Colgate will host Francesca Zambello ’78, as the inaugural innovator-in-residence in February, 2025. Zambello is the artistic director of the Washington National Opera. She also served as the general and artistic director of the Glimmerglass Festival — transforming the lives of children and early career artists in all aspects of theater through her many apprenticeship programs.
The innovator-in-residence program is made possible through the generous support of the Clifford family for the Arts, Creativity, and Innovation Initiative. The program will bring innovators from across different fields in the arts, entrepreneurship, pedagogy, and technology to share their knowledge and work with the Colgate community.
During Zambello’s residency she will workshop scenes from a new opera, O’Keeffe: Kiss the Sky. The opera is based on the lives of two pioneering women in the arts, Georgia O’Keeffe, the American Modernist painter, and Mabel Dodge Luhan, a patron of the arts associated with the Taos artist colony in the early 20th century.
Zambello will work with Colgate students, faculty, staff, and a team of professional artists to develop original music, text, and choreography for the project. Zambello’s team includes Christopher Tin, a two-time Grammy-winning composer; Jessica Lang, resident choreographer at Pacific Northwest Ballet and artist in residence at Sarasota Ballet; and Kelley Rourke, a librettist, translator, and dramaturg.
Students and faculty will have the opportunity to participate in a process of collaborative creation with artists of the highest caliber and share their work with the University community. In addition, Zambello and her team will leave Colgate at the conclusion of the residency with new material for their opera, and Colgate will be credited for support in all future productions.