and probing, quizzical and wonderstruck” (San Francisco Classical Voice). Recent works include Ten Minutes in the Life or Death of… (libretto by Marella Martin Koch), How To Create A Young Girl (book and lyrics by Laura Barati), Back to the Shore: A Jersey Short Opera (libretto by Mika Kauffman) and Nightlife (libretto by Deepali Gupta), which premiered at the Stonewall Inn as part of a collaboration between NYU and AOP for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. He is on faculty at Montclair State University and William Paterson University. He is also a composer in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. MFA: New York University, Musical Theatre Writing.

Kari Setsuko Love is a Brooklyn-based artist and educator who makes tech-enabled mixed media sculptures that demystify technology and ask the question of “Who does technology belong to?” She blends her experience as a NASA Space suit contractor and from co-writing a book on DIY soft robotics to make artwork that engages all 5 senses and then sometimes becomes a part of the viewer. Ms. Love teaches "Exploring Concepts From Soft Robotics" at NYU Tisch School of the Arts ITP program. With 25 years of costuming experience for stage and screen, the Spider-man costume she built for the Broadway production of "Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark" was inducted into the Smithsonian collection. She was the Associate Designer of Costumes and Wearable Technology for the new opera Primero Sueño which premiered in 2025 at the Met Cloisters.

Yuliya Parshina-Kottas is an Assistant Arts Professor at ITP/IMA with a focus on visual storytelling, information design, motion and 3D. She spent 9 years with The New York Times graphics team, covering a wide range of topics, including human rights abuses, science, public health and climate change.

A Familial Juncture by Lily Crandall

Lily Crandall is a Brooklyn-based educator, creative technologist, fiber artist, and arts event organizer exploring new ways to facilitate connection and play through accessible and inviting objects and experiences.

The Institute for Tridimensional Transportation Research, Discourse, and Analysis: Sonification Division by Sophia Collender

Sophia Collender is a New York-based design researcher and technologist making artwork about the many, many, many layers of activity that are all around us, all the time. 

Audrey Oh (b. 1996, South Korea) is an interactive media artist using sensor-based interactions, embedded electronics, and algorithmic systems to recreate modern ritual and collective meaning-making. She has exhibited at the National Science Museum of Korea, Dumbo Public Arts Festival, and Clive Davis and Livingston Gallery.

Sai is an information designer crafting delightful experiences with data & technology who draws inspiration from natural phenomena, often using code as a means to that end. In the past, his work has been recognised and celebrated by CultureHub, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Bangalore International Center and Information is Beautiful, among others.

Bethany “B” Lorraine Wu is an artist and researcher who creates objects and experiences that embody the ephemerality of space, time, light, and loss. Her work has been exhibited at NYC Resistor, DUMBO, New York, CultureHub, All Street, Clive Davis Gallery, and The Brick Aux.

Shloka Mohanty is a storyteller and learner for as long as they’ve known themself, and something they’ll continue to be, actively exploring and experimenting in various mediums. They hope to find their place as an inventor and artist whose creations spark curiosity in others.

Ryan Webber is a researcher-artist interested in multi-media installations, Black aesthetics, social art spaces, and invisible interactions. Previously, he was the lead curator of the Future Legends exhibition at Clive Davis Gallery, an editor for Adjacent, and a VP of data security research at Morgan Stanley.

Matthew Blanco is a Creative Technologist who develops interactive experiences that explore the invisible infrastructure around us through an interdisciplinary mix of data visualization, interface design, and physical computing. Currently, he is pursuing a Masters at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Christina, also known as tunapee, is a Vietnamese-American creative technologist. She is a first year ITP student with a background in data science, physics, and industrial design. Her work explores how technology and play as a creative tool produces emergent and unexpected outcomes, and how whimsy and absurdity can serve as a critical lens to ask what our motivations are for building the things that we do. She makes silly videos to share her physical and web art work online.

Devan is an intermedia artist and creative technologist making stories with text, play, song, and space in Brooklyn, NY. Working digitally, analogly, and everywhere in between, she makes intimate works celebrating organic materiality, the extraordinary in the everyday, and slowing down to connect with what’s right in front of us.

Christopher "Widget" is a game designer, hardware hacker, and hobby roboticist.