Director Biographies

photo ©Susan Wilson	Channing Yu (Artistic Director & Conductor) draws upon a rich array of musical experiences to achieve decisive and expressive interpretations of opera. His thorough understanding of both the voice and the orchestra makes him distinctive among emerging young American opera conductors. Prior to conducting this production of Verdi’s Otello, he conducted the Lowell House Opera in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (2003), Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (2007), and Puccini’s Turandot (2008) as well has serving as cover conductor in Bizet’s Carmen (2002) and as coach in the world premiere production of Noam Elkies’ Yossele Solovey (1999). This past season, he conducted the Lowell House Opera Orchestra in the Boston début performance of American soprano Sarah Price. He served as guest conductor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, in its 2008 production of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s baroque opera Les Arts Florissants. He has also served as assistant conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra. Originally trained as a pianist, he was a divisional grand prize winner of the American Music Scholarship Association International Piano Competition, and he has appeared as piano soloist with numerous orchestras including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic, and Orchèstra Nova. He was praised by The Boston Globe for his “imaginative piano work.” As a violinist, he has played in the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and now performs regularly as a chamber musician with the string quartet Quartetto Periodico. As a lyric baritone, he was invited to study at the Neil Semer Vocal Institute in Coesfeld, Germany. He lives in Boston.
	Sarah Eggleston (Producer) embarks upon her ninth year with the Lowell House Opera, singing in four productions and producing Don Giovanni (2005), The Threepenny Opera (2006), Der Rosenkavalier (2007), and Turandot (2008). She produced L’Orfeo with the Harvard Early Music Society and has also stage managed seven productions with the Harvard Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players as well as Candide, Dialogues of the Carmelites, and The Marriage of Figaro with the Dunster House Opera. She is a recent graduate of Harvard in chemistry, physics, and mathematics and is currently a Masters candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Specialized Studies.