New Series: Clifford Family Innovator in Residence 

Francesca Zambello workshops her opera-ballet, O’Keeffe: Kiss the Sky. 

In late February, Francesca Zambello ’78 arrived on campus with a story idea, an artistic team, and a bevy of performers. They had five days to workshop her new project, and the world-renowned opera and theater director was happy to return to Colgate, where the seeds of her artistic career were planted. Zambello is the first to hold the title of Clifford Family Innovator in Residence, and the residency is a gift for her to spend time creating, as well as to share that process with students.

Zambello had worked with all the assembled creatives before, both in her current role as the artistic director for the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and in her former role as the artistic and general director emerita of the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y. This time, the team began developing a new performance piece that blends opera with classical and modern dance elements. 

By the week’s end, they had sketched out the essential parts of a narrative about artist Georgia O’Keeffe; her husband, photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz; and socialite and arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan. 

Librettist and dramaturg Kelley Rourke, choreographer Jessica Lang, and two-time Grammy Award–winning composer Christopher Tin set to work right away, creating in an iterative fashion. As librettist, Rourke selected the key scenes and assembled them in a way that tells a satisfying story. Before arriving on campus, Tin and Rourke had begun some of the arias, but during the workshop, they further evolved the relationships between the three characters. 

The team’s first task was to identify how to develop the characters through song and movement. It quickly became apparent that each character would be represented by a vocalist and dancer pairing. While the singers voiced the characters they played, the dancers represented the characters’ souls. The couples were formed: mezzo soprano Michelle Mariposa and dancer Eve Jacobs as O’Keeffe, tenor Nicholas Huff and dancer Milan Misko as Stieglitz, and mezzo soprano Winona Martin and dancer Rachel Secrest as Luhan. 

As composer, Tin’s mission was to develop a unique sound for each character through music — highlighting the artistic dedication of O’Keeffe; the frenetic, distinctly American energy of Luhan; and a sophisticated, more European sensibility for Stieglitz. Lang conveyed O’Keeffe’s artworks and the landscape of the American West through choreography, which Rourke said furthered the narrative in ways the typical tools of opera cannot. 

“This week has been a ferocious pace of working on new music, new dance, and new words,” Zambello said. “But things don’t work without a love story, and with love of art and love of friendship, this is a different kind of love story.”

The result is a visual and auditory telling of the relationship between two women who found personal and artistic freedom in the American West. As operas typically feature male protagonists, it is unconventional for this production to center on women and their friendship. 

On the final night, the group gave two performances of O’Keeffe: Kiss the Sky in the new Experimental Exhibition and Performance Space in Bernstein Hall. Two students, Summer Davies ’28 and Josie Martin ’28, were selected to dance in the showcase and others were involved as assistants, technicians, and through classwork.

The team left campus with the elements of their production — a framework that they will continue to develop. One day, they will perform this novel mixture of opera and ballet on a larger stage, giving theatergoers “a new way of seeing things.”