Dr. Amy Stebbins (Cofounder and Chair) is a writer-director specializing in contemporary music-theater. Recent projects include not only operas at institutions such as the Bavarian State Opera and the Deutsche Oper Berlin, but also a silent film with live orchestra, virtual reality experiences, and a performance series featurin incarcerated men. Amy has taught seminars on contemporary opera at the Goethe University Frankfurt, the Ruhr University, and the University of Chicago. She serves on the selection committee of the Academy for Theater and Digital and on the board of the Carl Orff Foundation. Her advocacy for institutional reform in new opera development has taken the form of Transatlantic exchanges, and the creation of New Opera Dialogues together with composer Hauke Berheide in 2018.
Sandra Eberle (Board Member) is a production manager, who has worked in the artistic management (KBB) of the Bavarian State Opera since 2005. During that time she has served as the production manager on over thirty world premieres for the opera house’s summer "Munich Opera Festival", and since 2021 also for the "Ja, Mai Festival" dedicated to early and contemporary music theater. Born in Stuttgart, she studied Musicology, Phonetics and Psychology in Munich. One of her current professional focal points is discovering new ways to open up entrenched institutional processes for inquiry into new work development.
Dr. Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby (Board Member) holds a position as the only dramaturg of the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet. She received her PhD in musicology at the University of Oslo in 2013. Her dissertation, “Salome Ever and Never the Same: (Re)Productions of a Canonized Opera”, discusses opera as a material exemplification of canonicity as process by studying productions of Richard Strauss’s Salome between 1974 and 2011. Before joining the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet in 2013, she was a research fellow at the Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a journalist at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
Dr. Ulrich Kreppein (Board Member). How does reality sound? This question is at the heart of Ulrich Kreppein's musical work. His compositions have been awarded numerous prizes and include operas, orchestra works, and chamber music. Currently he is working on his opera "Caligari", which will premiere in 2025.
Kreppein is a professor of composition at the HfMDK in Frankfurt. Prior to that, he worked as a deputy professor at the HfM Weimar. He studied at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf, at Columbia University, and completed his PhD at Harvard University. His teachers include Manfred Trojahn, Tristan Murail, Julian Anderson, Helmut Lachenmann and Chaya Czernowin.
Hauke Berheide (Cofounder and Honorary Board Member) is a classical composer who specializes in opera. He has won the Rome Prize (German Academy Villa Massimo 2012) and the Munich Opera Festival Prize (2016), among other awards. Hauke has received commissions from the Bavarian State Opera Munich (Mauerschau), among others. Other notable collaborations include those with the Ensemble Modern, the Düsseldorf Symphonic, the Hamburg Philharmonic, and renowned European musicians such as Oksana Lyniv, Axel Kober, Michael Boder, André de Ridder, the Auryn Quartett, and Wenzel Fuchs. Hauke also composes orchestral music.