Conductor, Vocal Coach

An Italian-born conductor, opera coach, pianist, and educator with credits across the United States and Europe.

This year Mr. Cormio is returning to Sarasota Opera to conduct Mozart’s Don Giovanni in their 2023 Winter Season. Among his upcoming engagements, he will be guest conducting with the Santa Fe Pro Musica ensemble.

South Florida Classical praised him as "an assured hand in the pit, conducting the score with vitality while leaving the singers room to breathe in their solos" for Così fan tutte at Sarasota Opera's 2016 season. Mr. Cormio’s “notable” conducting debut at the 2014 Sarasota Opera Festival in Il barbiere di Siviglia was praised for a “lovely, light touch with the music”: “the young Italian drew vital and spirited playing, with the fizzing ensemble exciting yet with a fine balancing of solo voices, chorus and orchestra” (The Classical Review).

He has led productions of L’elisir d’amore, Così fan tutte and A Room with a View at the Michigan State University; Street Scene and Hansel and Gretel at the West Virginia University; Le nozze di Figaro, Rita, Il segreto di Susanna, La serva padrona, and Les pecheurs des perles at Sarasota Opera.

As a symphonic conductor, he has appeared with orchestras around the United States and Europe, including the San Antonio Symphony, the Orchestra della Società dei Concerti di Bari, the Orchestra Sinfonica della Città Metropolitana di Bari, and the Bacau Symphony.

Mr. Cormio was Head of the Opera Program at the West Virginia University in 2014-15. He has been on the faculty of the University of Kentucky as Director of the UK Philharmonia for six years. He is currently also the Music Director of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras in Lexington, KY. He was the Artistic Director of the Opera Lucca Festival in Lucca, Italy, for three editions.

Daniel Isengart

Resident Stage Director & Performance Coach

A trained dancer, entertainer, director, and performance coach who helps singers to analyze, shape and master the physical aspects of their on-stage expressivity.

Born in Germany and raised in France and Germany, Daniel moved to New York City to become an entertainer. A noted specialist in the Franco-German Chanson repertoire of the early 20th Century, he has brought his multi-lingual one-man shows to Joe's Pub at The Public Theater, the BAM Café at the Brooklyn Academy of Arts, Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie Museum, the Neuberger Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Berlin’s Spiegeltent Bar Jeder Vernunft, and SF MOMA. He has hosted and directed numerous cabaret-style variety shows at venues around New York City and beyond, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Gershwin Hotel, the Playboy Casino in Cancun, and the Night Hotel in Times Square, where his weekly, multinational Foreign Affairs cabaret ran for over a year. Working with conductor Edwin Outwater, he has been featured as a solo artist with the concert:nova ensemble, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, and the Sun Valley Music Festival. More recently, Daniel has staged operas with the KWS, directed the 2020 winter concert series at Sun Valley Music Festival, and taught a Masterclass on the art of the Master of Ceremonies at the En Piste Circus School in Montreal. He has taught a course on the history of vaudeville and the cabaret art form at NYU and given Masterclasses at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Bard College, and Wilfrid Laurier University. His ultimate aim is to vitalize the classic recital art form as he coaches singers and performers in stage craft, interpretative skills, body language and mime.

Daniel serves on the advisory board of the award-winning series Living the Classical Life, hosted by Zsolt Bognár.

Glenn Morton

Artistic Director

Glenn Morton, a faculty member at New York’s three music conservatories, is proud to serve as the Artistic Director of all three Classic Lyric Arts Programs.

One of New York City’s most sought-after vocal coaches, he is honored to coach and mentor every singer and pianist attending Classic Lyric Arts workshops.

Mr. Morton currently serves on the faculties of Mannes College the New School for Music, Manhattan School of Music, and the Juilliard School, teaching courses in Italian Diction, French Vocal Literature, and Song Interpretation.

He received a Bachelors degree in piano performance from the Hartt School of Music and a Master of Music degree in collaborative piano from the Manhattan School of Music.

His work includes a wide variety of collaborations with companies such as the Opera Company of Boston, Tulsa Opera, New Orleans Opera, Sarasota Opera, Opera Lyra Ottawa, Santa Fe Opera, and Glimmerglass.

Mr. Morton serves as the founding Artistic Director of Classic Lyric Arts, Inc., a non-profit organization encompassing CLA Italy in Novafeltria, Italy, founded in 2009, and CLA France in the Périgord region of France, founded in 2012, providing advanced training in the techniques and traditions of French and Italian lyric music to emerging opera singers.

Michelle Rofrano

Conductor

Michelle Rofrano is an Italian American conductor with a keen interest in the intersection of art and social activism.

An avid opera conductor, she is the Music Director of City Lyric Opera, a women-led company in NYC. She has led productions of The Queen of Spades and Trouble in Tahiti with The Glimmerglass Festival; Telemann's comic opera Don Quichotte at Camacho's Wedding with Opera Saratoga; the New York premiere of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon with City Lyric Opera; Le nozze di Figaro with the Crane School of Music; Trouble in Tahiti, Service Provider, Avow, and A Flourish of Green with Westminster Choir College; Così fan tutte and The Turn of the Screw with DC Public Opera; Così fan tutte with the Oberlin in Italy opera festival; and Suor Angelica with New Jersey Opera Project. She has served as assistant conductor for productions of La bohème and Le nozze di Figaro with Florida Grand Opera; The Cunning Little Vixen, La Traviata, Blue, and Silent Night with The Glimmerglass Festival; Eugene Onegin and Salome with Spoleto Festival USA; The Merry Wives of Windsor and L'elisir d'amore with Juilliard Opera; Man of La Mancha with Opera Saratoga; and La bohème with Opera Birmingham.

Recent and upcoming projects include conducting Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher with Orpheus PDX, covering Dream of the Red Chamber with San Francisco Opera, the world premiere of Proximity with Lyric Opera of Chicago, leading Menotti’s Amelia al Ballo with Juilliard Opera, leading The Turn of the Screw at Curtis Institute of Music, conducting No One is Forgotten: An Operatic Radio Play by composers Paola Prestini and Sxip Shirey, and conducting La Traviata with City Lyric Opera. Previous engagements include leading The Queen of Spades and Trouble in Tahiti with The Glimmerglass Festival; Telemann’s Don Quichotte at Comacho’s Wedding with Opera Saratoga; the New York premiere of Viardot’s Cendrillon with City Lyric Opera; and Così fan tutte and The Turn of the Screw with DC Public Opera. 2024 brings an exciting company debut with Madison Opera.

John Viscardi

Alumni Advisor

John Viscardi, alumnus of CLA Italy 2009 and CLA France 2014, lives in Philadelphia with his wife Molly and two children, Jack and Noa. Throughout his operatic career, Mr. Viscardi has performed with Santa Fe Opera, Opera Philadelphia, New York City Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Des Moines Metro Opera, and Opera Carolina. After a few years performing the tenor repertoire, Mr. Viscardi realized that his voice possessed a lower range, and he moved into the baritone repertoire, where his credits include the title roles in David DiChiera’s Cyrano at Michigan Opera Theatre and Opera Carolina, Erich in Dear Erich at the New York City Opera, and a forthcoming Pelléas in Pelléas and Mélisande at Opera Southwest. In addition, he has sung Valentin in Faust at Michigan Opera Theatre, and Papageno in The Magic Flute at the Toledo Opera. It was his work as a high baritone that enabled him to free the upper part of his voice, and he is now a Lyric Tenor, studying a variety of roles, among them Don José in Carmen and Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly.

Mr. Viscardi is featured in collaboration with Glenn Morton on Brilliant Classics’ complete recording of the works of F.P. Tosti – available on Spotify and Apple Music. Mr. Viscardi’s performances with orchestra and in recital includes Carmina Burana with Opera Philadelphia, the Duruflé and Fauré Requiems, and Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs (the latter three in Carnegie Hall), Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center, and a recital of Tosti songs in Tokyo. Mr. Viscardi has appeared in both recital and concert at venues that include Carnegie Hall (New York), Geffen Hall (New York), Tokyo Opera City (Tokyo), Verizon Hall (Philadelphia) and Avery Fisher Hall (New York). Winner of both the Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition and Concorso Internazionale F.P. Tosti, Mr. Viscardi is a graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts and New York University.

A multi-faceted artist, Mr. Viscardi is incredibly experienced in running and growing a variety of organizations. He is the co-founder of ArtSmart, a national arts mentoring organization that empowers students in underserved communities to find their path through mentorship with paid professional artists. Additionally Mr. Viscardi is the creator of Heartbridge, an app that explores the dimensions of sight, sound, and touch, and how they coalesce within Live Streamed performances. The app uses the vibrating motor in a cellphone to make it vibrate in time with the artists’ heartbeat so that the audience can feel what the artist is experiencing. Mr. Viscardi also serves as a board member of The Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (PVLA).