Neal Goren

Conductor Neal Goren is the founder and Artistic Director of Catapult Opera, in New York City, which presents neglected masterpieces from Monteverdi through the present. Their new CD set of Nadia Boulanger’s La ville morte has been critically lauded. BBC Music Magazine, in their 5-star review of the recording, states “Neal Goren conducts the Talea ensemble with unerring conviction. What might been just musical archeology becomes a living work.” 

 

From 2000 to 2015, Goren was the founder and Artistic Director of Gotham Chamber Opera. Goren conducted all of Gotham’s 27 productions, which included the world premieres by Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters and Lembit Beecher’s I have no stories to tell you; and the U.S. stage premieres of works by Kaija Saariaho, Toshio Hosokowa, Bohuslav Martinu, and Xavier Montsalvatge. Gotham’s production often featured unexpected elements, such as site-specific presentations in locales thematically related to the operas, such as Cavalli’s Eliogabalo presented in the Box, a louche Manhattan night club; Haydn’s Il mondo della luna, presented in the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History; and Daniel Catan’s La hija de Rappaccini, presented in the Rose Garden of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and the Greystone Manor Gardens in Beverly Hills, CA.

 

Goren’s other conducting credits include Die Zauberflöte for New York City Opera and the Trentino Music Festival (Italy), Dark Sisters by Nico Muhly for Trentino Festival (European premiere) and for Opera Philadelphia; Transformations by Conrad Susa, for San Francisco Opera Center; Mila by Eli Marshall (world premiere) for Asia Society of Hong Kong and additional performances in New York and San Francisco; and Anaïs Nin and Odysseus’ Women by Louis Andriessen (US premiere) for Center for Contemporary Opera; Le nozze di Figaro, La clemenza di Tito, Alcina, and Cendrillon for Trentino Music Festival.

 

A much sought-after recital accompanist, Goren was a protétgé of Geoffrey Parsons and has concertized extensively with Leontyne Price, Kathleen Battle, Hei-Kyung Hong, Harolyn Blackwell, Hakan Hagegard, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Aprile Millo, Hermann Prey, among others. He is an Associate Professor at Mannes College, The New School for Music, where has served on the faculty since 1991. Goren is a frequent judge of national and international vocal and composers’ competitions and is a frequent featured guest on the Metropolitan Opera quiz. 

 

A celebrated writer and lecturer on opera topics, his book, Beyond the Aria; Artistic Self-Empowerment for the Classical Singer was published by Rowman & Littlefied (formerly Amadeus Press) in January 2021. He has written about music and architecture for Yale Constructs Magazine and about music and art for Air Mail online newsletter.