(Photo credit: National Sawdust)

Spanish composer and conductor Pedro Halffter will take part in a panel discussion on his new chamber opera, “KLARA.”

Opera Hispánica in collaboration with National Sawdust, Divaria Productions, and the New York City Opera, presents the New York premiere of “KLARA,” in a new production directed and choreographed by choreographer Richard Stafford. “KLARA” features soprano Ashley Galvani Bell, dancer Laura Henning, and Silvia Santinelli and Halffter at the pianos.

The opera in four haikus uses enigmatic lyrics to emphasize the play between choreography and singing. This production engages the audiences in a current reflection on the development of artificial intelligence, and what it means to be human.

In preparation, for the performance at National Sawdust on Feb. 28, Opera Hispánica will lead a talk with the composer, Panoyotis Mavromatis from NYU’s Department of Music who works on the intersection of music and technology, and Rutgers professor Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini, who is part of the Rutgers-Newark initiative in Computer Science, Data Science, and artificial intelligence technologies. The Feb. 26, 2025 event will be held at the Instituto Cervantes in New York,  as part of its Fake News and Perception of Reality series. In addition to the talk is selections from the opera.

This production is supported in part by Opera America’s NYC Opera Grants for Small-Budget Companies, supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation.

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