Edward J. Crafts

Guest Director

Edward Crafts brings to his work with Peabody students the rare combination of training and professional activity as both a stage director and a singer. He holds degrees in Voice from Curtis and in Opera Stage Directing from Indiana, and has practiced in both fields throughout a long career.

Mr. Crafts was the founder of the Maryland Lyric Opera, for which he directed a dozen productions in half a dozen years. Before that, he directed the University of Nebraska Opera Theater and instructed young professional singers in the apprentice program of the Santa Fe Opera. His directing work with US regional companies has included such major challenges as Aïda and Falstaff.

As a singer, Mr. Crafts has performed for many years at the Metropolitan Opera and with major companies across the country, and also at Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper, and elsewhere in Europe. His repertoire includes most of the leading Wagner baritone characters, including two complete Ring cycles as Wotan, French roles such as Golaud in Pelléas and the villains in Hoffmann, and the major Italian buffi. Among his many operatic premieres, he takes special pride in Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place, which he has also recorded for DGG.

A teacher as much as he is a performer, Mr. Crafts will direct the Opera Potpourri program on October 27.