Rebecca Herman, Artistic Producer of Local Opera Local Artists (LOLA) in Austin, TX and opera stage director, is a storyteller who thrives on surprising, exciting, and moving audiences large and small. She is the Associate Director for Tomer Zvulun’s production of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, most recently seen at Calgary Opera and Utah Opera in 2023 and scheduled for Washington National Opera in Spring of 2025. In 2024, Rebecca returned to Austin Opera to direct Carmen, made her Madison Opera debut directing The Barber of Seville, and workshopped two new works, Un Cuento de Luces y Sombras and The Wildman attends the Queen’s Charity Retreat with LOLA. In the summer of 2023, Rebecca made her debut at The Glimmerglass Festival as the Associate Director for E. Loren Meeker’s production of La Bohème.
As the Artistic Producer of LOLA, Rebecca has been instrumental in cultivating innovative approaches to traditional, well-known classics as well as developing new works with living composers and librettists. Notable LOLA productions include: La Femme Bohème (La Bohème cast with all treble voices); La Clemenza di Tito: a Retelling (told through the eyes of Berenice of Cilicia, Tito’s lover, with added monologues spoken between musical numbers instead of the traditional recitativo); We Might Be Struck By Lightning (a devised work using classical Art song to tell two interwoven stories performed by 2 singers and 4 dancers); Lardo Weeping (a chamber opera featuring Dinah LeFarge “a rather large, sexual, woman of independent means,” who invites the audience into her living room for an evening of stories, musings, ranting, and ultimately physical transformation), Un Cuento de Luces y Sombras (a new Spanish language operetta about the power of embracing, instead of fearing, our differences by Venezuelan Composer and Librettist team Carlos Cordero and Germàn Barboza) and most recently The Wildman attends the Queen’s Charity Retreat (a comedy that looks at the uberwealthy, capitalism, and charity work).
Rebecca loves to collaborate with living composers and librettists. In the last several years, she has been able to facilitate the development of many new works including: Lardo Weeping (Stopschinski, Galloway); Good Country (Allegretti, Raker); Undine Speaks (Allegretti, Herman) Un Cuento de Luces y Sombras (Cordero, Barboza) and The Wildman attends the Queen’s Charity Retreat (Stopschinski, Rude Mechs).
