In this year in review article of South Florida performances, Lawrence Budmen writes, “In April, Michael Daugherty’s postmodern synthesis of American popular culture and avant-garde modernism combined sarcasm and pathos in equal measure. Vindhya Khare’s agile and radiant soprano evoked the glamour and mystery of the title heroine in an imaginative multmedia staging by Ben Krywosz. A milestone for the University of Miami’s opera program under Alan Johnson.”
Frost Opera Theater’s last season concluded with the staged production of the opera Jackie O by Michael Daugherty and Wayne Koestenbaum. The pop operatic collage combines Opera and American musical theater in this story of the private and public life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as she encounters Maria Callas, Liz Taylor, Ari Onassis, Grace Kelly, and Andy Warhol. Jackie O is an opera in two acts in which events are based on history, but are largely imaginary or metaphorical. American composer Michael Daugherty (2011 Grammy Award winner for Best Classical Composition—Metropolis Symphony) and librettist Wayne Koestenbaum (author of The Queen’s Throat and Jackie Under My Skin) capture the mystery, tragedy and glamour of an American icon.
Festival Miami at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami also earned an Honorable Mention for "Dawn Upshaw’s exquisite vocalism in Maria Schneider’s fine song-cycle Winter Morning Walks at Festival Miami" and Most Interesting Revival for the "enterprising all-American program that opened Festival Miami in October, Thomas Sleeper led the Frost Symphony Orchestra in a rare performances of the craggy, bristling Sun-Treader by iconoclast Carl Ruggles, an atonal work divorced from the sensibility of the Second Viennese School. Paul Creston’s Saxophone Concerto, a jazzy and distinctively American score, was a arresting bonus with a brilliant solo turn by Dale Underwood."
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