Stephanie Fleischmann

“A writer who can conjure something between a dreamy road movie and a theatrical coming-of-age tale, and who can piece these elements together in the style of a jagged ballad for guitar.” —Chicago Sun Times

UPCOMING

"Lyrical monologues"
 —The New York Times

"Finely tuned libretto"
—Opera News

"The plot's tension is set, taut as a drawn bow."
—The New York Times

"Each song is a meditation on a moment. The moment is drawn out, lengthened, examined, illuminated, somehow made more beautiful by being looked at so carefully."
—The Brooklyn Rail

“Prescient libretto…”
—The Wholenote

“The best new libretto I have experienced in years…”
—Seen & Heard International

A 2026 Guggenheim fellow in Drama and Performance Art and the recipient of Opera America’s 2022 Campbell Librettist Prize, Stephanie Fleischmann is a librettist and playwright whose texts serve as blueprints for intricate three-dimensional sonic and visual worlds. Opera libretti include: In a Grove (Christopher Cerrone; Prototype—NY Times Best Classical Performances of 2025, Pittsburgh and LA Opera; In a Circle Records); Poppaea (Wien Modern; Basel Zeiträume; Austrian music-theater Prize nominee) and Medea (Ensemble MusikFabrik, Cologne), with Michael Hersch; The Silver Cypress (Niloufar Nourbakhsh; Beth Morrison Productions); No Trouble (Melinda Wagner; for Dawn Upshaw and the Brentano Quartet; Juilliard); Another City (Houston Grand Opera) and The Long Walk (Opera Saratoga/ALT/Utah Opera) with Jeremy Howard Beck; The Pigeon Keeper (David Hanlon; Opera Parallèle, Opera Omaha, Santa Fe Opera); Remedios Varios (Carlos Carrillo; Chicago Opera Theater) Paradiso (Yevgeniy Sharlat; Hub New Music, Austin Opera); Claude & Marcel (Alyssa Weinberg and Elkhanah Pulitzer; West Edge Opera), Tevye’s Daughters (Alex Weiser; ALT), and Arkhipov (Peter Knell; Jacaranda). The Visitation, a soundwalk with Christina Campanella, can be accessed via URHERE. Selected grants / fellowships / residencies: Café Royal Cultural Foundation, Howard Foundation, NEA, NYFA, NYSCA, MapFund, Macdowell, New Dramatists, Tennesee Williams Fellowship, HARP. Fleischmann is an alumnus of the Composer Librettist Development Program at American Lyric Theater.