Press
PROTOTYPE is a “highly influential bastion of experimental opera” – The New Yorker
“For almost a decade the PROTOTYPE Festival has redefined the potential of vocal theater.” – Opera News, November 2021
“Ten years of vital contemporary opera and music theatre” – The New Yorker, Fall 2021
“One of the world’s top festivals of contemporary opera and theater.” – Associated Press, January 2021
“PROTOTYPE Festival has made a name for itself as the go-ahead promoter of new opera in the US.” – Financial Times, January 2021
“New York City’s most enjoyable and essential opera festival.” – Observer, January 2021
“A landmark achievement in the burgeoning contemporary genre of digital opera/music-theater.” – Opera New, January 2021
“Utterly essential.” – The New York Times, January 2020
“Opera but make it fashion.” – Vulture, January 2020
“One of the city’s more expansive music theater festivals returns to explore “the interstitial realms between music, operatic tradition, and theatre.” – Playbill, January 2020
“HERE and Beth Morrison Projects prove that thrilling opera continues to bloom.” – TimeOut New York, January 2020
“The Prototype Festival has become the essential way for adventurous operagoers to start their new year.” – WQXR, January 2020
“Prototype: Opera/Theatre/Now festival has established a track record of introducing New York audiences to some of the most daring new operas of the day.” – The New York Times, January 2019
“This new-music festival has made itself indispensable to New York’s classical scene by presenting operas that are fresh off high-profile premières alongside intimate music-theatre works at venues scattered around Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan.” – The New Yorker, January 2019
“Opera has everything to lose if it ossifies, and much to gain if it programs a little bit more like Prototype.” – The Boston Globe, January 2019
“Season after season, PROTOTYPE introduces to New York pieces that shift the whole paradigm of what opera is and can be.”
— Observer, January 2018
“PROTOTYPE – a festival of cutting edge opera-theatre and music-theatre works – has only been around a few years, but has gained major recognition as a collection of ‘can’t-miss’ events.”
— Classical Music Communications, January 2018
“…the PROTOTYPE Festival is deeply committed to artists, giving composers, librettists, designers, performers, choreographers, conductors and directors support, developmental workshops and productions of their work.”
— StageBuddy, January 2018
“Essential to the evolution of American opera.”
— The New Yorker, January 2017
“PROTOTYPE Festival. Annually one of the most important musical events.”
— Brooklyn Rail, December 2017
“…unleashing a powerful wave of opera- and music-theatre from a new generation of composers and librettists…Since its launch in 2013, the PROTOTYPE Festival has presented a phenomenal 32 new works across five seasons, propelling the industry forward as a first-rate presenter and influencer.”
— New Yorkled, December 2017
Photo of Toxic Psalms by Cory Weaver