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KEVIN NEWBURY,
director
A theater, opera, film, and event director based
in New York, Kevin Newbury has headed up
over 60 original productions. His work has
been presented by many opera companies, fes-
tivals, theaters, and symphonies, including the
Park Avenue Armory, Carnegie Hall, the Ken-
nedy Center, Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu,
San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago,
Houston Grand Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera
Theatre of Saint Louis, Minnesota Opera, Mon-
treal Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Seattle Opera,
Cincinnati Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, the
Prototype Festival, Bard Summerscape, the Vir-
ginia Arts Festival, Wexford Festival, San Fran-
cisco Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra.
Newbury is especially committed to developing
and directing new works, with over two dozen
world-premiere operas and plays to his credit.
Recent highlights include
Fellow Travelers
for
Cincinnati Opera (named one of the best clas-
sical events of 2016 by the
New York Times
),
The
(R)Evolution of Steve Jobs
for Santa Fe Opera,
O
Columbia
for Houston Grand Opera,
The Man-
churian Candidate
and
Doubt
for Minnesota
Opera, and
Bel Canto
for Lyric Opera of Chi-
cago, which was broadcast on PBS’s
Great Per-
formances
as was nominated as Best World Pre-
miere by the 2016 International Opera Awards.
He received the same nomination in 2014 for
Opera Philadelphia’s
Oscar
. Newbury’s produc-
tion of
Virginia
for the Wexford Festival in 2010
won the
Irish Times
Theatre Award for Best New
Opera Production, and his production of Bell-
ini’s
Norma
for the Canadian Opera Company
won three Dora Awards. His work has also been
nominated for a Grammy Award (Bernstein’s
Mass
with Marin Alsop), a Drama Desk Award
(
Candy & Dorothy
; Best Actor for Vince Gat-
ton), and two GLAAD Media Awards (winner:
Candy & Dorothy
; nominated:
Kiss and Cry
).
Newbury has had two short films,
Monsura Is
Waiting
and
Stag
, screened at 40 film festivals,
each winning several awards, and a third
Epiph-
any V
, was released in 2017. Kevin Newbury is
making his Ravinia debut.
LESLIE STIFELMAN,
music supervisor
Leslie Stifelman is the music director and con-
ductor of
Chicago: The Musical
, the longest-run-
ning American musical in Broadway history
and the second-longest-running Broadway
show of all time. She is celebrating her 22nd an-
niversary with the show, having brought such
stars as Chita Rivera, Usher, Cuba Gooding Jr.,
Jennifer Nettles, Patti Labelle, Brandy Norwood,
Mel B, Rita Wilson, George Hamilton, Sofia Ver-
gara, Melanie Griffith, and Brooke Shields to the
stage. Additionally, Stifelman is the executive
producer of the Peabody Award–winning HBO
docu-series
The Music in Me
, a music supervisor
and master teacher for theatrical productions
and online programs for Carnegie Hall’s Weill
Music Institute, a music supervisor for films by
Martin Scorsese and Rita Wilson, and the music
director and creator of
Here Lies Jenny
, written
with Bebe Neuwirth, Roger Rees, and Ann Re-
inking. She is also an active performing artist,
having recorded for the Angel, Nonesuch, BMG,
and EMI labels; conducted the Philadelphia Or-
chestra and Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Seattle
Symphony Orchestras; and played solo piano
with Marin Alsop, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg,
Dawn Upshaw, and the London Symphony Or-
chestra. Through her work with the Weill Music
Institute, Stifelman has designed and contrib-
uted to such educational initiatives as the New
York City–wide
Somewhere Project: West Side
Story
and the first-ever interactive Broadway
show for families,
Take the Stage with Broadway
Stars
, which featured Tony Award winner Jessie
Mueller. This year she and Kevin Newbury and
Melissa Mahon created the Musical Theater Per-
formance Lab for the College of the Performing
Arts at the New School, a collaboration between
Mannes College, The New School for Drama,
and the The New School for Jazz. In addition
to Ravinia’s
Mass
, Stifelman is supervising mu-
sic for Bernstein centennial celebrations by the
Philadelphia Orchestra (
West Side Story
) and
the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
MELISSA MAHON,
choreographer
Melissa Rae Mahon
has spent 20 years per-
forming on Broadway
with credits in five
shows:
Chicago: The
Musical
,
The Producers
,
42nd Street
,
Cats
, and
The Sound of Music
. She
has choreographed for Carnegie Hall, Lincoln
Center, City Center Encores!, Broadway Bares,
24 Hour Musical, NBC’s
Today Show
, and, cur-
rently,
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
. She
now combines her theatrical eye and marketing
expertise to creating large-scale installations as a
senior producer at MAS Event + Design for cli-
ents such as Google, YouTube, Lincoln, Spotify,
and Unilever.
VICTORIA “VITA”
TZYKUN,
scenic designer
A native of Odessa,
Ukraine, and Tel-Aviv,
Israel, Victoria “Vita”
Tzykun
holds an MFA
from
NYU’s
Tisch
School of the Arts, and a BFA from Tel-Aviv
University. Tzykun has designed productions
for such companies as the Norwegian Opera,
LA Opera, Minnesota Opera, and Seattle Opera,
among others. Her numerous film and TV cred-
its include art direction for Lady Gaga’s ABC
Thanksgiving Special and production design for
several award-winning films. Her recent proj-
ects include set design for the world premiere
of Mason Bates’s
The (R)Evolution of Steve Jobs
at Santa Fe Opera, set and costume design for
Faust
at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and costume
design for
The Passenger
at the Bolshoi Theater
in Moscow. Tzykun is a founding member of
GLMMR, a New York–based interdisciplinary
art collective that fuses the worlds of fine art,
audiovisual technology, and live performance.
In 2016, the International Opera Awards nom-
inated her for Best Design.
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