leadership

Lani Winskye hails from St. Petersburg, Florida. She holds a BA in Theatre Arts from the University of South Florida. Mrs. Winskye was the founding Company Manager of Hat Trick Theatre Productions, where she served for over eight years before moving to attain her MFA in Theatre for Young Audiences at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Her joint passions for arts education, stage management and arts administration led her to find her home with The Milnes VOICE Programs in 2014, first as a production manager, and now as Managing Director (and sometime Stage Manager). Mrs. Winskye has stage managed in a variety of live performance genres and venues, and taught all areas of theatre and arts management to students across the US. Favorite stage management experiences include Noises Off, Waiting for Godot, Alice Ryley: A Savannah Ghost Story and Anna Hunter: The Spirit of Savannah.

Chad Sonka is establishing himself as a versatile American baritone, teacher, and director. Most recently, he directed and sang the role of Alidoro the world premiere of A Royal Feast by Michael Ching, a sequel to Rossini's La Cenerentola, with the Savannah VOICE Festival. He has performed as the baritone soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem at Carnegie Hall with Iowa State University and Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with Oneota Valley Community Orchestra. Previous performing credits: Tosca (Scarpia – cover) with Central City Opera; Gianni Schicchi (Marco) with Savannah Music Festival; Man of La Mancha (Don Quixote) and Carmen (Dancaïro) with Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre; The Mother of Us All (Virgil T.), The Rape of Lucretia (Junius), Faust (Wagner), Elijah (Elijah) with Manhattan School of Music; and Amahl and the Night Visitors (King Melchior) with Nevada Opera. He was the first-place winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions – Iowa District in 2017. Chad is an active voice teacher and director and currently serves on voice faculty at Iowa State University. Directing credits include multiple scenes programs, Cendrillon (Viardot), Hansel and Gretel (Humperdinck), and The Little Prince (Portman).

Emily Gallagher is a soprano and community based artist working in the United States and Austria. This season she has been seen performing Shattered Storybook, an original solo concert at Balance Arts Center in NYC, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel and Adele (cover) in Die Fledermaus with Pacific Opera Project, John F. Kennedy in the world premiere of Minute to Midnight with Synchromy, and in concert in Savannah, Georgia, Vienna, Austria; and Valletta, Malta. As a 2022-23 Fulbright Scholar to Austria, she worked with the multimedia production company TaleSpin—Musical Tales for Big and Small to produce an original children’s concert series and picture book available in four languages

Additional projects this season included Assistant Director for the world premiere of Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant with Opera Modesto, Artist-In-Residence at the Southern California Children’s Museum, and participant in the 2024 Opera for Peace Academy in Rome and Paris. Upcoming engagements include First Wood Sprite in Rusalka with Pacific Opera Project and her solo recital Women Have Loved Before featuring the music of Margaret Bonds which will be performed in Vienna with her collaborator Donna Suenyan Chan.

Composer Jodi Goble writes text-based, character-driven music fueled by her extensive background as a vocal coach and song-specialist collaborative pianist. Her compositions have been performed across the United States and internationally and featured on National Public Radio. She won the Iowa Music Teachers Association Commission Competition in 2013 and took first prize in the National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Competition in 2024 for her song cycle Sea Creatures for soprano and piano. She also placed as a NATS ASCA finalist in 2008, 2017, 2020, and 2021, as the honorable mention winner in 2015, and won second prize in 2016. Her art songs are published in anthologies by New Music Shelf and North Star Music.

Ms. Goble’s recent commissions include works for Seaglass Theater, Really Spicy Opera, I, the Siren, Voices of the Pearl, the Durward Ensemble, and Laura Strickling’s GRAMMY-nominated 40x40 Project. Her works have recently been performed at the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago’s Spring Lieder Lounge, the ASEAN Festival of Contemporary Music, Calliope’s Call, Songfest, the National Opera Center in New York City, the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris, San Francisco Opera's Atrium Sessions, Jordan Hall, Ames Town and Gown, Omaha Under the Radar, and the Art Song Preservation Society of New York. Helen of Troy, her monodrama for mezzo-soprano and chamber instruments, was recorded and released by the Durward Ensemble on their Prophetic Revolutions album.

Ms. Goble is Full Teaching Professor in Voice at Iowa State University, the official pianist for the Simon Estes Roots and Wings Community Concert Series, and the official accompanist for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Guild Auditions in Iowa.

Reviewed as having “the most expressive conducting hands since Stokowski” by the New York Daily News, Maestro Parodi has worked extensively in North America, Latin America and Asia. Some of his credits include Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires for New York City Opera, The Atlanta Opera, Opera Hispánica and Opera Grand Rapids; Rodriguez’s Frida for The Atlanta Opera and Opera Orlando; Lucrezia Borgia and I Capuleti e i Montecchi for Buenos Aires Lírica (Argentina); The Turn of the Screw for the Castleton Festival in Virginia and The Banff Centre (Canada); Carmen, Les pêcheurs de perles, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Les contes d’Hoffmann and Le nozze di Figaro for Opera Tampa; Roméo et Juliette, Il barbiere di Siviglia, La traviata, Pagliacci, Faust, Dido and Aeneas, and Madama Butterfly for Savannah OPERA; Les contes d’Hoffmann and Die Fledermaus for Opera Orlando; ¡Figaro!(90210) for Chautauqua Opera; and L’enfant et les sortilèges for The Juilliard School.

He led the World Premiéres of Anton Coppola’s Lady Swanwhite for Opera Tampa, Michael Ching’s The Birthday Clown for Savannah OPERA; and John Musto’s Rhoda and the Fossil Hunt in a coproduction of On Site Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago Lyric’s Unlimited and Pittsburgh Opera-. In the 21/22 Season he made his debut at Amarillo Opera for their Opera Gala; at Gulfshore Opera with Tosca; and at the Merola Program of the San Francisco Opera conducting the Schwabacher Summer Concert. In the 22/23 season he made his debut at New Orleans Opera with Charlie Parker’s Yardbird and at El Paso Opera with La Traviata; and he returned to Tampa for Norma, Amarillo for Rigoletto; Gulfshore Opera for Il barbiere di Siviglia and Don Giovanni; and Opera in Williamsburg for Don Giovanni. Last season he made his debut at Knoxville Opera with Fastaff and at Opera San José with Rigoletto; and he returned to Orlando for Frida; Gulfshore Opera for Turandot; and Williamsburg for Die Fledermaus and Les contes d’Hoffmann.

Jorge Parodi has worked with a wide range of ensembles, as the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Michoacán (Mexico), the NHK Symphony (Japan), the Ensamble XXI and the Orquesta del Conservatorio Nacional (Argentina), the Castleton Festival Orchestra, the Metamorphosis Chamber Orchestra, the Ensemble Zipoli for the American Baroque, and the Juilliard Pre College Orchestra among others. He has worked with such companies as the Teatro Colón in Argentina, the Volgograd Opera in Russia, the Encuentros Internacionales de Opera in Mexico and the International Vocal Arts Institute in Israel. He has collaborated with such artists as Isabel Leonard, Nancy Herrera, Eglise Gutiérrez, Tito Capobianco, Sherrill Milnes, Aprile Millo and Rufus Wainwright and has assisted conductors Lorin Maazel and Julius Rudel, among others.

Maestro Parodi is the General and Artistic Director of Opera Hispánica, the premier company in the United Sates focused on the Hispanic vocal repertoire and on the Latin perspective. With Opera Hispánica, maestro Parodi performed with such artists as Nancy Fabiola Herrera, Eglise Gutiérrez and Metropolitan Opera star, Isabel Leonard. He conducted OH’s production of Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires, which The New York Times described as “excellent.” Opera Hispánica’s programming included a production of de Falla’s El Amor Brujo featuring Spanish opera superstar Nancy Fabiola Herrera in collaboration with Teatro Grattacielo; Y Volveré, a solo recital featuring Verónica Villarroel, and the American premiere of the first Guarani opera, Diego Sanchez Haase’s Ñomongeta, in coproduction with the Americas Society and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian; and a program of South American Baroque music at the Missions of San Antonio (an UNESCO World Heritage Site).

“the most expressive conducting hands since Stokowski’s,” (New York Daily News)
Mr. Parodi in the new Music Director of the Moores Opera Center and Assistant Director of Orchestras at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston. Primary responsibilities include collaborating with the Director of Orchestral Studies to serve the myriad orchestras at the Moores School of Music and the Moores Opera Center and to teach conducting to undergraduate and graduate students.

He has been a faculty member at The Juilliard School for over two decades and is Vocal Coach of the premier Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. and he is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Tokyo International Vocal Arts Academy Summer Workshop, an intensive program for pianists and singers in the early stages of their professional career. Maestro Parodi was the Music Director of the Senior Opera Theater at the Manhattan School of Music, where he led its productions for twelve seasons to critical acclaim, including Schubert’s Die Verschworenen –that the New York Times praised as being “superbly performed”– and the American premieres of Le Roi l’a dit by Délibes and Nina by Paisiello. His work with MSM Senior Opera Theater was featured in an interview published in the March ’18 edition of Opera News. He was Music Director of the International Summer Opera Festival of Morelia (Mexico), and a long time faculty member of the International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv, one of the world’s foremost summer opera training programs. With IVAI he taught at the Nagano Opera Master Class (Japan) and at the Inaugural Opera Master Class in conjunction with China National Opera (Beijing). He has also been a faculty member of Artescenica (Mexico), and the International Institute of Vocal Arts (Puerto Rico).

He has offered master classes at the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), Manhattan School of Music (as coteacher with opera legend Martina Arroyo), the Escuela Superior de Canto (Madrid), the Kunitachi Music College (Tokyo) and Senzoku Gakuen Music College (Tokyo).

Maestro Parodi was appointed Artistic Director of the Sherrill Milnes VOICE Programs (VOICExperience and Savannah VOICE Festival). The Savannah VOICE Festival is a celebration of the classical voice with over 25 performances, including operas, concerts and masterclasses. The Festival and its sister organization, the VOICExperience, which helps young artists pursue their careers in the performing arts, were founded by opera legend Sherrill Milnes and soprano Maria Zouves. They work together to serve the community by providing the highest level of education and quality performances by talented artists for all to enjoy. Maestro Parodi recently conducted Dido and Aeneas, and Madama Butterfly at the SFV, and in previous seasons he led productions of Pagliacci, La Traviata, Roméo et Juliette, Faust and Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Within the framework of the Festival, he programmed events that included artists of the caliber of Frederica von Stade, James Morris, Sherrill Milnes, Fabrizio Melano, Trey Smagur and Federico de Michelis among others.

He is Music Director of Gulfshore Opera in Southwest Florida, where he has conducted Die Fledermaus, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Don Giovanni and Tosca with the Naples Philharmonic, and this season he lead a production of Turandot at Artis Naples. He is also the Music Director of Opera in Williamsburg (Virginia), where he has conducted Rigoletto, Il trovatore, L’elisir d’amore, Lucia di Lammermoor, La cenerentola and Così fan tutte, among other titles.

Maestro Parodi also conducted historically informed performances of Cavalli’s La Calisto and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, and a concert performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in Lincoln Center that Opera News praised as “a fully convincing presentation”. Other New York credits include productions of The Beggar’s Opera, La Doriclea, The Ghost of Versailles, La Vida Breve, Riders to the Sea, Camilla, Apollo e Dafne, Don Giovanni, Orphée aux Enfers, and La vie parisienne.

A prizewinner at the Bienal de Arte of Buenos Aires, Mr. Parodi completed studies in Conducting and Piano Performance at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música of Buenos Aires. He holds a Masters degree in Accompanying and Chamber Music from the University of Michigan as a full-scholarship student of the eminent accompanist, Martin Katz. He participated in the recording of the complete edition of the music for piano by Muzio Clementi with Denon Essentials and is featured in recordings for Albany Records and MSR Classics.