General Director: Mark Streshinsky
Photo credit: Cory Weaver
Mark Streshinsky has created many productions for West Edge Opera starting in 2003 with Eugene Onegin and continuing with productions of Legend of the Ring, Xerxes, Ariadne auf Naxos and many others. Nationally, Mark has been on the staging staffs of several large companies including San Francisco Opera, The Dallas Opera, Los Angeles Opera and New York City Opera. He has directed his own productions for Florida Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Michigan Opera Theater, Boston Baroque, Cincinnati Opera and Lyric Opera of Kansas City. For the Reina Sofia Opera House in Valencia, Spain he directed Massenet’s Manon. Mark has worked with students at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Yale Graduate School of Opera and the Peabody Institute. For The Crucible in Oakland, Mark created Machine – a fire opera for which he wrote the libretto and directed and produced the huge fiery production. An advocate and supporter of new opera, Mark has directed two major world premieres: Anna Karenina by David Carlson and Colin Graham for Florida Grand Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and most recently, Rev 23 by Julian Wachner and Cerise Jacobs for White Snake Projects in Boston.
Music Director: Jonathan Khuner
Jonathan Khuner has been Musical Director of West Edge Opera since 1986 and served as Artistic Director from 1994 to 2009. He has conducted over 65 of our productions. He has also worked as assistant conductor at the San Francisco Opera for over thirty years, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for over fifteen years, and has served as well on the musical staff of Chicago's Lyric Opera since 1992. In 2013 he conducted the first Wagner opera ever performed in the nation of Albania: Tannhӓuser, at the National Theater in Tirana, and the Wagner Mini-Ring at Minnesota Concert Opera.
Mr. Khuner also has conducted performances of the New Israeli Opera, the San Francisco Opera Center, West Bay Opera, Pacific Repertory Opera, Livermore Valley Opera, San Francisco Lyric Opera, California Opera (Fresno), Verismo Opera, Opera Virago, and the Tel Aviv Symphony. He has also appeared with the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany, Santa Fe Opera, Miami Opera, Opera Barga in Italy and the Israel Philharmonic. Besides directing performances, he often lectures for San Francisco Opera, serves a faculty member at Bay Area opera workshops, and accompanies recital performances.
Associate Director of Development: Emilie Whelan
Emilie Whelan arrived at West Edge Opera in 2019 after a career in the bayous of New Orleans where she was a major force in arts and development post-Katrina. There she oversaw the development of NHP Foundation’s arts programming, Cripple Creek Theater Company, The Fringe Theater Festival New Orleans, and The DISTILLERY Artist Residency at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans for mid-career performing artists. She is also an Associate Artist of Ubuntu Theater Project in Oakland, and a professor at Chabot College and Contra Costa College for Theater History and Acting. She’s received a BFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, and an MFA UC San Diego.
Marketing and Media Relations Manager: Brian M. Rosen
Brian is a San Francisco-based composer/performer. He studied music composition at Interlochen Arts Academy and computer science at Princeton University. He moved from New York to the Bay Area in 1993 to join Pixar Animation Studios in the creation of the first full length computer animated film in history (Toy Story). As a composer, Brian has written and arranged an album of material for the Webby award winning a cappella ensemble The Richter Scales, completed a commissioned operatic adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for Cinnabar Opera Thater, and his arrangement of Bach’s Wachet Auf was performed by the Cypress String Quartet and the San Francisco Girls Chorus. He is the recipient of a grant from the American Composer’s Forum for the premiere of his song cycle A Brief History of Love and Poetry. His series of choral pieces, The Google Variations, is being recorded by the New York-based contemporary group Choral Chameleon. He is the creator and associate producer of the West Edge Opera new works series, Snapshot.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Judith Workman, President
James Parr, Vice President
Gertrude Allen, Secretary
Paul McKaskle, Treasurer
Norm Abramson
Claudia Conrad
Elizabeth Green-Sah
Brian M. Rosen
Pepi Ross
Anne Shortall
Terri Stuart
administrative and Production STAFF
Valden Kamph, Director of Operations
Lily Hill, Bookkeeper
Terry McKelvey, Director of Finance