If you hadn’t heard, The Aspen music community endured a terrible loss this summer. On July 18, Aspen Music Festival and School opera program director Edward Berkeley died unexpectedly just hours before a performance of Mozart’s Magic Flute. From the obituary in Operawire:
Berkeley was born in New York City and became the artistic director of the Willow Cabin Theater Company and director of the Aspen Opera Theater Center where he directed classics and championed new operas including Cavalli’s “Eliogabalo” and “Giasone” and new works by Bright Sheng, Augusta Read Thomas, Michael Torke, Mark-Anthony Turnage, H.K. Gruber, and Bernard Rand.
He also directed the New York premieres of plays by Derek Walcott, Israel Horovitz, Terence McNally, Leonard Melfi, Louise Page, and Tennessee Williams. He also directed at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Library of Congress, Williamstown Theater Festival, Old Globe Theater, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, and Spoleto and Ravinia festivals. Most notably he directed the Tony-nominated revival of the play “Wilder, Wilder, Wilder” in 1993.
Berkeley also taught Shakespeare at the Circle in the Square Theater School and Pace University. He was also a guest faculty for the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and was a guest professor at Carleton College, Princeton University, and Williams College. He became a faculty member of the Juilliard School in 1987.
Colleagues and singers knew Berkley for his signature shorts, high socks, and sneakers and traveled almost exclusively by bicycle in Aspen.
If you ever had the chance to attend one of his opera workshops, it was wonderful to watch him shape the performances and help literally generations of singers. Opera has lost one its dedicated students.
