STEPHANIE FLEISCHMANN is a librettist and playwright whose texts serve as blueprints for intricate three-dimensional sonic and visual worlds. Her “lyrical monologues” (The New York Times), “finely tuned” opera libretti (Opera News), plays and music-theater works have been performed internationally and across the U.S.
Fleischmann collaborates closely with a wide range of composers, responding to and supporting each artist’s unique voice with language that sings and dramatic structures that activate and hold space for music. She writes texts designed to serve as blueprints for operas that are highly imagistic, powerfully theatrical, and intensely human. She is the 2022 recipient of the Opera America Campbell Librettist Prize.
Opera libretti include: In a Grove (music by Christopher Cerrone; commissioned by LA Opera; premiere: Pittsburgh Opera, directed by Mary Birnbaum, 2022; In a Circle Records, 2023, NY Times Best Classical Music Albums of 2023); Dido (music by Melinda Wagner, for Dawn Upshaw and the Brentano Quartet, 2022; commissioned by 92nd Street Y, Rockport, Chamber Music Northwest, Wake Forest, Hopkins Center for the Arts and more); 2 operas with Michael Hersch: Medea (for Ensemble MusikFabrik, Schola Heidelberg and Sarah Maria Sun, Cologne, 2023) and Poppaea (commissioned by Wien Modern/Zeiträume Basel Biennial for New Music and Architecture, 2021; nominated for the Austrian Music-Theater Prize, 2023; New Focus Recordings); 2 operas with Jeremy Howard Beck: Another City (commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, 2023) and The Long Walk (commissioned by American Lyric Theater, Opera Saratoga, 2015; Utah Opera and Pittsburgh Opera), and Arikhipov, music by Peter Knell (Jacaranda/Seattle Opera). Upcoming: The Pigeon Keeper (music by David Hanlon, commissioned by Santa Fe Opera, premiering TBD), Remedios Varios para las Affliciones del Cuerpo y el Espiritu, music by Carlos Carrillo (commissioned by Chicago Opera Theater); Tevye’s Daughters (music by Alex Weiser, commissioned by American Lyric Theater); a new commission from West Edge Opera, premiering in a production directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer in 2028); Paradiso with Yevgeniy Sharlat (for Hub New Music and Estelí Gomez, 2024/25, developed c/o Austin Opera). The Visitation, an Opera for a Vanishing World, with Christina Campanella received an Opera America Discovery Grant for Female Composers.
Fleischmann’s texts and songs have been set by composers Anna Clyne (“The Years,” for Scottish National Chamber Orchestra and Choir), Christopher Cerrone (“Last Message Received,” for Northwestern, and “Wind Phone, Goleta, CA, April 22,” for Conspirare), Gity Razaz (“She Sings,” for Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Bang on a Can Longplay), Olga Neuwirth (Aldeburgh, Basel, Berlin, Vienna), Matthew Recio (“Byssus” for Ithaca College Treble Chorale), Sxip Shirey, and others. Her rendition of “Carnival of the Animals” has been seen at the Ojai Festival and the Hollywood Bowl. Her “album adaptation” of Christopher Cerrone’s “Liminal Highway” for Soundworlds ranked among the top 100 podcasts in the UK and South Africa.
Music-theater works include The Visitation, a sound walk, with Christina Campanella (urhere.art/Jackie Robinson Park); Agave, with Daniel Kluger and Dmitry Troyanovsky (Brandeis); Niagara, with Bobby Previte and Daniel Fish (Hudson Opera House); Red Fly/Blue Bottle (music by Christina Campanella, Here Arts Center, NYC; EMPAC, Troy, NY; Noorderzon, NL; created with Mallory Catlett), The Secret Lives of Coats (music by Christina Campanella, Red Eye, Minneapolis, with Hayley Finn; Whitman College, WA; the Playwrights Center/Playlabs); The Sweetest Life, music by Saskia Lane (New Victory LabWorks; Vineyard Theatre; BRIC lab), Orpheus (HERE). Plays include Sound House, Eloise & Ray, Tally Ho, The Street of Useful Things, What the Moon Saw, The World Speed Carnival, among others. Fleischmann’s work for theater has been developed or presented at venues including Exit Festival (France), Roundhouse Studio (London), Synchronicity (Atlanta), Son of Semele (LA), Roadworks (Chicago), Empty Space, Act II, Asolo Rep and others; and in NYC at venues including New Georges, Soho Rep, Mabou Mines/Suite, Theater for One, the Knitting Factory, Prelude, the Public. Her plays have been published by Play, a Journal of Plays, Playscripts.com, and Smith & Krauss.
Additional writing and/or dramaturgy includes lyrics and dramaturgy for Chekhov at Lake Lucille (including the film, I Am a Seagull—lyrics/story producer); text/dramaturgy for The Russian Doctor, inspired by Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island, (Birmingham Rep, Bristol Old Vic, Winchester Theatre Royal, UK; Mass MoCA); songs for sound installations by Christina Campanella and Jim Dawson (NY Electronic Arts Festival); lyrics/dramaturgy/co-devising for The Greeks, Parts 2 & 3 and The Americans, with director Brian Mertes at Juilliard. She has received 2 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships for her fiction, and a memoir, as part of a micromuseum, was presented in Athens, Frankfurt, and Slovenia.
Fleischmann is a recipient of a Café Royal Cultural Foundation Performance Grant for The Visitation, a sound walk; a NYFA Fellowship in Playwriting for her libretto for The Pigeon Keeper; a Virginia B. Toulmin grant for her libretto for Barrel of Laughs. She has received a Venturous Capital Fund grant, a NYSCA Individual Artist Commission, and a 2014–15 Howard Foundation Fellowship in Playwriting for her play, Sound House; an Arts Council England grant (for Tally Ho), two NYSCA Individual Artist Commissions for her libretti (The Long Walk and Red Fly), a NEA Opera/Music-Theater commission, the Tennessee Williams Fellowship, and the Frederick Loewe and Whitfield Cook Awards, as well as residencies at Macdowell, Hedgebrook, HARP, BricLab, among others. Her work has been supported by the MAP Fund, Opera America, New Music USA, the Greenwall Foundation, Mid-Atlantic Arts Fund, the Tobin Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust, the Copeland Fund, LMCC Swingspace, and NY State Music Fund. She is an alumnus of the Composer Librettist Development Program at American Lyric Theater, a former Playwrights Center Core Writer, New Georges Audrey Resident, and a former resident playwright at New Dramatists.
She received her BA from Wesleyan University, and her MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College, where she studied with Mac Wellman. She has taught at Sewanee, Bard, and Skidmore Colleges.