Time to Act: Bringing a New Opera to Life

Time to Act: Bringing a New Opera to Life Boston Conservatory at Berklee vocal arts students played a vital role in shaping the opera's creative development.

July 24, 2026

By

Sarah Godcher Murphy

Professor Laura Kaminsky is a composer whose stock-in-trade is making opera of contemporary life. Her new work with librettist Crystal Manich, Time to Act, asks tough questions about gun violence in twenty-first-century America as it explores the lives of high school drama students after a school shooting hits very close to home.

Boston Conservatory at Berklee vocal arts students played an instrumental role in Time to Act's creative development. In fall 2024, they workshopped an early draft of the libretto and provided feedback that helped to shape the narrative and craft authentic teen characters. A year and a half later, in April 2026, the Conservatory's Vocal Arts Department gave Time to Act its collegiate premiere with a cast of Gen Z performers whose own lived experience as members of the lockdown generation brought fresh insight to their roles.

As committed to teaching as she is to composing, Kaminsky was ecstatic to have her new work brought to life by Boston Conservatory students who, like the characters in the opera, turn their complicated reality into thematically rich storytelling. It's that whole learning curve of performing a new opera, and that the subject matter is something that I thought would be powerful and relevant for them, that it could lead to not just musical conversations but cultural, societal, political conversations, ethics conversations, she said.

The initial concept for Time to Act originated with Boston Conservatory alum Kostis Protopapas (MM 99, piano), artistic director of Opera Santa Barbara, who reached out to Manich after the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Parkland's theater students-who turned their grief into activism in the months following the shooting-served as inspiration. The power of art to transform and activate people is a big part of the story, Kaminsky says.

Along with dramaturg Amy Hutchison, the creative team developed the work over several iterations while a commissioning consortium gradually coalesced around the project. Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Santa Barbara, and Opera Montana-led by alum Michael Sakir (MM 09, conducting)-joined forces with Boston Conservatory at Berklee to bring the opera to fruition. Pittsburgh Opera gave Time to Act its professional premiere in February 2026, and Boston Conservatory followed with the collegiate/New England premiere in April 2026.

To serve as a commissioning and creative partner for a new opera is an extraordinarily rare and profoundly exciting opportunity, says Chair of Vocal Arts Isa Jess Mu oz, who helped broker the consortium arrangement and steered the collaboration on the Boston Conservatory side. The Boston productions were stage directed by David Gately and conducted by Andrew Bisantz, both associate professors in the Vocal Arts Department.

All photos by Jim Coleman

A week after the Boston production, Conservatory students performed a semi-staged production of Time to Act at one of New York City's most innovative venues for contemporary music, National Sawdust in Brooklyn. A live recording of the performance will be released by the Grammy Award-winning contemporary classical label Bright Shiny Things in spring 2027, with Mu oz serving as coproducer alongside Elaine Martone, whose many Grammy wins include three for Producer of the Year, Classical.

Citing Martone's decades-long track record with orchestras and artists around the world, Mu oz says, Opportunities like this don't simply prepare students for the field-they transform their artistic lives.

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Time to Act: Bringing a New Opera to Life Boston Conservatory at Berklee vocal arts students played a vital role in shaping the opera's creative development.

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