Staff

Andrew M. Kurtz

General & Artistic Director

Andrew M. Kurtz is founder of the Center City Opera Theater, a professional opera company, which is now a resident company at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia.   The company has performed in the Perelman Theater in the Kimmel Center and multiple other Philadelphia venues during its history.  Kurtz has led over forty productions including multiple world and regional premieres.  Productions include of Don Pasquale, Lucia di Lammermoor, L’Elisir d’amore, Eugene Onegin, Werther, Il Barbiere di siviglia, Suor Angelica, La Boheme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, I Pagliacci, Il Trovatore, Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, Magic Flute, Hansel & Gretel, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Of Mice & Men and Little Women, Cosi fan tutte, Amahl & the Night Visitors, Pirates of Penzance, La Traviata  and Rigoletto. Maestro Kurtz received international praise and recognition for leading the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (chamber orchestra version).  Kurtz’s conducting has been called “passionate, expansive, expert, and musical.” Kurtz’s repertoire encompasses a wide range of music styles from baroque to contemporary, and multiple genres including opera, symphonic, ballet, musical theater, jazz, cantorial, and symphonic pops.

Kurtz enters his seventeenth season as Music Director and Conductor of the Gulf Coast Symphony in Fort Myers, Florida, considered one of the country’s leading community orchestras. His creative and diverse concerts has received accolades throughout the community and for his effort Kurtz was awarded the 2007 Performing Artist of the Year at the Lee County Angel of the Arts awards ceremony. Kurtz currently serves as the Past-President of the Board of the Lee County Alliance for the Arts. A specialist in Jewish and cantorial music, Kurtz served as the Music Director of the Florida Jewish Philharmonic Orchestra and is the international tour conductor for CANTORS: A Faith In Song, featuring three of the world’s leading cantors: Alberto Mizrahi, Naftali Herstik and Benzion Miller. He was Producing Artistic Director of Synergy Productions, a professional musical theater company in Southwest Florida. Kurtz served on the Board of the Conductors Guild, and was editor of their quarterly newsletter, Podium Notes. An avid arts educator, Maestro Kurtz was Resident Music Director at the Luzerne Music Center, where he led the student orchestras and taught conducting and composition.

Kurtz was a regular guest conductor of the Charlotte Symphony. Kurtz’s previous season saw debuts with the Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra and the International Master Musicians Orchestra. In 2004 Kurtz made his New York City conducting debut with the Metropolitan Repertory Ballet in a Jazz Ballet, “Sinatra & Swing” at the TRIBECA Performing Arts Center.  Maestro Kurtz was music director as well as stage director for multiple performances of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change; They’re Playing Our Song; Marry Me A Little and Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years with Synergy Productions.  In 1995 Kurtz made his international operatic conducting debut in Tel Aviv while working as staff conductor at the Israel Vocal Arts Institute. In April 1997 he conducted the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s Opera Educational tour production of The Best of Puccini. A scholarship conducting student at the prestigious Aspen Music Festival in 1997, Kurtz conducted four concerts, including a concert version of Puccini’s La Bohème. Highlights of the various conducting posts to his credit include work with the Metropolitan Opera Guild, The Pennsylvania Opera Theater, The Pennsylvania Ballet, the Ash Lawn-Highland Opera Festival and the Ocean City Pops.  Kurtz completed his Doctoral studies in conducting at the Peabody Conservatory and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia where he received his Master’s degree in Music History and a Bachelor of Arts in music and drama.

• (215) 238-1555
• akurtz@operatheater.org

Albert Innaurato

Artistic Director of Creative Development Projects.

Albert Innaurato was born in Philadelphia and attended Central High School and the Philadelphia Musical Academy. He received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts where he studied music and theater and then received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. As a playwright he received the Guggenheim Grant, the Rockefeller Grant and three National Endowment of the Arts Grants. Two of his plays, The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie and Gemini opened off-Broadway the same week, winning Innaurato acclaim and two Obies. Gemini moved to Broadway where it became one of the longest running non-musical plays in Broadway history (1819 performances). His play Passione also played on Broadway where it was directed by Frank Langella and starred Jerry Stiller. He has worked for TV, winning an Emmy for Verna the USO Girl, which starred Sissy Spacek and Bill Hurt. In the 1990’s, also he wrote for Molly Dodd and contributed many half hours to a more adventurous PBS, including a controversial and highly praised comedy called Death and Taxes, starring Sally Kellerman. Innaurato has had a second career as an arts journalist, with articles appearing in Opera News,The New York Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, New York, Gramophone, BBC Music and Opernwelt. He has written and narrated, as well as playing the piano, on 17 CDs/cassettes from the Metropolitan Opera Guild. He appeared often on the Metropolitan Opera Broadcast Intermission feature as a member of the popular Opera Quiz. He taught playwriting at Columbia University, Princeton, Yale and Rutgers. In 2005 he returned to Philadelphia at the invitation of Marjorie Samoff to be in residence at the Prince Music Theater. While there, he functioned as writer, co-producer and developer of projects given at the theater. These include a musical-theater piece based on Einstein’s Dreams (in collaboration with the acclaimed directer, Whit MacLaughlin, produced at CUNY, NY, and other theaters), a musical based on his play, Gemini, directed by the esteemed Doug Wager, and work with gifted composers, such as Paul Scott Goodman and Zack Manna. He acted there, and also co-produced the first complete presentation of Dreamgirls since its Broadway run, working closely with the composer, Henry Krieger. He also was a co-producer of Annie Get your Gun, Bright Lights, Big City, Casino Paradise by Bill Bolcom, the book for which he had worked on when it was new, and other, newer works. With Center City Opera, Innaurato directed the world premiere of Paul’s Case by Gregory Spears in 2008/09, the American Premiere of The Shops by Edward Rushton and Dagny Gioulami, in a site specific production at the Comcast Center in 2009/10 and will direct Three Decembers by Jake Heggae in 2012, as well as non traditional productions of Don Pasquale (2011), Eugene Onegin, L’elisir d’amore (later given in the Italian Market), The Magic Flute (as Star Wars with an army of children) and familiar iterations of Aida, Rigoletto, Un ballo in maschera and Werther. He has worked on the development of new operas such as Love/Hate by Rob Bailis and Jake Perla, Slaying the Dragon with the composer, Michael Ching, and Maren of Vardo, with composer, Jeff Myers, With the young singers of the company he works on acting and interpretive technique. He and Mo. Kurtz have founded a group for the creation of new work, which will start in January, 2012, called The New Camerata.

• (215) 238-1555
• albert@operatheater.org

Ellen Frankel

Managing Director

Dr. Ellen Frankel served for eighteen years as the Editor in Chief and CEO of The Jewish Publication Society, the oldest and only nondenominational, non-profit publisher of Jewish works in English, and was named its first Editor Emerita upon her retirement in 2009. She is the author of nine published books, including The Classic Tales, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols, The Five Books of Miriam, and The JPS Illustrated Children’s Bible, which won the 2009 National Jewish Book Award. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton.

For the past ten years, Frankel has been writing libretti, working with Philadelphia composer Andrea Clearfield. In May 2000, the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony premiered Clearfield’s cantata, Women of Valor, which included two pieces by Frankel, “Sarah” and “Hannah.” In 2005, Philadelphia’s prestigious Mendelssohn Club Choir commissioned Ms. Clearfield to write a new oratorio; Frankel wrote the libretto. The resulting work, “The Golem Psalms,” inspired by the ancient Jewish legend of the Golem, premiered at the University of Pennsylvania in May 2006, performed by the Mendelssohn Club and the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, with Sanford Sylvan as baritone soloist. Since its premiere, the oratorio has also been performed at Haverford College by the Bryn Mawr/Haverford Choir and Orchestra (April 2007); Indiana University, performed by the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and the Conductor’s Orchestra, under conductor John Leonard, with Kenneth Pereira as baritone soloist (February 2009); and at Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Center, performed by the Temple University Symphony Orchestra and Combined Choirs, conducted by Alan Harler, with Sanford Sylvan again as baritone soloist (March 2010). CCOT recently commissioned Frankel to write the libretto for another new opera, Slaying the Dragon, a two-act work inspired by actual events that took place in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the early 1990’s. In this true story, Larry Trapp, Grand Dragon of the Nebraska Ku Klux Klan, renounced a lifetime of hatred and violence after being befriended by a Jewish cantor and his wife.  The opera will be premiered in Philadelphia in June 2012.

• (215) 266 6435
• efrankel@operatheater.org

Joy Kurtz

Education Director

Joy Kurtz was a teacher and administrator, K-12, in Philadelphia and its suburbs for more than 32 years. As a teacher of English, communications and reading, she was involved with developing the middle school gifted curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia. She was Curriculum Consultant for In Every Way the Arts, the education program of The Pennsylvania Opera Theater. She also served on the education curriculum development committee for productions at the Annenberg Theater. As International Spontaneous Problem Captain for Odyssey of the Mind, a creative problem- solving program for students in K-college, Joy Kurtz has traveled internationally to train teachers and parents. She has also written several training videotapes for new coaches. She is responsible for coordinating the Odyssey of the Mind, World Finals Spontaneous competition each year, and was Project Director of the Microsoft Mid Tier Grant for Odyssey of the Mind. Joy was selected Pennsylvania Middle School Principal of the Year for 2003. She is Vice-President of Synergy Educational Consultants, and also serves as a consultant/staff developer for American Reading Company, and as an adjunct instructor at the University of Pennsylvania serving as a university mentor for principal intern program.

• (215) 238 1555
• jkurtz@operatheater.org

Eric Brower

Marketing Associate

Eric is a graduate of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, where he received a B.A. in Music and Communications.  Eric was a Marketing/Communications specialist for the Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra before joining CCOT in March 2011.  Eric is a freelance musician and private instructor on double bass, and is Center City Opera Theater's studio bassist for its 2011/2012 mainstage productions.  Eric is devoted to making classical music relevant to younger audiences, believing that appreciation for music fosters life-long education, cultural understanding, and a sense of self-worth.

• (610) 547 3476
• eric@operatheater.org

Emily Knitter

Marketing Assistant

Emily Knitter is a recent graduate of Elizabethtown College with a B.A. in corporate communications and theatre performance. With an avid interest in performing arts marketing, Emily has previously interned at two other nonprofit theaters and is continuing to expand her experience as a Marketing Assistant at Center City Opera Theater. Emily hopes to one day work as a marketing director for a theater company or performing arts venue. She also hopes to continue to pursue acting as well.

• emilyk@operatheater.org

David (Shu-Hao) Hsu

Artistic Administrator & Staff Coach

Born in Taiwan and began studying piano at the age 13. He was a student of Shu-Jong Shan in a special class for talented young musicians at the senior high school in Pingtung City. He continued his education at the Taipei National University of Arts in Taipei City. He received his Postgraduate Diploma in Performance and Master's degree from the Birmingham Conservatoire under the tutelage of Professors Malcolm Wilson and Simon Nicholls. While in the Conservatoire, he gave solo recitals at the Andrian Boult Hall and and various churches in Birmingham. Mr. Hsu also studied with Professors G. Serova and L. Tamoulevich at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia. He has participated in numerous Master-classes with outstanding pianists, such as Andir Diev, Tatiana Pikazan, Carl Urquhart, Marina Maivani, Alexander Sandler, Richard McMahon, Bryce Morrison, Peter Donohoe, and Philip Martine. He won First Prize at the Pingtung City Piano Competition and Diplomas at the National Taiwan Piano Competition. As a chamber musician and accompanist, he collaborated with many outstanding chamber music groups and soloists in Taiwan and in UK. He has also performed in Taiwan, Malaysia, Canada, Russia, USA and United Kingdom. In 2009, he gave the recitals/concerts in Iowa and New York City's Carnegie Hall. In 2010, he was the staff accompanist in the Interlochen International summer Camp. He has also been the accompanist for the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Voice competition. David is currently A.B.D. in the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy with opera/song accompaniment at the University of Iowa. He is the student of Ksenia Nosikova in piano and Shari Rhoads in opera/song accompaniment.

• (215) 238-1555
• david@operatheater.org