DON IMBROGLIODON IMBROGLIO

Peter Hilliard is the composer of 10 Operas, 4 musicals, and numerous other works with Matthew Boresi, including The Filthy Habit, a finalist in the National Opera Association chamber opera competition, which has received 12 productions. It was the first opera ever presented in the Chicago Fringe Festival and was the subject of an Emmy nominated public television feature in Minnesota.

Other operas include Circe on Superior, a comic singspiel, Inbox Zero, a monodrama about a man who falls for an internet scam, and Blue Viola, commissioned by Urban Arias in Washington DC and subsequently produced in Duluth Minnesota and at Opera Memphis, and The Last American Hammer, starring Elizabeth Futral. The Last American Hammer was presented at the Opera America New Works Forum in 2019 and received subsequent productions at Pittsburgh Opera, The University of Illinois, and Opera Grand Rapids. Hilliard and Boresi also revamped their comic reduction of the complete Verdi operas, co-commissioned by a consortium of opera companies from across the country. A virtual production presented by Resonance Works Pittsburgh won a 2022 Opera America award for Digital Excellence in Opera (Education/Enrichment Material) . During the pandemic of 2020, Hilliard and Boresi conceived a consortium of 9 opera companies to commission 9 short operas in the manner of Boccaccio’s Decameron. The resulting project; The Decameron Opera Coalition became one of the most ambitious new opera projects in the history of opera in the US, and a model for virtual opera in a changing world. Peter is also the recipient of the 2020 Hoefer Prize at the San Francisco Conservatory.

Peter has received numerous commissions for Orchestra, Chorus, Concert Band, and Piano, and his work has been performed by the Orchestra of St. Olaf College, The Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, The San Francisco Girl’s Chorus, The Anna Crusis Women's Chorale, the Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus, VocalEssence, The Abington Symphony, The Young New Yorker's Chorus, VoxMusica Sacramento, The Ocean City Pops, The Temple University Women's Choir, The Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, opera luminaries like Luca Pisaroni, Karen Slack, Jennifer Aylmer, Elizabeth Futral and Caroline Worra, and Broadway stars Christiane Noll and Marla Schaffel.

Peter is an active conductor, pianist, and educator in the Philadelphia area. With Glen Clugston, Hilliard built a new performing score and parts for Victor Herbert’s opera Natoma from the original materials housed at the library of congress, allowing Herbert’s most ambitious score to be heard for the first time in a century. He is an Assistant Professor at Villanova University where he directs the music in the graduate theatre department and teaches the core classes in the undergraduate music minor. He conducts a 90 voice community chorus that performs choral masterworks and popular music, and he is the Music Director for the Savoy Company, the oldest Gilbert and Sullivan company in the world. He has conducted The Grand Duke, Iolanthe and The Pirates of Penzance at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in the UK. In 2024 he was named Best Music Director of the festival.

Peter Hilliard studied with Ellen Southard and Richard Allen Fiske in his teens, and then with English baritone John Shirley Quirk at the Peabody Conservatory. He holds a Bachelor of Music Degree in Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory, where he studied with David Conte and a Master’s Degree in Musical Theatre Writing from New York University, where he studied with Mel Marvin and Phillip Johnston.

Matt Boresi serves as Director of Special Initiatives at the Music Institute of Chicago, overseeing initiatives such as our One Composer One Community Initiative and the Martin Luther King Community Celebration. Matt has previously overseen our classroom outreach and musical theatre programs. His teaching and directing experience includes music theatre at the University of Chicago Laboratory School, Lake Forest Academy, Carthage College, North Central College, and Northwestern University. Matt is an award-winning opera librettist whose work has been produced at such institutions as Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Memphis, Charlottesville Opera, Carnegie Mellon University, and Lyric Theatre @ Illinois. Matt lives in Evanston with his wife, NU voice professor Melissa Foster, and their daughter, actress Viva Boresi.

Education

Master of Fine Arts Degree in Musical Theatre Writing, New York University
Bachelor's Degree in Theatre performance, North Central College

Additional Studies / Recent Awards / Recordings

Teaching philosophy and areas of expertise:

Matt is a firm believer that Musical Theatre is a cultural cornerstone of our country, firmly rooted in the American spirit and experience, and that all forms of lyric theatre, from Opera to Broadway, represent a glorious intersection of the arts. There some of humanities most enduring myths, stories, and characters can be brought to life in a manner that only music, drama, and dance can provide.
Matt's personal favorite interest is seeing a performer, young or old, create a new role on stage — using the grand theatrical tradition to tell new stories to a world longing to better understand itself.

Jenny Lord, who studied at Yale, has directed Juilliard productions of Measure for Measure, All My Sons, and As You Like It. Her other directing credits include Of Mice and Men at the Serenbe Playhouse (which received Suzi Bass nominations for best play, best ensemble, and best director), Shakespeare Theatre’s Free-for-All productions of Much Ado About Nothing and All’s Well That Ends Well; A Christmas Carol at the Dallas Theater Center; Bee-luther-hatchee at the New Century Theatre; By Jupiter at the 42nd Street Moon; and several operas. She directed King Lear at the University of Texas, El Paso; The Cherry Orchard and Angels in America: Perestroika at New York University/Stella Adler Conservatory; and Street Scene at San Francisco State University. She has assisted many distinguished directors including Michael Kahn, Christopher Bayes, Mary Zimmerman, Daniel Fish, and Rebecca Taichman. She was the associate director for the Broadway productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III, featuring Mark Rylance and directed by Tim Carroll.

Steven McGhee is a collaborative pianist and educator who earned a Grammy nomination in 2021 for his work on the song recital album A Lad's Love. He is well known in the Detroit, Michigan, area as a collaborative pianist, educator, and conductor.

McGhee was born in Coventryville, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, on September 28, 1977. As an undergraduate, he attended nearby West Chester University of Pennsylvania, earning a music degree. He went on for master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Michigan, studying collaborative piano with renowned vocal accompanist Martin Katz. McGhee received his DMA degree in 2013. He held teaching positions at the University of Michigan, Long Island University, and New York University before joining the faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit in 2019. Outside the academy, he has been active around the Detroit area in a variety of capacities. He is the artistic director and principal conductor of Opera MODO, a Detroit opera company (founded in 2011 in Princeton, New Jersey) that seeks to bring opportunities to young and emerging artists. He joined the company in 2014 and has since led the creative team for 13 productions, including Mozart's Così fan tutte, Britten's Albert Herring, and Bizet's Carmen. With soprano Leann Schuering, he created The Art Song Doctors, which focuses on education and performance. The duo seeks to bring art song to new audiences and to assist younger singers in exploring song repertory. McGhee has given or participated in recitals at the Yale Institute for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California, and the Casement Fund Song Series in New York, among other venues.

McGhee made his recording debut in 2020 on the Naxos label, accompanying tenor and University of Michigan classmate Brian Giebler on the song recital A Lad's Love. That recording earned a 2021 Grammy Award nomination for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

Lee is a Brooklyn based scenic designer working in theater, opera, tv and film.

Broadway: The Lightning Thief (Longacre Theatre). Additional New York City credits include: Natural Shocks and Collapse (Woman’s Project), Surely Goodness and Mercy (Keen Company), Somebody's Daughter (Second Stage), Twelfth Night, X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation and Julius Caesar (The Acting Company), The Lightning Thief (Lortel), Imagining the Imaginary Invalid (Mabou Mines), Satchmo at the Waldorf (Westside), Muscles in our Toes, Sunset Baby and Thinner Than Water (Labyrinth), New Golden Age and Rx (Primary Stages), All-American (LCT3), The Dream of the Burning Boy and Ordinary Days (Roundabout Underground), Jack's Precious Moment (P73), Oohrah! (Atlantic), The Bereaved (Partial Comfort), The Seagull (NAATCO), punkplay (Clubbed Thumb), End Days (EST), Go-Go Kitty Go! (NY Fringe Festival), West Moon Street (Prospect Theater Company), The Private Lives of Eskimos and I Heart Kant (Committee Theater Company), and Harvest (La Mama).

Regional credits include productions at: American Conservatory Theatre, Alliance, Asolo Rep, Baltimore Centerstage, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Chautauqua Theater Company, Cleveland Play House, Dallas Theater Center, Delaware Theatre Company, Dorset Theatre Festival, Glimmerglass Festival, Goodman, Guthrie, Huntington, Kansas City Rep, Long Wharf, Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, Merrimack Rep, Old Globe, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Signature Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, PlayMakers Rep, Trinity Rep, Two River Theater, Washington National Opera, Weston Playhouse, Wilma and Yale Rep.

Lee is the recipient of the Helen Hayes Award (Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream (nom), Richard III (nom), NAACP Award (Satchmo at the Waldorf), Connecticut Critics Circle Award (The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow), and has received nominations for the Irish Times Theatre Award (A Streetcar Named Desire) and the Suzi Bass Award (Smart Cookie).

Lee is a founding member of Wingspace Theatrical Design. He holds a Master of Fine Arts (Yale School of Drama), a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Rhode Island School of Design), and is the Head of Scenic Design at Rutgers, Mason Gross School of the Arts.

Camille Assaf is a French and American costume designer for theater, dance, opera and film.

She most recently designed costumes for the Nine Jeweled Deer an opera by Sivan Eldar and Ganavya Doraiswamy, with art by Julie Mehretu, directed by Peter Sellars at the Festival d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence (2025), and One morning turns into an Eternity, also directed by Peter Sellars at the Salzburg Festival (2025). Other collaboration with director Peter Sellars: Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater for the Teatro dell Opera di Roma and San Francisco Symphony, Castor et Pollux and Beatrice di Tenda for the Opéra National de Paris, Charpentier's Médée for the Berlin Staatsoper under den Linden, and Le Roman de Fauvel at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

She has collaborated as costume designer on director Silvia Costa's Macbeth, at the Comédie Française, and her upcoming production of I didn't know / Curlew River, at the Opéra National de Loraine.

Camille is also a frequent collaborator of choreographer Benjamin Millepied, for whom she designed Romeo and Juliet Suite, at the Seine Musicale, Unstill Life at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, On the other side, at the Teatro dell Opera di Roma*, and the Nico Muhly / Benjamin Millepied retrospective, danced by the LA DanceProject at the Philharmonie de Paris. More recently (2025), she designed Koyaanisqatsi under the impulse of Benjamin Millepied : a collective dance piece performed outdoors all around Paris with contributions by choreographers Dimitri Chamblas, Emmanuelle Huynh, Benjamin Millepied, Jamar Roberts et Pam Tanowitz on the famous film score by Philip Glass.

Other opera costume designs include : Verdi's Don Carlos directed by Vincent Huguet at Theater Basel, two operas by Grétry, directed by Marshall Pynkoski: Richard Coeur de Lion and La Caravane du Caire at the Opéra Royal de Versailles, Il trovatore directed by Stephen Wadsworth at the Houston Grand Opera, and for director James Darrah, two operas by Philip Glass: The Fall of the House of Usher, an opera turned film for the Boston Lyric Opera and Les Enfants Terribles at Long Beach Opera and Opera Omaha.

With her long-time collaborators, contemporary artists Gerard & Kelly, she has designed costumes for various films and performance pieces including the most recent Gay guerilla at the Centre Pompidou, Panorama, premiered at the Collection Pinault / Bourse de Commerce and also Reusable Parts / Endless Love (Palais de Tokyo, Centre National de la Danse) and Timelining (Centre Pompidou, Paris).

Camille designed costumes for many of Stephen Wadsworth's productions, including Fidelio at the Santa Fe Opera, Cosi Fan Tutte (a Juilliard Opera/Metropolitan Opera Lindemann co-production), and The Beaumarchais plays at the McCarter Theater, among others.

A few of her designs were exhibited in the historic exhibit Costume at the turn of the Century, 1990-2015, in Moscow, among the works of many of her peers from around the world. The exhibit travels to the Hunan Province of China in the summer 2017.

Internationally, her work was seen in Phnom Penh, Hong Kong, Shanghai and New Delhi. In 2008, under the direction of her mentor, the late costume designer Eiko Ishioka, she was part of the small team of international designers to contribute to the Beijing Olympics Opening and closing Ceremonies, for director Zhang Yimou.

Marcus Doshi is an international theatre maker who designs lighting and sets for theatre, opera, and dance, and collaborates with artists and architects on a wide array of non-performance-based work. His work is known for its essentialist point of view, bold visual style, musicality, and dramaturgical integration — all driven by his manifesto: “Good Lighting for the Stage.” He is the author of Towards Good Lighting for the Stage: Aesthetic Theory for Theatrical Lighting Design, published by Routledge.

His work has been seen on and off-Broadway, at most major regional theatre and opera companies, and extensively around the world. He is a frequent collaborator with NYC’s Theatre for a New Audience—where he has designed many shows with director Arin Arbus—and Opera Theatre of St. Louis, with whom he has an ongoing association.

His work for Opera has been seen in the US with Houston Grand Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Minnesota Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Kansas City Lyric Opera, Seattle Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Virginia Opera, Spoletto Festival USA, Lincoln Center Festival, Julliard Opera, and The Greenwich Music Festival where he was principal designer for many years, and internationally with companies such as The Royal Opera House (London), Garsington Opera (UK), Aldeburgh Music (UK), Canadian Opera Company (Toronto), La Monnaie / De Munt (Brussels), Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (France), Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia (Valencia), and others.

Other international engagements have included designs for theatre and dance in Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Paris (at La Comédie Française), Marseille, Castres, Venice, Vienna, Sarajevo, Mostar, Tuzla, Tunis, Sousse, Cairo, Beirut, Kuwait City, Mumbai, New Delhi, Phnom Penh, Jakarta, and Sydney.

On Broadway, Pass Over (also Steppenwolf, Lincoln Center, and Amazon Films) and Linda Vista (also Steppenwolf and Center Theatre Group). Notable productions off-Broadway include The Merchant of Venice, The Skin of Our Teeth, King Lear (2014 Henry Hewes Design Award nomination), Othello (2009 Lucille Nortel Award for Outstanding Lighting Design nomination), and Hamlet (2009 Drama Desk for Best Lighting Design of a Play nomination and 2009 Henry Hewes Design Award nomination) with Theatre for a New Audience, Party People at The Public Theatre (2017 AUDELCO ‘Viv’ Award Nomination), Queens Boulevard (The Musical), The First Breeze of Summer (2008 AUDELCO ‘Viv’ for Best Lighting Design) at The Signature Theatre Co., and projects with Lincoln Center, BAM, New York Theatre Workshop, The Vineyard Theatre, SoHo Rep, and others.

His extensive regional collaborations include work with Huntington Stage Co., Yale Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, Geva Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Co., Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Dallas Theatre Center, California Shakespeare Theatre, South Coast Rep, Center Theatre Group, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Seattle Repertory Theatre, The Intiman, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and many others.

He is a graduate of Wabash College and the Yale School of Drama, and is a tenured Professor in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University where he has taught in the MFA design and directing programs since 2012.