Kate Soper: The Romance of the Rose

Lucas Steele

Lucas Steele has appeared on Broadway in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 as well as The Threepenny Opera at Studio 54 (with Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper). Off-Broadway he originated roles in Adam Guettel’s Myths and Hymns (Prospect Theater Company), The Kid (The New Group), The Great Comet (Ars Nova, Kazino), Emojiland (The Duke on 42nd St.), Wickets (3LD), Oliver Twist (TFANA), and Novenas for a Lost Hospital (Rattlestick Theater). A Tony nominee and Lucille Lortel Award winner for his portrayal of Anatole Kuragin in The Great Comet, he also received Elliot Norton and IRNE award nominations for playing the role at American Repertory Theater in Boston.

Phillip Bullock

Phillip Bullock is an Operatic and multi-genre baritone praised by Opera News for his “appealingly suave baritone”. He has been featured in operas, recitals and concerts throughout the United States and Europe. Noted for a voice that can “travel from airy falsetto heights to basso profundo depths” by the New York Times, Phillip has lent his artistry to a variety of performance styles including contemporary gospel, traditional and modern opera. Phillip has worked with some outstanding organizations and collaborators including, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Cincinnati Opera, Royal Danish Opera, Long Beach Opera. Additional highlights include roles in Damien Sneed’s reimagining of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, the premiere of Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith’s critically acclaimed opera, Castor and Patience, voted the Best New Opera of 2022 by The New York Times, and Deep Blue Sea, the acclaimed production with the Bill T. Jones dance company.

Anna Schubert

Described as “luminously expressive” with a “silvery voice” that “moves from innocence to devastation with an actor’s ease,” Anna Schubert loves bringing new stories and musical ideas to life. Anna’s passion for new music has garnered several world premieres, most notably the role of Bibi in Ellen Reid’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Prism. She is also credited with creating the role of L in Anne LeBaron’s LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip, Klara in Vera Ivanova’s The Double, and Lady Reason in Kate Soper’s The Romance of the Rose. Other career highlights include the Controller in Jonathan Dove’s Flight, Lise in Philip Glass’ Les Enfants Terribles, Arianna in Handel’s Giustino, and Haydn’s Die Schöpfung. Outside the world of classical vocals, Anna enjoys a versatile career as a session singer. Her solo vocals can be heard dramatically soaring over orchestra and choir in the films Birds of Prey and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

Kate Soper

Described by the New Yorker as “one of the great originals of her generation,” Kate Soper has been creating unique and uncategorizable musico-theatrical spectacles for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, she has received awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Koussevitzky Foundations and has been commissioned by Miller Theatre, Alarm Will Sound, and the New York Philharmonic. Her large-scale works include the monodramas Voices from the Killing Jar and IPSA DIXIT as well as the operas Here Be Sirens, The Romance of the Rose, and The Hunt. Praised by the New York Times for her “lithe voice and riveting presence,” Soper performs frequently as a new music soprano. She is the vocalist and co-director for the Wet Ink Ensemble.

Devony Smith

Recognized for her “sensual” and “strong” voice (New York Times), mezzo-soprano Devony Smith is a versatile performer in opera, concert repertoire and contemporary music. Notably, she has premiered works by composers Jennifer Higdon, Benjamin P. Wenzelberg, Eve Beglarian, Jake Landau, and Luna Pearl Woolf. Most recently, she sang the role of the Designer in the world premiere of Woolf ’s oratorio Number Our Days at the Perelman Performing Arts Center with the choir of Trinity Wall Street. Devony has a long relationship with Kate Soper’s Here Be Sirens, which she has performed in various roles across four different seasons, including an appearance at National Sawdust. A cham- pion of concert repertoire, Devony has performed as a featured recitalist with Caramoor Center for the Arts, Carnegie Hall City Wide, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, and Songfest, where she was also a recipient of a Sorel Fellowship. The past few seasons, Devony made several operatic role debuts, including Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, the title role in Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Sesto in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, and Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

Ariadne Greif

Ariadne Greif, praised for her “luminous, expressive voice,” “searing top notes,” and “dusky depths,” (NYTimes), enjoyed a casual child career as a “boy” soprano at the LA Opera, making an adult debut singing Lutoslawski’s Chantefleurs et Chantefables with the American Symphony Orchestra. She starred in operas ranging from Donizetti’s Elixir of Love with The Orlando Philharmonic, to Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias at the Aldeburgh Festival, and Atthis, by Georg Friedrich Haas, which the NY Times called “one of the most searingly painful and revealing operatic performances in recent times.” Ariadne performed with William Kentridge in Ursonate at The Oslo Opera House, The Luxembourg Philharmonic, Cal Performances, and Performa. She sang with Opera Philadelphia, The Knights, Brooklyn Rider, JACK Quartet, The Ojai Festival, Ultima in Norway, Helsinki’s Meidän Festival, Long Beach Opera, The Park Avenue Armory, AMOC, and Sydney Chamber Opera. Ariadne has premiered upwards of thirty new operas and more than 150 chamber works.

Ty Bouque

Ty Bouque writes about opera: its slippery bodies, its sensual histories, and the work of mourning for a dead genre. Their writing can be found in VAN Magazine, TEMPO, Opera News, in the liners of HCR, in a forthcoming book from Lyrebird Press, and, less formally, on Substack. Elsewhere they sing as one-fourth of the new music quartet Loadbang, as well as in various solo, ensemble, and opera settings around the world. Experiences of infection, queerness, and submission inform their sound work. Bouque lives in Chicago with an accordion they do not know how to play, but would like to.

Wet Ink Ensemble

The Wet Ink Ensemble is a collective of composers, performers and improvisers dedicated to adventurous music-making. Named “The Best Classical Music Ensemble of 2018” by The New York Times, Wet Ink’s work is rooted in an ethos of innovation through collaboration, extending from the music and the unique performance practice developed in Wet Ink’s core octet of composer-performers, to committed performances of music by young and underrepresented composers, from today’s most promising emerging voices to the next generation of artists. Hailed for “sublimely exploratory” (The Chicago Reader) and “dense, wild, yet artfully controlled” (The New York Times) performances and for “uncompromisingly original music by its members, and unflagging belief in the power of collaboration” (The New Yorker), Wet Ink has been presenting concerts of new music at the highest level in New York City and around the world for over 20 years.

Eric Wubbels

Eric Wubbels (b.1980) is a composer and pianist, and a Co-Director of the Wet Ink Ensemble.

His music has been performed throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and the U.S., by groups such as Wet Ink Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, yarn|wire, Splinter Reeds, Kupka's Piano (AUS), SCENATET (DK), Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and featured on festivals including Huddersfield Festival, Chicago Symphony MusicNOW, New York Philharmonic CONTACT, MATA Festival, and Zurich Tage für Neue Musik.

Wubbels has been awarded grants and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NYFA, NYSCA, Fromm Foundation, Chamber Music America, ISSUE Project Room, MATA Festival, Barlow Endowment, Jerome Foundation, and Yvar Mikhashoff Trust, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony ('11, '16, '20), Copland House, L'Abri (Geneva), Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Civitella Ranieri Center (Italy).

As a performer, he has given U.S. and world premieres of works by major figures such as Peter Ablinger, Richard Barrett, Beat Furrer, George Lewis, and Mathias Spahlinger, as well as vital young artists such as Rick Burkhardt, Francesco Filidei, Erin Gee, Bryn Harrison, Clara Iannotta, Darius Jones, Cat Lamb, Ingrid Laubrock, Charmaine Lee, Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, Katharina Rosenberger, and Kate Soper.

He has recorded for Carrier Records, hatART, Intakt, New Focus, Spektral (Vienna), quiet design, and Albany Records, among others, and has held teaching positions at Amherst College and Oberlin Conservatory.