Adam Noble is a movement specialist with over 25 years of experience in theater, opera, and film. He is the former movement instructor for the Butler Studio, and this 2024-25 season serves as fight director for Breaking the Waves and fight director and intimacy director for Tannhäuser. In the 2023-24 season, he served as fight director and intimacy director for Parsifal, Madame Butterfly, and Don Giovanni. Additional HGO engagements include serving as the company’s fight director and intimacy director for The Wreckers, La traviata, and Romeo and Juliet (2022); Werther, The Marriage of Figaro, Salome, and Tosca (2023); Carmen (2021); and Don Giovanni (2019). He also served as fight director for Rigoletto (2019) and Julius Caesar (2018). Notable credits include The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Alley Theatre, Opera Carolina, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, Dayton Opera, the Public Theatre, and more. Noble is the co-founder and artistic director of the Dynamic Presence Project, a theater company focused on the revitalization and proliferation of movement theater and embodied physical storytelling. He teaches movement both nationally and internationally, and has choreographed the physicality, violence, and intimacy for well over 200 productions. As the Associate Professor of Acting & Movement at the University of Houston, he serves as Head of the MFA acting program. He is also the resident Fight Director & Intimacy Specialist for The Alley Theatre.
Fight Director and Intimacy Director:
DON GIOVANNI 2018-19
CARMEN 2021-22
ROMEO AND JULIET 2021-22 (Mainstage and Miller Outdoor Theatre)
LA TRAVIATA 2022-23
THE WRECKERS 2022-23
THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO 2022-23
WERTHER 2022-23
TOSCA 2022-23
SALOME 2022-23
PARSIFAL 2023-24
MADAME BUTTERFLY 2023-24
DON GIOVANNI 2023-24
Fight Director:
JULIUS CAESAR 2017-18
RIGOLETTO 2019-20
Actor:
Captain Lawson: A COFFIN IN EGYPT (World premiere)
Take a deeper dive into Houston Grand Opera's history, productions, and artistic process as told by the people who help bring it all to the stage.
Tucked away in the Houston Heights, bordered by concrete parking lots and cookie-cutter condos, is an acre-sized patch of green planted with trees and bamboo. In one corner of the lot, a friendly dog wanders down a gravel path past a koi pond. At the water’s edge stands a corrugated-steel chapel topped by an onion dome.
This strange little utopia, which resembles some kind of scrap-metal monastery, is the compound of Nestor Topchy. A painter and sculptor, Topchy deals in a variety of mediums—everything from tiny dyed eggs to massive welded orbs. One might argue that his greatest creation is the property itself, which comprises a complex of whimsical buildings he constructed with his own hands out of recycled materials.
But Topchy is best known for his gilded portraits, which draw on traditions of Eastern Orthodox iconography. Houston Grand Opera has commissioned a series of original paintings by Topchy in this style to be featured as poster artwork for the company’s 2025-26 season. The images will be revealed at the season-launch event at Lynn Wyatt Square, held on March 19, 2025, at 2 p.m.
Topchy doesn’t consider his paintings to be icons. While some of them do depict religious figures, most of them are representations of average, everyday people. But because they’re created using the same methods and materials as Orthodox icons, he refers to them as “iconic portraits.”
HGO General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor and Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers first encountered Topchy’s work in 2024. That year, the Menil Collection hosted an exhibition titled The Iconic Portrait Strand, which featured 124 of the artist’s portraits. “Patrick and I both had the same thought after visiting Nestor’s solo show,” recalls Dastoor. “We knew we wanted him to create a body of work that captures the spirit and emotion of the incredible operas we’ll be staging for our city.”
In the 1970s through the ’90s, HGO actively sought artists and illustrators to create promotional imagery and program covers. Most famously, Maurice Sendak of Where the Wild Things Are fame produced a set of posters for the 1997-98 season. However, it’s been decades since the company commissioned a project of this scale by a single artist like Topchy. “The resulting suite of paintings is stunning,” says Dastoor, “a wonderful reflection of the great art to come on the Wortham stage, made by and for Houstonians.”
Topchy’s art is rooted in his Ukrainian heritage. His father’s family hailed from Korsun, a city southeast of Kyiv. Fleeing the Soviets during World War II, they headed to Germany, where they were imprisoned in a Nazi displaced-persons camp. After the war, Topchy’s father immigrated to Canada, married, and eventually relocated to New Jersey. The couple gave birth to Nestor in 1963 and raised him in the Orthodox faith.
“My father’s best friend, Yurii Kodak, was in the same concentration camp with him. He was the architect for our church in Bound Brook, New Jersey,” says Topchy. It was here where Topchy first saw icons assembled on a wall known as an “iconostasis.”
Icons flourished as an art form in the Byzantine Empire and spread with Christianity to Slavic regions near the end of the first millennium. In both Old Greek and Old Russian, the verb for “to write” was identical to the word for “to paint.” For this reason, even in English, icons are often said to be “written.”
This linguistic oddity also reflects their original function as tools for religious instruction. “In the early days, it was the priests that were literate, and the masses looked at icons and saw a story on the iconostasis,” explains Topchy. “You would ‘write’ an icon because you’re ‘writing’ a divine liturgy.”
In 2004, Topchy studied with master icon artist Vladislav Andrejev, who founded the Prosopon School of Iconology in New York City. Here, he was introduced to the aesthetic, technical, and—most importantly—deep theological symbolism of icon-writing. “The process is probably the same since about 700 A.D., or even longer,” says Topchy.
An icon begins as a wooden board stretched with canvas, to which Topchy applies an animal glue known as “gesso.” Having pre-sketched the portrait on paper, he then carves it into the white, bone-like surface of the hardened gesso. The background surrounding the figure is covered in a reddish-brown clay called “bole,” which serves as a backing for the layer of gold leaf.
“Only after the gold leaf is attached does the painting begin, with at least seven layers of egg tempera”—i.e. paint made from mixing egg whites with powdered pigments. There is a special order Topchy follows, “proceeding from cruder earthen minerals to more refined ones, such as lapis lazuli and pure, colorful pigments.”
The figures themselves, as in traditional Orthodox icons, are represented in a rather flat, stylized, and even geometrical manner. There’s no attempt at simulating three-dimensionality through linear perspective. Rather, Topchy’s portraits exhibit what he calls “hierarchical perspective”: “What’s important is larger, but if something is of secondary importance, we make it a little bit smaller.”
To make the works his own, Topchy deviates slightly from convention by incorporating aspects of other religious iconography, especially Buddhist imagery. He possesses an intense curiosity for East Asian art and philosophy. No mere dabbler, Topchy immerses himself fully in a myriad of traditions: Daoism, Zen, Chinese calligraphy and painting, and Japanese martial arts, including Kyūdō archery.
In exploring these diverse cultures, Topchy often seeks out what Swiss psychologist Carl Jung dubbed “archetypes”—basic symbols and stories that can be found in every human society and unite us as a species across time and space. These archetypes served as a starting point for Topchy’s poster artwork for HGO.
Each of the seven paintings portrays characters from the season repertoire, most modelled after the singers who will play the roles. These figures Topchy surrounded with symbols from the operas themselves, as well as design elements from the specific productions HGO will stage. The artist carefully selected objects and emblems with universal meanings, as well as symbols that intersect with those found in Orthodox icons.
For Topchy, the stories of the operas—which resemble ancient myths—also stand as archetypes. “Operas, just like fairy tales, are personifications of archetypal wisdom which could help us learn from the lives of others through tragic stories,” he observes. As in Orthodox icons that illustrate biblical episodes, his artworks have narrative dimension.
“It isn’t just a portrait, but it’s also a portrait of phenomena that tell a story—putting a visual reality in just one moment, because I can't make a film about it. It’s not a moving image, so everything has to exist at that moment in time.”
Ultimately, what sets Topchy’s artwork apart is his ability to convey the ineffable—to use humble materials and age-old methods to capture the invisible divinity at the core of every person. “I’m not trying to provide a naturalistic depiction,” he says. “I’m looking for an inner light.”
Join us for Giving Voice 2025 at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston's historic Third Ward! The concert takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, February 28. More info at HGO.org/GivingVoice
Issachah Savage, one of the leading heldentenors in the world, has a vivid memory of the moment he began to consider opera as a career. He was a student at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, and his choral director, David King, asked him to stay after school one day. King pointed to a tape recorder and said, go over to this machine and press play. Out came a voice that Savage would later learn was Jussi Björling singing the climactic phrase of the “Ingemisco” from Verdi’s Requiem. King instructed Savage to copy what he heard, and Savage, feeling embarrassed, turned away. But he started to sing.
“And when I turned back to David King, as if to say, okay is that what you wanted?, I saw that he was quite emotional,” Savage remembers. “Now, this is the David King, who typically is like a giant. We don’t see emotions other than him looking for perfection and excellence. But he was quite moved. And he said, you see? You have the kind of voice that you can do anything you want with it. Even opera.”
Savage started taking private lessons, in addition to singing with his church and local choral groups and entering local competitions. He began to haunt Philadelphia’s Tower Records, listening to all the opera he could get his hands on. And when it was time to go to college, he decided to pursue a degree in vocal performance at what he refers to as “my beloved Morgan State University,” an HBCU in Baltimore, under acclaimed choir director Nathan Carter.
During our conversation ahead of his appearance in Houston at Giving Voice—his first performance with HGO since he made his acclaimed company debut as Radamès in Aida in 2013—Savage shared more about his time at Morgan State and how it has shaped his life and career.
Tell us about your experience performing with Dr. Carter.
At Morgan State, anyone who took voice got to sing in the university choir. But there was a small group of singers called The Morgan Singers that were handpicked by Dr. Carter. And it was a rigorous kind of trial-by-fire audition where you were being auditioned and didn’t even know it. Dr. Carter did everything unconventionally. He auditioned us in real time. He wanted to see what you were going to do in front of an audience, under pressure.
And so we were at this university gig, and it was a song called “God and God Alone.” Old, old song by Daryl Coley. And Dr. Carter called me out. Mind you, he didn’t really know whether I knew it or not.
And I think it comes out of the Black church—the whole idea of spontaneity and being driven or led by the Spirit or one’s intuition, if you will. Dr. Carter was a son of a preacher, brother of a preacher, so the church was very much in him. And so he called me out to sing the lead for “God and God Alone,” and I did. And that was my audition for being in this hand-picked group called The Morgan Singers that went all over the world.
That must have been an incredible experience.
Yes. We traveled all over the world, singing at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the White House, overseas in Prague, Paris, Russia, Japan, Africa, and beyond. We got to sing with the likes of Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Barbara Smith Conrad—really, really consummate professionals and great singers. Simon Estes, Bobby McFerrin, Stevie Wonder, Diane Schuur—I mean, a wide range of people. So we had that hands-on training from Morgan State University. And I think it’s part of what really shaped so many of us—Leah Hawkins, Jasmine Barnes, Soloman Howard, Jason Max Ferdinand, Darin Atwater, Kevin Short—a long list of classical voices, conductors, teachers, preachers, composers, and instrumentalists has come out of Morgan State University. It’s because we were able to see it and be a part of it and just see ourselves in those spaces.
How did your time in college shape you as a performer?
This is a big part of why I think aspiring singers should consider HBCUs. It was so well-rounded, in that we were encouraged to sing literally everything. Jazz had to sound like jazz. R&B had to sound like R&B. Gospel had to sound like gospel. And you could not mix it all together, where somehow you’re singing “Caro mio ben,” and it sounds like gospel. You would get stopped immediately. Dr. Carter was a stickler for us being well-rounded musicians. And he would always use elements from the Black church and the Black community, which I think gives the HBCU its uniqueness about how to train a voice. The sounds that come out of the Black community open the throat and allow flexibility in ways that other genres don’t.
My time at Morgan taught me to be on stage, how to command the stage. Also, being nimble, flexible. Just because you sang the solo last week, doesn’t mean you’re going to do it this week. Dr. Carter didn’t have to tell us to warm up our voices before choir rehearsal. We knew we better come warmed up, because we didn’t know what he was going to do. That kind of environment that he created encouraged us to be ready musicians.
That must have been great preparation for life as an opera star.
Oh, absolutely. Being able to be a quick study, being able to hear something in your ear even if you can’t get the music—that kind of readiness was so instrumental when I first started out in my career because I didn’t often know what the conductor was going to do on these contracts. If it’s something off the beaten path and not in traditional rep, you have to learn it. Well, how do you learn it? Getting someone to play it out for you and getting it in your ear, and then you go and be the musician and conduct yourself through it. When I went to my master’s program, I was able to learn the role of Martin in Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land literally in two weeks. If I didn’t have that Morgan experience, I would never have been able to learn some of the demanding roles that I’ve learned in my career.
How has the network you built at Morgan State supported you in your life and career?
It’s built such a profound network of musicians, teachers, preachers, people who have gone on to start their own churches and things like that, principals of schools. And I get to still collaborate with a lot of them. Most recently, I was doing a gig, and their mezzo couldn’t perform. I was able to get on the phone and call one of my former colleagues from school and say, Hey, you’re choral-directing now. Do you have a mezzo that would fill this particular criteria? And she was hired immediately.
And furthermore, it’s provided work for me in some instances. For example, a colleague of mine is working on a project, and he has to present it at the Kennedy Center, and he says, Hey, Issachah, would you do this workshop for me? And I’ll go sing for the workshop, but it also ends up leading me to doing the professional performance. So just a large network of camaraderie and professional engagements have come out of it, but perhaps what I most value is the wealth of knowledge shared within and across the artistic disciplines.
Why would you recommend your alma mater, or another HBCU, to an aspiring singer?
It was important for me to attend Morgan State, because you literally got to see yourself. And I think this is the heartbeat of what education is, particularly in African American communities. We need to see ourselves do it. We need to see ourselves a part of it. I would also recommend an HBCU for the exposure and proper education of how to sing African-American literature, which is in abundance.
The gem of being at an HBCU is that you literally get to see yourself in places and spaces of excellence. And I think Morgan State was pivotal for me in that way, because they made sure we not only sang with professional artists, but that we sang with Black professional artists. We didn’t just see Marilyn Horne, with whom we did sing, but we also saw Florence Quivar, Leona Mitchell, Martina Arroyo. It was important that the university showed us, us.
The legendary Bernstein was a stylistically versatile composer who contributed major works to Broadway, operetta, opera—and even a new hybrid genre with his 1971 Mass. Trace his output for the stage and learn about the part HGO played in producing and commissioning these pieces.
Compara los actores principales y los puntos de la trama de West Side Story con su base teatral, Romeo y Julieta. Como en la tragedia de Shakespeare de 1597, una pareja de amantes condenados de facciones enemistadas reciben una mano funesta.
"Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America,
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico’s in America!"
Como señalan Anita y las chicas Shark en "América," en los años 50, muchos estadounidenses aún ignoraban que Puerto Rico formaba parte de los Estados Unidos. Esta cronología describe la relación política de la isla con los Estados Unidos y la historia de la emigración puertorriqueña.
1508: Juan Ponce de León coloniza Puerto Rico, hogar de los indígenas taínos. Los españoles se asentaron en la isla durante los 400 años siguientes, trayendo consigo africanos esclavizados.
1898: Estalla la guerra hispano-estadounidense por la disputa de territorios insulares en el Pacífico y el Caribe. Como parte del tratado de paz, Puerto Rico es cedido a los Estados Unidos.
"For this production, designer David Farley and I have chosen to imagine that the characters of the opera may act as our interpreters. If Schaunard, the composer, is represented in the pit by Puccini himself, the scenic world that the bohemians inhabit is as if painted by Marcello. Ever y surface of the set is a canvas drawn f rom the same rich and chaotic pictorial world as that of Toulouse-Lautrec—a contemporary of Puccini and an artist who was himself obsessed by the bohemian underworld of Paris."
—John Caird, La bohème director
Since 1958, Houston Grand Opera has mounted Puccini’s perennial masterpiece in 13 seasons, staged by nine separate directors. Trace the work’s history at HGO with these standout performances from the past seven decades.
Discover the origins of the story and learn about the many adaptations of Puccini’s cherished opera.
Read all about Houston Grand Opera's impact in the community through recent news, press releases, and media.
Houston Grand Opera has announced the world premiere of A Voice Within, a new song cycle created by HGO Composer-in-Residence Joel Thompson and librettist and Houston poet laureate emeritus Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, inspired by the life stories of residents of Houston's Third Ward.
This year, the Houston Grand Opera is honoring Historically Black Colleges and Universities during the annual Giving Voice program.
Holy Ziegfeld, send this Houston Grand Opera production of West Side Story to Broadway! What a sizzling, dynamic account of this consummate American musical.
On Friday night, the Houston Grand Opera brought back its zestful and poignant staging of "La Bohème" – a joint production with San Francisco Opera and the Canadian Opera Company seen in 2018 and 2012 – that captured the buoyancy of the story’s youthful characters along with their grim and impoverished circumstances.
Not since Wagner’s singing contests in Tannhauser and Der Meistersinger has there been a more posh competition than Houston Grand Opera’s Concert of Arias, formally known as the Eleanor McCullum Competition for Young Singers.
When Yaritza Véliz was 13 years old, she happened to be at a church service where a tenor performed. She had been singing at home and in the school chorus but had no idea of what opera was, she says. The only thing she knew was that the man was singing in a certain familiar way.
Houston audiences can hear seven emerging opera singers from around the globe at Houston Grand Opera’s upcoming 37th Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers. The annual audience favorite, also known as Concert of Arias, is Friday, January 17 at the Wortham Theater Center at 7 pm.
Later this month, Houston Grand Opera kicks off the new year by bringing back their popular adaptation of West Side Story, the blockbuster tale created by composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, choreographer Jerome Robbins, and playwright Arthur Laurents.
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