Biography
Heidi Lauren Duke
Heidi Lauren Duke wrote and directed her first play at the age of seven, and since then has found a home in the performing arts that encompasses music, literature, dance, and visual design. A specialist in interpreting the classics, she merges traditions of the past with the innovations of today, creating stage experiences that inspire her collaborators and audiences alike.
The summer of 2010 found Ms. Duke premiering Lorca en Nueva York, a new music theatre piece she developed, at Espai Brossa, an esteemed theater in Barcelona, Spain. Devised from the poetry Lorca wrote during his New York visit in 1929, interwoven with the Andalusian folk songs he loved to perform, as well as new music by Anthony Ocana, the production was met with a full house of Catalan theatre lovers and was featured in four Spanish newspapers. The piece will have subsequent performances in New York and an international tour is in development.
Other European projects include four seasons as Artistic Associate at Les Azuriales Opera Festival, which produces events in the Rothschild Villa overlooking Villefranche-sur-mer near Nice, France. There Ms. Duke helped develop the Ozone Program for Young Artists, and directed the annual Concert des Solistes, which features singers from around the globe performing in the intimate 200-seat house.
Ms. Duke makes her home in New York, where she has directed several classics to great acclaim, most recently Ravel’s
l’enfant et les sortileges and Britten’s Rape of Lucretia at the historic Player’s Club Theater in Gramercy Park, both with Jorge Parodi conducting. Her production of Hansel & Gretel for Opera Manhattan continues to run seasonally after its sensational premiere in 2009. Other new productions include Faust and
Cosi Fan Tutte for Hillhouse Opera in New Haven, Connecticut, Tosca and Aida for Opera of the Hamptons, Massenet’s Cendrillon, Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, Shakespeare’s Richard III, and Puccini’s La Boheme.
Also an active assistant director and choreographer, mentor directors include Bernard Uzan, Mark Morris, Ned Canty, Robin Guarino, Ben and Michael Spierman at Bronx Opera, and Chief Resident Director at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Elaine Kidd. In the spring of 2006, Heidi Lauren helped launch the first opera production of Lorin Maazel’s Chauteauville Foundation, Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw, which played to audiences on Maestro Maazel’s estate in Castleton, Virginia, as well as the Terrace Theatre of Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center.
In 2004 Heidi Lauren was accepted into the Directing MFA program at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied opera directing on full scholarship. She was also invited to UC’s Music and Opera Theatre Festival in Lucca, Italy, where she directed the second act of La Rondine with Maestro Mark Gibson, which performed in both Lucca and Torre del Lago, Italy.
Since graduating from Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music with a double major in musical arts and theatre, Ms. Duke has completed apprenticeships with a number of Young Artist programs in the US, including the Merola Program at San Francisco Opera, Wolf Trap Opera Company, and Opera North in New Hampshire.
Heidi Lauren grew up in suburban Chicago, Illinois, where she was an avid musical theatre performer with dreams of Broadway. Her music, dance and theatre training began at age eleven, with workshops at the Steppenwolf Theatre and “Cherubs” at Northwestern University. Most of her family, including three siblings, now live in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.