Music by Laura Kaminsky
Words by Elaine Sexton
Design by Charles Renfro
The ghost of Benjamin Franklin, the first US Postmaster General, is drawn into a thoroughly contemporary conflict among co-workers in a one-room post office about gay marriage, free speech, racial and class divides, and democracy itself in a provocative new opera by composer Laura Kaminsky (AS ONE) and poet/librettist Elaine Sexton (Site Specific). Produced by American Opera Projects, THE POST OFFICE makes its premiere, featuring a cast of five singers and piano, and a set designed by Charles Renfro, a partner in the distinguished architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro with a long history of involvement in the performing arts.
LAURA KAMINSKY (music) frequently addresses social and political issues in her work with a distinct musical language that is “full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection.” (American Record Guide). Her first opera, As One (co-librettists Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, AOP-commissioned and developed) is the most produced 21st century opera since its 2014 BAM premiere, with 65+ productions internationally. In addition to As One and The Post Office, she has composed 7 other operas in the past decade that have been produced across the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and South America. Her chamber music and instrumental works have been performed widely by acclaimed artists, including pianists Ursula Oppens, Jenny Lin, Mackenzie Melemed, Margaret Kampmeier; and Idith Meshulam; the Fry Street, Cassatt, and Carpe Diem String Quartets; Sybarite 5; Quintet of the Americas, Ensemble Pi, and Hub New Music. She recently completed a score for PBS's Poetry in America. She is on the faculty at SUNY Purchase and Boston Conservatory/Berklee. laurakaminsky.com
ELAINE SEXTON (words) is a poet, librettist, critic, and educator. Her latest collection of poems is Site Specific: New & Selected (Grid Books, 2025). Her four previous books of poetry are: Sleuth (New Issues, 2003), Causeway (New Issues, 2008), Prospect/Refuge (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015), and Drive (Grid Books, 2022). Her poems, art reviews, book reviews, and works in visual art have appeared in journals and anthologies, textbooks and websites, and include American Poetry Review, Art in America, Poetry, Ploughshares, and O! the Oprah Magazine.
In addition to The Post Office, she wrote the text for After Stonewall, co-commissioned by the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), and Five Boroughs Music Festival, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.
Sexton teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and has been guest faculty at New York University and City College (CUNY). She regularly teaches poetry at arts and writing programs and centers in the U.S. and abroad.
Charles Renfro is an architect working at the intersection of building design, the performing arts, and academia. He joined Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) in 1997 and became a Partner in 2004, and has led many of DS+R’s performing arts, academic, and adaptive reuse projects.
The Post Office is Charles’ first opera and continues his longstanding interest in performance and stage design. Previous work for the stage includes collaborations with Australian Dance Theater on Be Yourself and with Jonah Bokaer Dance on Indecent Spaces and Late Nights on Air, both pieces exploring how quotidian objects and everyday spatial conditions have deeper, more complex, and often violent histories.
Charles continues to design performance spaces and is currently leading the design for DS+R of Casa Belongó in East Harlem, the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra’s new permanent home, as well as the adaptive reuse of St. Clement’s Church for The New Group theater company in Hell’s Kitchen. Both projects engage the general public in unexpected ways through radical transformations of their primary performance spaces.
Charles' previously completed performance space projects for DS+R include the renovation of The Juilliard School at Lincoln Center and Juilliard’s new ground-up campus in Tianjin, China, which houses the firm’s first new concert hall and the Prior Center for the Performing Arts at Holy Cross College, which includes the firm’s first opera house.
Recognized twice on the Out100 list as a leading LGBTQ+ voice in architecture and the arts and in Crain’s New York as one of New York City’s outstanding gay business leaders, his independent work around areas of sexuality, space, and intentional family are currently being explored in his ongoing academic work ‘Queer Utopia’ and his participation in the design of QNCC, the Queer Nightlife Community Center under construction in Brooklyn. He serves as an adjunct board member of BOFFO, a nonprofit arts residency supporting LGBTQ+ BIPOC artists in Fire Island Pines.
He is a recurring professor at Rice University, on faculty at the School of Visual Arts, and has taught at Columbia, Parsons School of Design, and Friends Seminary, among others. He was a founding editor-at-large of Document Journal and has contributed writing to many magazines, monographs, and history books, including The Art School.
Laura Kaminsky
Music
CREATIVE TEAM
Elaine Sexton
Words
Charles Renfro
Design
Kevin Newbury is an opera, theatre, film and television director and producer based in New York City.
Kevin has directed over 100 original projects in multiple mediums. Career highlights include three productions for PBS Great Performances: the world premiere of Bel Canto (Lyric Opera of Chicago), the world premiere of Doubt (Minnesota Opera) and Bernstein’s MASS (Ravinia Festival). Kevin has directed dozens of world premieres, including Kansas City Choir Boy (starring Courtney Love, Prototype Festival/National Tour), GRAMMY-winner The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (Santa Fe, Seattle, San Francisco Operas), GLAAD Media Award Winner Candy & Dorothy and five operas with acclaimed composer Gregory Spears, Kevin’s long collaboration with acclaimed composer Gregory Spears includes five world premieres: including Fellow Travelers (NY Times “Best of 2016”) and Castor & Patience (NY Times “Best of 2022”), both with Cincinnati Opera, and The Righteous (Santa Fe Opera). Creative Director: Liz Phair's 30th Anniversary Exile in Guyville national tour. TV credits include SOUL(SIGNS): Making Music Visible for PBS/WNET/All-Arts and Dickinson for AppleTV. In February 2026, Kevin launched the 10th Anniversary National Tour of Fellow Travelers at Seattle Opera and Portland Opera, with upcoming engagements at San Diego Opera, the Glimmerglass Festival and Austin Opera, with more cities to be announced soon. Co-Founder: Up Until Now Collective.
David Bloom (he/him) is a conductor equally at home in orchestral repertoire, opera, and new music, noted for his “dazzling precision and grace” (San Francisco Chronicle), “intelligence, elegance, and passion” (Opera News), “ferocious and focused” (The New York Times) performances, and “breathtaking and inspired programming” (Shepherd Express). He dedicates his work to collaborating with artists and communities to inspire creativity, empathy, and joy.
Bloom has guest conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Washington National Opera, American Composers Orchestra, Opera Omaha, Central City Opera, Tri-Cities Opera, Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Crossing, Ensemble Connect, and Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and worked with soloists Dashon Burton, David Byrne, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Helga Davis, Nathalie Joachim, Kronos Quartet, Isabel Leonard, Courtney Love, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Hila Plitmann, Dawn Upshaw, Andrew Yee, and many more. He has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Kennedy Center, Park Avenue Armory, and Big Ears Festival. He conducted the opening of Lincoln Center’s 2024 Summer for the City festival with a program of operatic standards and original songs with drag artists Sapphira Cristál, Monét X Change, and Thorgy Thor.
Acclaimed Israeli American pianist Daniel Gortler has delighted audiences and critics alike with his performances around the world, receiving praise for his technical mastery and musical ingenuity.Gortler has performed with major orchestras such as the Berlin and Bavarian radio symphony,London Philharmonic, San Francisco, New World, and Atlanta, Symphony ,as well as all Israeli orchestras including the Israel Philharmonic.Highlights including recitals at Wigmore Hall in London, Mogador Theatre in Paris, tours in South Africa, Brazil, South Korea.In the U.S he’s held recitals at the Museum of Art in Cleveland, Lincoln Center Metropolitan Museum and 92Y. Gortler has collaborated with esteemed conductors including Mehta, Tilson Thomas, Eschenbach, Gergiev, Levi, Welzer-Most, Frantz, Sheriff, Ettinger and Kabaretti. He has appeared in many festivals and in a video of Mark Neikrug’s Through Roses, collaborating with Pinchas Zukerman. An avid chamber music performer, Gortler has worked with artists such as Bo Skovhus, Nikolaj Znaider, David Garrett, Giora Schmidt, Steven Isserlis, Gortler is a guest soloist with the Jupiter, Catalyst, and Shanghai Quartets. Following his Celebrated Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert albums, Gortler's new album - Grieg's Lyric Pieces - released in 2024 with Prospero Classical was highly praised, and won the prestige Choc de Classica award.Continuing to explore unusual and under-represented repertoire, Gortler will record a unique selection of Nocturnes for Prospero Classical in 2026.
Kevin Newbury
Director
David Bloom
Conductor
Daniel Gortler
Pianist
cast
Soprano Sarah Moulton Faux finds forgotten music and brings it back to life. Lauded for her "full, silvery soprano" (Opera News), "luminous voice" (Textura), and "mesmerizing" performances (Brooklyn Spectator), she has appeared at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall, and is a frequent guest with orchestras and opera companies.
Moulton Faux's work extends beyond the stage into the archive. Her album YULIYA (Azica Records) presents the first modern recordings of Julia Weissberg Rimsky-Korsakov's songs—compositions silent for over a century after the Jewish composer's death during the Nazi siege of Leningrad. She uncovered the forgotten scores at the Russian State Library in Moscow, then recorded them with pianist Konstantin Soukhovetski and seven-time Grammy® winner Judith Sherman. Textura noted that the duo "prove to be equally effective whether they're delivering lyrical reveries, entrancing fairy tales, or aching laments."
This pattern—discovery, scholarship, performance—defines Moulton Faux's artistic identity. Her debut album, Where Should This Music Be? Songs of Lola Williams (New World Records), also produced by Sherman, earned her the American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award. Fanfare Magazine declared: "Sarah Moulton Faux is stunning: her devotion to this music shines through every syllable…a glorious disc." She co-edited Williams's handwritten manuscripts and created modern editions through Classical Vocal Reprints, opening the repertoire to other performers.
Beyond performance, Moulton Faux shapes the future of American opera. As Co-President of the Board of Directors of American Opera Projects—the nation's leading opera development company—she earned an Opera America National Trustee Recognition Award. A graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies (magna cum laude with departmental honors), she holds a Master of Music in Voice Performance & Pedagogy from Westminster Choir College, graduating with honors.
Mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert has established herself as one of the preeminent interpreters of some of the brightest stars of new classical music. A true singing actress, she has received critical acclaim for her interpretations of both new and traditional repertoire in opera, concert, and chamber works. Ms. Gaissert’s solo debut album titled “HOME”, which consisted of 7 world premiere works, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Classical charts and received great acclaim from Opera News, The New Yorker, and the London Financial Times among others.
In the 2025-26 season, Ms. Gaissert will be creating the role of the Margravine in the world premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s opera Hildegarde with Los Angeles Opera and the Prototype Festival NYC, as well as recording her second solo album, and performing and recording Laura Kaminsky’s new opera Time to Act with Boston Conservatory and National Sawdust in NYC.
Previous engagements include world premieres by John Adams, Laura Kaminsky, Mikael Karlsson, Ricky Ian Gordon, David Little, Kamala Sankaram, Marc Neikrug, Rene Orth and many more. Other engagements include: Carmen, Sally in The Hours, Margret in Wozzeck, Mere Jeanne, Mother Marie and Old Prioress in Dialogues of the Carmelites, Hansel, Siegrune in Die Walkure, Lucretia in Rape of Lucretia, Maddalena in Rigoletto, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, soloist in the Verdi Requiem, Berio Folk Songs, Mozart Requiem. Companies include the Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, Dallas Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, San Diego Opera, Prototype Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Lyrique en Mer, Tulsa Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Sarasota Opera, and Opera Saratoga.
Brian Jeffers is a New York City based performer praised for his “flexible and heroic tenor” (Opera News) and “mix of comic boldness and fine voice.” (Arts Knoxville). He recently made his Off-Broadway debut in Lincoln Center Theater (in association with the Met Opera)’s Amahl and the Night Visitors (Ensemble/King Kaspar u/s). Recent engagements include The Rake’s Progress (Sellem) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (Mole) with Opera Omaha, Cendrillon (Count Barigoule) with Knoxville Opera, and Sweeney Todd (Beadle Bamford) with Chautauqua Opera. In 2023 he made his solo recital debut with Songs of a Lark (Vesper Concerts Omaha). This fall, he will perform the World Premiere of Joshua Daniel Nicols and James Harrigan’s Jefferson Lives! with Teatro Grattacielo at The Flea Theater.
Active in choral and popular repertoire, he is a member of the New York Philharmonic Chorus (Done Made My Vow, Mozart’s Mass in C, Maestro, Mahler 2) and has performed as a backing vocalist for Kristin Chenoweth with the Phoenix Symphony. He has performed solos for Messiah, To Be Certain of a Dawn, Das Lied von der Erde, Considering Matthew Shepard, Mozart’s Requiem and Vesperae solennes de confessore, Haydn’s The Creation, and Honegger’s King David.
He appears in the 2025 Oscar Hermanus film The History of Sound and in 2023, as part of the Gloria choir, performed the US debut of the title track “Gloria”, with Sam Smith and Sharon Stone on Saturday Night Live. He holds his Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln and Masters of Music in Music Theatre-Opera from Arizona State University. He is a young artist alum of Chautauqua Opera, Opera Saratoga, Aspen Opera Theatre, and the Broadway Dreams Foundation. He is represented by Insignia Artists Management and makes his BAM debut with The Post Office.
Sarah Moulton Faux
Anna
Blythe Gaissert
Emily
Brian Jeffers
Frank
With two decades of distinguished experience as a performer, educator, writer, and passionate LGBTQ+ activist, American baritone Michael Kelly has carved out a remarkable and multifaceted artistic career. His performances have captivated audiences worldwide, earning him accolades as a “mesmerizing” and “vocally splendid” artist. Michael has graced the stages of renowned international opera and orchestral companies, showcasing a diverse repertoire that spans numerous styles and historical periods. Notable venues that have hosted his artistry include Carnegie Hall, Geffen Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, and prestigious festivals such as Santa Fe Opera and Theatre du Châtelet, as well as partnerships with symphony orchestras across the United States. His contributions to the music world are further highlighted by his appearances on nine commercially released recordings.
Named one of the world’s 100 Most Creative Visionaries in Experiential Art by the XLIST, David Adam Moore is a Grammy-nominated baritone, director, and immersive media artist with a prolific international career. He performs leading roles with major institutions including the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Carnegie Hall, and the Salzburg Festival. His repertoire spans over 65 principal roles, with acclaimed performances as Don Giovanni, Dead Man Walking, Eugene Onegin, Billy Budd, Stanley Kowalski, Prior Walter, and in works such as Winterreise and Carmina Burana.
An advocate of contemporary music, Moore has created roles for composers including Thomas Adès, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Peter Eötvös, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and David T. Little. Recent highlights include his return to the Metropolitan Opera as Horatio in Brett Dean’s Hamlet, the world premiere of Snider’s Hildegard at L.A. Opera and Prototype Festival, his Covent Garden debut as Col. Gomez in Adès’s The Exterminating Angel—a role he originated at the Salzburg Festival and reprised at the Metropolitan Opera—the international premiere of his multimedia Winterreise at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, with pianist Daniel Gortler, and the title role in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking for Hungarian State Opera, featuring scenic design based on Moore's photography.
Moore’s work in immersive performance, installation art, stage direction, and design has been has been featured in Lighting and Sound America, and presented by organizations including the Guggenheim, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Diego Opera, .NO Gallery NYC, and National Sawdust. In partnership with director/designer Vita Tzykun, he co-leads the NYC-based transdisciplinary collective GLMMR. Together, they will direct and design a new production of Rossini’s William Tell to open Boston Lyric Opera’s 50th anniversary season. Moore teaches courses in Transdisciplinary Storytelling and Voice at the National Theater Institute and has served twice as Granada Artist-in-Residence and Visiting Professor at University of California, Davis.
Baritone Markel Reed “brings great articulate power and style” (Broadway World) to concert, recital and opera performances throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. A passionate conveyor of the operatic repertoire, Reed has been cited for “delighting the crowd with his musical and dramatic expression” (Upstage Post) in both standard and contemporary repertoire. At the Metropolitan Opera, Reed performed with the ensemble in productions of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones and sang in their 2019 GRAMMY®Award-winning production of Porgy and Bess. That same year, he created the role of Chester in Fire Shut Up in My Bones in its premiere at Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
The 2025-26 season features Mr. Reed in the roles of Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus with Washington Opera Society, Marcello in La Bohème with Portland Opera,his return to the role of James Baldwin in Sneed’s The Tongue & The Lash with Opera Theater of Saint Louis, a premiere with American Opera Projects as Ben in Kaminsky’s The Post Office, and Thomas Eugene Mckeller in Damien Geter’s American Apollo with West Edge Opera.
Last season, Reed performed the roles of Masetto in Opera Omaha’s Don Giovanni, a guest performance of Henry “Box” Brown in Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road with UK Opera Theatre, Jigger Craigin in Boston Lyric Opera’s Carousel; and Yusef Salaam in Anthony Davis’ The Central Park Five with Detroit Opera. The previous season, he made his European debut as Joey in The Time of Our Singing with Theater St. Gallen in Switzerland
Opera Today deemed Reed “a physical dynamo and a vocal delight” for his portrayal of Parson Alltalk in Joplin’s Treemonisha at OTSL, and the Boston Globe said he “sang with magnetic swagger as the fighter in his prime” as Young Emile in Champion with Boston Lyric Opera.
Michael Kelly
Benjamin Franklin
David Adam Moore
Benjamin Franklin
Markel Reed
Ben
DESIGNERS
Phillip Franck is an accomplished lighting designer with over 175 professional and academic productions to his credit. For 26 years Phillip was based in Nashville, Tennessee, where he worked extensively with Nashville Repertory Theatre. NRT credits include Our Town, Indecent, The Cake, Clybourne Park, Shakespeare in Love, Sense and Sensibility, and A Raisin in the Sun. Phillip has also designed for American Stage in St. Petersburg, Florida where his credits include Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Bad Jews, The Pitmen Painters, and Red. Other recent credits include As You Like It, Much Ado about Nothing, Cymbeline, Gem of the Ocean, and Julius Caesar for Nashville Shakespeare Festival.
Phillip was a member of the Theatre faculty at Vanderbilt University from 1999-2025, serving as the resident set, lighting, and sound designer. Phillip holds an MFA from Northwestern University and a BA from The University of Puget Sound.
An avid nature and landscape photographer, Phillip uses photography to inform his work as a theatrical designer as he explores light, color, and texture. Phillip is a member of the professional design union, United Scenic Artists, Local 829. Phillip recently relocated to Vermont where he is the Director of Production and Technical Education at Spruce Peak Arts in Stowe.
Alex Knezo is an Associate Designer for the Post Office. He joined Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) in 2016, where he has been instrumental to many of the studio's significant public projects including the High Line in New York City and Nuevo Azca, a new park in the center of Madrid. In parallel, he is also a central member of DS+R's independent projects team, contributing to numerous performing and visual arts projects such as: the Mile-Long Opera, a performance work featuring 1,000 singers distributed along the High Line; Deep Blue Sea, a dance work choreographed by Bill T Jones that premiered at the Park Avenue Armory; Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, heralded as one of the most visited exhibitions in the history of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Cartier, Islamic Inspiration and Modern Design, which premiered at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris before traveling to the Dallas Art Museum and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
Prior to DS+R, Alex worked at Shigeru Ban Architects, and Steven Holl Architects, and with Christo and Jeanne-Claude to install The Gates in Central Park. His own design work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo Designers Week, and the University of Texas, Austin. Alex holds a BSE in Civil Engineering with Architectural Focus from Princeton University
Amanda Roberge is a New York-based costume designer for theater, opera, and film. She finds great joy in infusing her work with inspiration from nature and is deeply passionate about sustainable design. Amanda thrives on the collaborative process, creating a shared visual language alongside fellow artists and working closely with actors to craft characters and transform the human body through costume.
She holds an MFA in Design for Stage and Film from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and a BFA from NYU Tisch, where she studied at the Experimental Theatre Wing. Her work has been seen at The Public Theater, HERE Arts, The Brick, Dixon Place, The Tank, and numerous other Off and Off-Off Broadway venues. Regionally, she has designed for The Alley Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Berkshire Theatre Group, and more.
Zack Lobel is a lighting and video designer working across theater, museums, and live performance. His work has been seen at the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Alice Tully Hall, The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and Webster Hall. He is the lighting director for Omari Wiles’ Bessie Award–winning dance company and has served as an associate on productions at Roundabout Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Theater for a New Audience, and PlayMakers Repertory Company. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and a proud member of USA 829, IATSE.
Alex Knezo
Associate Designer
Phillip Franck
Lighting Designer
Zack Lobel
Associate Projection Designer
Amanda Roberge
Costume Designer
Audio Excerpt from THE POST OFFICE workshop with Cincinatti Opera, March 22, 2025:
THE POST OFFICE, Scene 3 excerpt, Emily sings directly to Benjamin Franklin (ghost):
"Words mattered to you.
Decency mattered.
Honesty and humor mattered.
You believed in the common good.
You changed the word,
“sacred,”
to be “self evident,”
as in: We hold these truths,
these truths…. to be
self-evident.
To hold anything “sacred” is
the language of gods, and kings,
of despots (you said),
Not the law.
Here is your legacy
your post office––
your mess."
Information
Duration 70' / no intermission
Commission Queen City Opera. March 2025 workshop by Opera Fusion: New Works, Cincinnati
Premiere AOP Production Premiere run at Spruce Peak Arts (May 7, 2026); Brooklyn Academy of Music (May 16-21, 2026)
Roles 5 singers (1 soprano, 1 mezzo-soprano, 1 tenor, 1 baritone, 1 bass-baritone)
Instrumentation Piano