AMPHION FOUNDATION WORK SAMPLES

While Service Organizations are not required to submit work samples as part of their application, we have uploaded three samples relevant to the Composer Librettist Development Program in the event that the Trustees of the Foundation wish to review work by artists supported by ALT in the current season.

FOURTH WAVE BEAUTY QUEENS (Tagg/Barati)

The audio sample above is the final trio from FOURTH WAVE BEAUTY QUEENS, an opera being developed by composer Kathleen Tagg and librettist Laura Barati under the auspice of the CLDP. A 30 minute version of this opera was workshopped in June of 2025. The writers are expanding this work into a 75-minute one act opera, which ALT will workshop and showcase in public performance in April 2027.

Featured artists: Jennifer Zetlan, soprano; Nicole Keeling, soprano; Olivia Vote, mezzo soprano
Kelly Kuo, conductor
Jason Wirth, pianist

FOURTH WAVE BEAUTY QUEENS delves into the relationship between Délia, a feminist academic researching extreme beauty treatments, and her mother, Flora. When Délia receives rare prototypes of the latest, miracle anti-aging and weight loss treatments as a gift, she and Flora are forced to face their ultimate temptations. A darkly comedic mother-daughter story, FOURTH WAVE BEAUTY QUEENS explores the competing desires and gordian knot of living within the female gaze.

The following two videos are from Orchestral Workshops held by American Lyric Theater of two recent commissions, both of which are in the final stages of development in advance of their world premieres: WORKING FOR THE MACBETHS, by Johanny Navarro and Marcus Yi; and TEVYE’S DAUGHTERS, by Alex Weiser and Stephanie Fleischmann.

TEVYE’S DAUGHTERS (Weiser/Fleischman)

This video is from ALT’s 2026 orchestral workshop and concert of TEVYE’S DAUGHTERS. The link is cued to be viewed from 8’38” - the introduction of Tevye and Golde, which leads into an ensemble with Sprintse, Beylke and Tsytle.

CAST:
Tevye: Gideon Dabi
Golde: Mary-Hollis Hundley
Rose / Shprintse: Elizabeth Sutphen
Tseytl: Jennifer Zetlan
Beylke: Gina Perregrino
Khave: Heather Johnson
Arontshik: Hayden Smith

Conductor: Geoffrey Andrew McDonald
American Lyric Theater Chamber Orchestra

Inspired by the darker, grittier stories by Sholem Aleichem not included in Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye’s Daughters centers on the tale of the beloved milkman’s younger daughter Shprintse, who falls in love with a young man above her station. Like so many women of her generation, Shprintse has no choice but to navigate her crisis with silence. Galvanized by the literature of little-known female Yiddish writers, as well as tkhines - Yiddish prayers designated expressly for women - Tevye’s Daughters rewrites that silence, giving voice to a generation of women whose stories have frequently been suppressed, omitted, even erased. The opera moves between a shtetl in Ukraine in 1907 and a summer cabin in the Catskills in 1964 as Tseytl, Khave, and Beylke, now old women, haunted by a vestigial memory submerged for more than half a century, can no longer look away from the past. The arrival of Rose, a granddaughter grappling with her own sexual identity, incites the sisters not only to remember Shprintse’s traumatic story, but to come to terms with their shared tumultuous present.

WORKING FOR THE MACBETHS (NAVARRO/YI)

This video is from ALT’s 2024 orchestral workshop and concert of WORKING FOR THE MACBETHS by Johanny Navarro and Marcus Yi. The comic opera will receive its world premiere production in partnership with Pittsburgh Opera in February 2027. This scene marks Macbeth’s entrance, as he and Lady Macbeth begin plotting King Duncan’s demise.

FEATURED:
Lady Macbeth: Meghan Kasanders
Macbeth: Ethan Vincent

Conductor: Kelly Kuo
American Lyric Theater Chamber Orchestra

Shakespeare meets Monty Python in WORKING FOR THE MACBETHS, a riotous look behind the tragedy we think we all know. After three witches prophesize the downfall of Macbeth, Florinda - Lady Macbeth’s Lady-in-Waiting - is determined to fight fate and give the Macbeths the happy ending they deserve. Can destiny be changed, or is the play doomed to repeat itself?