The Magic Flute

Prelude Opera’s 2022 production of The Magic Flute was made possible in part with funding from donors, The Roxanne and Henry Brandt Foundation and UMEZ Arts Engagement, and with public funds from Creative Engagement, administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

This production featured an arrangement for children by Roger Brunyate

Selected photos courtesy of Jonathan Rothermel/Cursive Films

Cast and Crew

Stage Director – Benjamin Spierman

Music Director – Christine Melamed

Papageno/Narrator – Jonathan Harris

Tamino – Andrew Klima

Pamina – Halley Gilbert

First Lady/Queen of the Night – Elizabeth Treat

Second Lady/Papagena – Claire Robinson

Third Lady – Sara Henry

Flutist – Sasha Blackman

Monostatos – Shane Brown

Stage Manager – Holly Thomas

Makeup Artist – Donetta Riley

Costume Coordinator – Eric Lamp

Set Design Consultant – April Bartlett

Props Master – Olivia Ronald

Technical Director – Michael Shortino

Tech Crew-  Juliette Hacquebord

Tech Crew – Caroline Judd

Marketing – Neidin Shelnutt, Amara Pierre

Videographer/photographer – Jonathan Rothermel

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Jonathan Harris

Bass-baritone Jonathan Z. Harris is a native New Orleanian opera singer, recitalist, and actor based in New York City. A two-time Regional Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Jonathan has previously been an Apprentice Artist with Sarasota Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Opera Saratoga, and Chautauqua Opera. He has also sung with Opera Company of Middlebury, Bronx Opera, Opéra Louisiane, and dell’Arte Opera Ensemble, among others. Recent roles include the King (Eight Songs for a Mad King), Leporello (Don Giovanni), Don Alfonso (Così fan tutte), Papageno (The Magic Flute), Publio (La clemenza di Tito), Don Basilio (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Peter Quince (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and Superintendent Budd (Albert Herring). Theatre credits include Salome and The Importance of Being E(a)rnest Hemingway with M-34 and Love & Geography with Piehole. Jonathan holds degrees in theatre arts from Brown University and in music from the University of Michigan. www.jonathanzharris.com

Shane Brown

Shane Brown is a New Jersey based artist and singer. He began performing classical music at a young age, attended ChARTer Tech High School for the Performing Arts and went on to study Vocal Performance at Rutgers University. Since then, he has sung, mostly as a baritone but now as a tenor, with opera companies and ensembles around the NY/NJ area including Bronx Opera, City Lyric Opera, Dell’Arte Opera, Fresh Squeezed Opera, The West Jersey Chamber Chorus, The Highland Park Community Chorus, and PROTESTRA. Shane has recently found a place for himself in the world of cross-genre contemporary music bringing electronics and programming into his repertoire. His sound installation “The Spotted Lanternfly Doesn’t Choose Destruction” appeared in a Juried Exhibition at the Ringwood Manor Association of the Arts Gallery in October, and in the summer of 2022, Shane appeared with Fresh Squeezed Opera as the character of Pete in the world premiere of Jillian Flexner’s “Self-Defining Circuits” in New York City.

Halley Gilbert, soprano

Of Ms. Gilbert’s Zerbinetta in Utopia Opera’s production of Ariadne auf Naxos, James Jorden of the New York Observer wrote: “Stealing the show was Halley Gilbert as Zerbinetta, flinging out crystalline trills, arpeggios, staccati and roulades…Ms. Gilbert’s frankness…made the text sound like it could have been written yesterday.” She has performed multiple leading roles including Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Konstanze (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Cunegonde (Candide), Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro), Violetta (La Traviata), Nanetta (Falstaff), Ännchen (Der Freischütz) and Birdie (Regina). Other roles include Ms. Wordsworth (Albert Herring), Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflӧte), Chlorinda (Cenerentola) and Frasquita (Carmen). Ms. Gilbert has been a featured soloist with the Great Music in a Great Space Concert Series, Musica Sacra, Greenwich Symphony Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, Pensacola Symphony Orchestra, Lake Placid Sinfonietta, and Bronx Arts Ensemble among others. She recieved first prize in both Opera Idol NYC and the Jenny Lind Competition for Sopranos and was a Regional Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

Andrew Klima

Andrew Klima, tenor, cannot wait to sing Tamino for the Prelude audiences.  Making music accessible to everyone has been professional goal which he has accomplished through various engagements including:  The Hudson River Voices, a group of Senior Citizens who perform in Riverdale, singing title roles in various operas, most recently with Opera Oswego, and as a member of the St. Francis of Assisi choir.  When not singing, he can be found selling Real Estate or at a playground with his daughter, Sloane and wife, Molly.

Elizabeth Treat

Elizabeth Treat is thrilled to debut with Prelude Opera, reprising her critically acclaimed Queen of the Night. In this modern adaptation, she also sings the role of First Lady. Earlier in 2022, Elizabeth sang the role of Sophie in a scene from a new opera based on The Count of Monte Cristo, premiered with Bronx Opera at the 2022 New York Opera Alliance. Recent New York City appearances include a Lincoln Center solo debut at Alice Tully Hall, Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte with Amore Opera at the Riverside Theater, and the title character in Flotow’s Martha with Utopia Opera. Elizabeth is lauded by critics for her “stunning” coloratura and “stratospheric high notes sung with clarity and ease.”

Frequently featured with Washington Opera Society, Elizabeth has appeared in gala concerts and operas at the embassies of France, Indonesia, Poland, Slovenia, and Colombia in such roles as Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte), Clorinda (La Cenerentola), Marie (La Fille du Régiment), and a triumphant Washington debut as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the O.A.S. Hall of the Americas, led by Metropolitan Opera conductor Gregory Buchalter.

Other notable performances include the role of Konstanze in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail with Opera Theater of Montclair (NJ), gala concerts with the Gateway Classical Music Society in New York and Connecticut, and Queen of the Night with Light Opera of New Jersey, Regina Opera, Amore Opera, One World Symphony, New York Lyric Opera, and Intermezzo Opera with the Charlemagne Orchestra in Belgium. Elizabeth has also sung principal roles in several U.S. opera premieres, including Susanna in Mercadante’s I due Figaro, Isabella in Donizetti’s Olivo e Pasquale, and Queen of the Night in Peter von Winter’s long-lost sequel to The Magic Flute, Das Labyrinth.

Elizabeth holds performance degrees in both piano and voice, with highest honors.

Claire Robinson, Soprano

Soprano Claire Robinson captivates audiences with her shimmering tone and passionate storytelling, from comic coloraturas to lyric heroines. Audiences burst out laughing at her depiction of the sultry and witty Despina in Così fan tutte and her recent portrayal of Leïla in Les pêchuers de perles was
heralded as “pure and full of vulnerability”. In addition to opera, her voice can be heard in solo recital work and oratorios. She frequently performs Carmina Burana and Handel’s Messiah in the concert hall and as a soprano in the choir at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Claire Robinson received a Master of Music in Opera Performance at the University of Oklahoma while studying with soprano Lorraine Ernest. In addition to performing, Claire has a passion for teaching and can often be found doing movement and music classes for young children.