Administration
Tony Kostecki, General Director
Tony Kostecki was appointed General Director of Seagle Festival in January of 2008. Previous to this appointment, Tony held the position of General Manager at Seagle from 2006-2007.Before moving into management, he was on the faculty of Seagle Festival as a pianist/coach and conductor for ten years. Between 2002 and 2007, Tony was Director of Education at Fort Worth Opera and also Director of the Fort Worth Opera Studio. During his tenure with Fort Worth Opera, Tony oversaw the creation of the Fort Worth Opera Studio Young Artists Program and all outreach aspects of Fort Worth Opera. From 2002-2007 he was also the Fort Worth Opera Chorus Master and writer of many of the supertitle translations for Fort Worth Opera.
As a pianist/coach, Tony worked for Fort Worth Opera, Shreveport Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Utah Opera, Kansas City Lyric Opera Express and Kansas City Civic Opera. A native of Topeka, Kansas, he received a BA in Music from Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas and an MM Degree in Piano Accompanying and Organ Performance from the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
Darren K. Woods, Artistic Director
Darren K. Woods was appointed General Director of the Seagle Festival in the summer of 1996. Since that time, Seagle has experienced incredible growth in almost every aspect including budget, production quality, facilities and faculty/staff. The caliber of young artists at Seagle continues to rival any other program in the world with recent debuts of our artists at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera and even on Broadway. Because of this extensive growth and the need for Seagle to have a full-time presence in Schroon Lake, Darren transitioned to part-time Artistic Director in January 2008. In February 2017, Darren returned full-time to Seagle Festival and is now also leading the Colony’s development and fundraising efforts. Darren was General Director of the Fort Worth Opera, from 2001 to 2017. Under his leadership, the Fort Worth Opera increased subscription and donor bases and also moved from a full season to a festival format company. Expanding on Mr. Woods’ dedication to young artists, the Fort Worth Opera Studio was founded during the 2002-2003 season with four members who participate in main stage productions, perform for more than 50,000 children each year and receive coaching and lessons from resident and guest artists. Prior to his appointment in Fort Worth, he was the General Director of the Shreveport Opera in Louisiana. While in Shreveport, Mr. Woods founded Shreveport Opera Express, or SOX, a touring, arts in education program that involved school children working with professional artists in the schools.
Mr. Woods is a frequent vocal competition judge. Over the past few years, he has served as a panel judge for the Richard Tucker Foundation, the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the Lieber Competition, the Denver Opera Guild Competition, the Dallas Opera Guild Competition and the Marguerite McCammon Competition. He has been a guest grant panelist for the State of Louisiana (Music, Opera and Theater), the National Endowment for the Arts, the State of Nevada and the Fort Worth Arts Council.
Mr. Woods performed as a professional operatic tenor for twenty years prior to beginning his management positions in such venues as: The New York City Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Washington Opera, L’Opera Madrid, Opera Trieste, Seattle Opera, the Dallas Opera, Baltimore Opera, the Santa Fe Opera and many others.
Performance Faculty
Conductor
Filippo Ciabatti
Filippo Ciabatti is the Music Director of the Opera Company of Middlebury, where he made his debut with Fidelio in June 2023. He has conducted leading orchestras and opera companies across the U.S. and internationally, including the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, Irving Symphony Orchestra, Portland Symphony Orchestra, Macon-Mercer Symphony Orchestra, San Angelo Symphony Orchestra, Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Opera North, University of Illinois’ Lyric Theatre, and the ICM Orchestra.
His international engagements include performances with the Universidad Central Symphony Orchestra (Colombia), Aurora Festival Orchestra (Sweden), Orchestra Toscana dei Conservatori (Italy), and members of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Italy). In 2024, Ciabatti was awarded the Joel Revzen Conducting Prize, leading to performances with the Festival Orchestra Napa alongside internationally renowned soloists Ray Chen, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Time for Three. In October 2023, he became the first Assistant Conductor of Boston Baroque.
Ciabatti is the founding Artistic Director of Upper Valley Baroque (VT), a professional chamber orchestra and choir. He also serves as Director of Orchestral and Choral Activities at Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center for the Arts. Additionally, he has served on the faculty of Camerata Bardi Vocal Academy and Opera Viva (Italy).
Website: filippociabatti.com
Voice Teachers
Dr. Byron Jones
Singer/Master Teacher Byron Jones is well-known to Washington DC-area audiences, having performed regularly for more than three decades in opera, concert, recital, and intimate cabaret settings. Jones has received critical praise for his warmth of tone and clear, expressive use of language. His operatic repertoire includes roles by Mozart, Puccini, Ullmann, Floyd, Mollicone, and more. As a concert singer, Jones has performed major works by Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mahler, Verdi, Berlioz, Orff, Fauré, Hailstork, Finzi, and Britten. His deep commitment to American art song includes everything from Ives and Owens to Mack and Sankaram. In October 2022, he traveled to Irvine CA for the African American Art Song Alliance Conference to present a commissioned work by Andre Myers. In early 2023, Jones made his Lyric Fest (Philadelphia) debut with a program of songs by Arne Dørumsgaard with pianist Laura Ward. Recent engagements include a performance of Requiem by Gabriel Fauré in Bogotà, Colombia and Winterreise with John O’Conor. He is a frequent clinician, presenter, and adjudicator in the mid-Atlantic region. Dr. Jones is Professor of Voice and Coordinator of Vocal Performance Programs at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA. This summer marks his 13th year as part of the performance faculty at Seagle Festival.
Stephen Lusmann
Stephen Lusmann has enjoyed a successful international career singing over forty leading baritone roles with major opera houses, including the Oper der Stadt Bonn, Opera de Monte Carlo, Stadttheater Luzern, Washington National Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre and Glimmerglass Opera among many others. As an active concert soloist he has performed at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall and with numerous symphony orchestras and festivals in the United States and Europe. On recordings, Mr. Lusmann may be heard in Richard Strauss’ opera Der Friedenstag on the Koch International label, Operngala on Tonstudio AMOS, and on E. E. Cummings: An American Circus, songs of Logan Skelton on the Centaur Records label. He also recorded two more CDs of Skelton’s songs that were released in April 2013 on the Blue Griffin label: Ohr Songs: The Mad Potter, Clyburn Songs: A Kind of Weather and Anderson Songs: Through the Eyes of an Islander. His students are having tremendous success performing professionally in opera, concert, musical theater and young artist programs throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. They are performing with the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, Washington National Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Oper Frankfurt, Bayerische Staatsoper München and on Broadway. In addition they are winning prestigious international vocal competitions and are members of university voice faculties. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan where he was awarded the Harold Haugh Award for Excellence in Studio Teaching in 2020. He was the voice teacher for the Fort Worth Opera Studio from 2010-2017, taught at Music in the Marché in Mondavio, Italy and has been a voice teacher at Seagle Festival since 2001.
Dr. Chad R. Payton
Dr. Chad R. Payton is excited to return to “the hill” for his eleventh summer! Previous to beginning teaching voice at Seagle in 2016, he was a two-time young artist with Seagle Festival (2002, 2005) and served as General Manager (2010-2015). Dr. Payton is an Assistant Professor of Voice at Capital University in Columbus, OH. Since 2016, his private NYC Studio and Seagle Artists have placed in various levels of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and are singing with Merola Opera Program, Wolf Trap Opera Company, Chautauqua Opera Company, Sarasota Opera, Central City Opera, Opera Saratoga, Opera Theatre St. Louis, Opera Philadelphia, Opera Delaware, Middlebury Opera, and have received Career Blueprint Awards from Opera America. His music theatre artists have been seen in Naked Boys Singing in NYC, have won the national music theatre NATS competition, and are singing at festivals such as the International Performing Arts Institute in Germany.
Payton made both his Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center debuts in Michael Ching’s opera, Corps of Discovery: A Musical Journey, and has presented chamber music recitals with his professional ensemble, Payton and the Pipes, in Italy and throughout the United States. He has presented technique and audition masterclasses at The Boston Conservatory, University of Southern Mississippi, University of Texas El Paso, and Utah State University.
Vocal Coaches/Pianists
Neill Campbell
Pianist Neill Campbell has been on the music staff of Seagle Festival since 2018. He has also been a pianist/coach at Janiec Opera Company at Brevard Music Center, Gulfshore Opera, Pensacola Opera, and Shreveport Opera. At Shreveport, Neill was a Resident Artist, where he served for two years as chorus master, rehearsal pianist, and pianist for the Shreveport Opera Xpress outreach and touring program. Most recently, Neill was the coach and Program Director for the Gate City Bank Young Artist Program at Fargo-Moorehead Opera, where he prepared singers for Speed Dating Tonight and Cavalleria Rusticana. Neill has performed across the United States, and internationally in Italy and in Havana, Cuba. Neill is a graduate of Michigan State University, where he received both his MM in Collaborative Piano, and his BM in Piano Performance.
John Cockerill 
Pianist and vocal coach John Cockerill joined the Seagle Festival music faculty in 2018 and has had the pleasure of music-directing The Great Gatsby (2018), The Manchurian Candidate (2019), The Fantasticks (2021), La bohème (2021) Once Upon a Mattress (2022), and Sweeney Todd (2024). John holds a master’s in musicology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master’s in collaborative piano from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He has served on the music staff at Des Moines Metro Opera, and he is currently the assistant conductor at Tri-Cities Opera in Binghamton, NY, where he has music-directed productions of Suor Angelica and The Elixir of Love. John has also been active in musical theatre. He made his off-Broadway debut at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2017, and he was nominated for a Jeff Award for Bonnie & Clyde (2017) in Chicago. You can hear him as a featured pianist on the recording of Rosśa Crean’s The Great God Pan (Navona Records, 2017).
Yukiko Oba
Highly sought-after pianist Yukiko Oba is a Boston-based artist known for her abilities as both a collaborative and concert pianist. Serving as a senior member of the music staff at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Ms. Oba has collaborated with many young singers who now sing professionally at major opera houses in the US and abroad including The Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Santa Fe Opera, St. Louis Opera, Glimmerglass, Houston Grand Opera and countless others. Singers such as Gabriella Reyes, Ava Pine, Vanessa Becerra, Eric Ferring, Mack Wolz, Sondra Kelly, and Anthony Roth Constanzo have engaged with Ms. Oba in the studio and stage alike. As a concert pianist, she has appeared at Jordan Hall and the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum. Most recently, she’s performed as a solo pianist for the Boston Lyric Opera’s Bluebeard’s Castle and performed Alma Mahler songs with Naomi Louisa O’Connell.
Ms. Oba is an affiliate artist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, she has served as a staff and audition pianist for Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Opera Collaborative, The Beth Morrison Project, Odyssey Opera, Boston Modern Opera Project, Seagle Festival, Opera NEO, The Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, The Mass Opera competition, and many others.
Ms. Oba holds a Bachelor’s degree from Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, Japan. In her free time, Ms. Oba enjoys spending time with her family and running marathons. Most recently, she placed first overall among the women’s division in the Adirondack Marathon.
Stage Directors
Octavio Cardenas
Stage director Octavio Cardenas captivates audiences with his visionary, visceral, and physical style of directing. Born in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico, Opera News has praised him for creating “an immersive theater experience” while the Dallas Morning News hailed him for bringing “every character and situation to life.”
This year saw him directing 3 world premieres: Dolores by Nicolas Lell Benavides and Marella Koch, Llantos by Adam del Monte, and Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote by Pulitzer Award Winner Anthony Davis. Also, Andrea Che nier for Opera Delaware and Ainadamar and Die Fledermaus for Eastman Opera Theater.
He received his Master of Fine Arts in Theatre from UCLA, a Master of Music from the University of South Carolina, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Centenary College in Louisiana. He was a Resident Artist at Minnesota Opera for 4 seasons and has served as the Head of Directing Staff at Des Moines Metro Opera where he directed very successful site-specific productions of María de Buenos Aires in a Black Box, Rappaccini’s Daughter at Des Moines Botanical Gardens, Galileo Galilei at a Planetarium, The Tender Land on a corn field and La bohème for the main stage. He has also been on the directing staff at Chautauqua Opera and is currently a Professor of Opera at The Eastman School of Music
Cara Consilvio
Cara Consilvio is a director and producer of opera, theater, and film. Cara will serve as the Guest Artistic Director for Opera Grand Rapids 2026-2027 Season. Her recent directing projects include La Bohème for Portland Opera, and Let’s Celebrate, a world premiere of three chamber operas for White Snake Projects. Other recent productions include Carmen and The Elixir of Love for Charlottesville Opera, and La Bohème for Opera Carolina. Cara has directed productions for Guerilla Opera, Opera Grand Rapids, Opera Naples, Tri-Cities Opera, Opera in the Heights, Chautauqua Opera, Opera Carolina, Fort Worth Opera, Anchorage Opera, Piedmont Opera, and others. Cara has also had engagements with The Glimmerglass Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, The Atlanta Opera, Tulsa Opera, American Opera Projects, and Opera Saratoga. As an educator and guest director, Cara has taught at Oberlin Conservatory, The Boston University Opera Institute and directed productions for Loyola University at New Orleans, The Cleveland Institute of Music, UC San Diego, Depauw University and The Hartt School of Music. Cara is a co-founder of Hup! Productions. Her feature film directing debut, a documentary called For the Love of Friends is currently available to watch on PBS passport. www.caraconsilvio.com
Richard Kagey
Richard Kagey has been Director of Productions at Seagle for over thirty years, directing operas and musicals as diverse as Oklahoma! to 2006’s workshop and performances of Morning Star by Ricky Ian Gordon. After spending numerous years on faculty at several colleges and universities, Mr. Kagey has begun freelance directing full time. He was involved with Pasatieri’s opera Frau Margot from its inception, and directed the first workshop production at Seagle during the summer of 2005. In the summer of 2007, he directed and was also set desginer for another Pasatieri premiere, Hotel Casablanca, for the San Francisco Opera Merola Program. The opera was a co-production with the University of Kentucky, where he also directed the piece. He is currently working extensively with Atlanta Opera and will direct Of Mice and Men during the 2008 Fort Worth Opera Festival. Other experience includes direction at regional theaters and opera companies across the country as well as several years as a press agent for Broadway theaters.
Corey Trahan
Corey Trahan is a performer, educator, and stage director with more than 85 roles across opera, operetta, music theatre, oratorio, and recital stages. Known for his comic timing, vocal versatility, and charismatic presence, he has appeared internationally in repertoire ranging from operatic classics to contemporary musical theatre.
He is Director of the Opera Studio at TCU and serves on the directing staffs of Tokyo Opera Studio and the Trentino Music Festival. In 2026, he joins the Seagle Festival to direct The Sound of Music. 2025-26 directing credits include L’enfant et les sortilèges, The Medium, A Service of Love, The Turn of the Screw, Carmen, and Die Zauberflöte, alongside performances with Fort Worth Opera (Madama Butterfly) and Louisiana Delta Ballet (The Polar Express).
Corey has held faculty and leadership positions at the University of Louisiana, Mahidol University in Bangkok, and Northwestern State University. He holds degrees from the University of North Texas (DMA), University of Houston (MM), and Louisiana State University (BM), and has been an apprentice at Lake George Opera, Central City Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Amarillo Opera, Shreveport Opera, and the Seagle Music Colony. He is a member of AGMA, Actors’ Equity Association, NATS, NOA, and Opera America.
