Alan Schneider is a principal artist with the Boston Lyric Opera and has performed with some of the best-known companies in the Northeast, including the Huntington Theatre Company, Boston Opera, Chautauqua Opera and the Glimmerglass Opera Young American Artists Program. An advocate of New Music, he has created roles in world premieres of works by Joseph Summer, Daniel Pinkham and Paula Kimper. Schneider has appeared in a wide range of operas, including Salome, Don Carlos, Carmen and Rigoletto. A graduate of UMass-Amherst and Boston University, he completed the Boston University Opera Institute with the title role in Mozart's Idomeneo - the topic of a The Boston Globe feature story by music critic Richard Dyer. Schneider, who lives with his wife and son in Northampton, is also founder of The American Singers' Theater, which produces new American opera.
NORTHAMPTON - It is rare to encounter an opera premiere outside the big cities or big festivals but Amherst composer Eric Sawyer and Berkeley poet John Shoptaw have done the almost-impossible. They raised $100,000 (from foundations and generous individuals), enlisted the talent (some of it from Opera Boston), and produced their new opera, Our American Cousin, on Friday at the Academy of Music in this town. This was its first fully staged performance. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project was in the pit, led by Gil Rose.