Opera Hispánica

Directors

Daniel Frost Hernández
Founding Executive Director
An emerging music producer and entrepreneur, Daniel Frost Hernández brings both management and organizational experience to Opera Hispánica. His current duties include overseeing board cultivation, company management, fundraising, and marketing. A San Antonio native, Mr. Hernández has worked for Primary Services, a firm based in Houston that recruited for Fortune 500 companies within the oil and gas industry. He has also served as an administrator for Manhattan’s EMM Group, a hospitality/marketing firm. A trained tenor, he has sung with regional companies throughout the United States and studied opera at the Boston Conservatory and Moores Opera Center.

Camille Ortiz-Lafont
Artistic Director
Puerto Rican soprano Camille Ortiz-Lafont has been seen in lyric coloratura roles and song recitals locally and abroad. In addition to serving as Opera Hispánica’s Artistic Director, Miss Ortiz is coordinator of The Zipoli Ensemble, a Latin American Baroque music ensemble, and founder of ALMA, an organization that promotes Ibero-American repertory and Latino musicians. Her operatic credits include Fire/Nightingale in L’enfant et les Sortilèges(Coopera:POM), Oscar/Blonde in Ballo in Maschera (Martina Arroyo’s Prelude to Performance), Lucia in Rape of Lucretia (Manhattan School of Music), as well as a Mexican recital with pianist Juan Pablo Horcasitas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and with pianist Jeanne-Minette Cilliers for Música de Cámara at the Museum of the City of New York. An accomplished violinist, she is the founder of several after-school music programs in New York. Miss Ortiz holds a Master’s degree in Vocal Performance from the Manhattan School of Music.


Juan Pablo Horcasitas
Music Director
Mexican pianist Juan Pablo Horcasitas recently made his Carnegie Hall solo debut performing the works of Samuel Zyman and Enrique Granados, among others. In 1997, Mr. Horcasitas was awarded first place in the Manuel de Falla Piano Competition from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). As a collaborative pianist, chamber musician, conductor and educator he has dedicated much of his career accompanying singers both in recital and at the Manhattan School of Music where he currently serves as a Staff Accompanist. Mr. Horcasitas received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Piano Performance from the Manhattan School of Music under the guidance of Nina Svetlanova. He will help cultivate and develop the artistic vision of Opera Hispánica to ensure that its artistic endeavors are in-line with the company’s mission.

Brigid Milligan
Communications Director
Brigid Milligan is a public relations professional with a passion for the arts. She currently provides strategic communications counsel to a diverse set of Fortune 500 clients across numerous industries, including media, technology, financial services, health care, aviation and consumer products. Additionally, she teaches in Hunter College’s department of Media and Film Studies. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, she is a published bilingual poet and translator and has degrees from Wellesley College and New York University.

Regina Ferramosca
Finance Director
Regina Ferramosca brings years of financial management experience to Opera Hispánica. After spending twenty-two years in retail management, Ms. Ferramosca founded R.R.F.A. Consulting LLC, an accounting and bookkeeping firm. Her clients include the EMM Group and One Group. Along with the Executive Director, she plays a vital role in the management and development of Opera Hispánica’s financial matters.

Opera in New York City Takes on a Spanish Accent
By Julia Furlan: WNYC Culture Producer

On the streets, stage and screen, New York City is no stranger to the multi-regional staccatos of the Spanish accent. Nearly 17 percent of the city’s population hails from the Spanish-speaking world—from the tip of Southern Chile through Central America and the Caribbean to Spain. That’s created a movement of opera companies, ballet troupes, orchestras and film festivals focusing on Spanish-language material, which is increasingly filling seats in teatros across the city.

In the grand form of small and often underfunded New York City theaters, the Thalia Spanish Theater in Queens advertises a repertorio where “every month is Hispanic Heritage Month.” The Opera Hispánica, which is in its inaugural year, is a company dedicated exclusively to Spanish-language material. Another opera, Ricardo Llorca’s work about Internet addiction, “Las Horas Vacias (The Empty Hours),” puts on an of-the-minute theme at Lincoln Center next week.

Executive Director Daniel Frost Hernandez feels that although the pieces are in Spanish, any audience will connect with the music. “These compositions are based on universal issues that are obviously of global interest—they affect all of us,” he says. “It is the perspective from a Latin American or Hispanic composer that makes it Latin American or Hispanic.”

Dr. Antoni Piza, the director of the Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Graduate Center, is happy that New York is celebrating the extended vowels and vibrato of opera en Español. ”Not only will the several million Spanish-speaking people who live in the New York City area have access to their own tradition of musical theater,” he says, “the English-speaking audience gets to know something that most likely they would not encounter.”

Opera’s lingua franca is traditionally Italian. In Spain and Latin America, though, the tradition of zarzuelas, or light comedic operas, dates back to the 17th century. Dr. Piza is emphatic about reminding audiences that one of the most famous operatic arias was written by a Spaniard. “Carmen’s ‘Habanera,” he says, “of course was written by a Spanish composer,” referencing Sebastián Yradier, whose song was famously plagiarized by Georges Bizet. Olé to that.