David Sloss, Artistic Director of Fremont Opera, comes to this project with many years of experience. Since 1980, he has been Music Director and Conductor of the Fremont Symphony, which also serves as the orchestra for Fremont Opera. During his long association with West Bay Opera, beginning in 1981, he conducted over twenty productions for the Palo Alto company. Among them have been La clemenza di Tito, Don Giovanni, The Barber of Seville, Tosca, The Marriage of Figaro, Tartuffe, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Così fan tutte, Italian Girl in Algiers, The Turn of the Screw, The Magic Flute, Pagliacci, Carmen, Count Ory, Falstaff, La Bohème, and Candide. He served as General Director of West Bay Opera from 1997 to 2005, and as stage director for productions of Carmen, Il Trovatore, The Barber of Seville, and Lucia di Lammermoor. He has also conducted operas for Pacific Repertory Opera, Berkeley Opera, the Lamplighters, the San Francisco Talent Bank, and the Oakland Symphony. From 1970 until the start of his full-time work at West Bay Opera in 1997, he was Professor of Music at Sonoma State University. Other conducting appearances have included the Santa Cruz County Symphony, Peninsula Symphony, ALEA II, Vallejo Symphony, and the Stanford Symphony. Prior to his appointment at Sonoma State University, Mr. Sloss worked as a producer and director for WGBH-TV in Boston, where he received an Emmy nomination for the National Educational Television series A Roomful of Music. He holds degrees in music from Harvard College and Stanford University.

Jonathon Field (Stage Director)
Mr. Field directed Fremont Opera’s inaugural production of La Bohème in 2007, and returns this season for Barber.  His other credits include over ninety productions throughout the United States. For Lyric Opera of Chicago he directed touring productions of Trouble in Tahiti, Gianni Schicchi, The Old Maid and the Thief, and The Spanish Hour. For San Francisco Opera's Western Opera Theatre he staged La Cenerentola and Die Fledermaus, and for Seattle Opera an updated version of La Bohème. Over the past ten years he has directed ten productions for Arizona Opera, and has been hailed as "their most perceptive stage director". Mr. Field introduced computer-generated scenery to opera production in Candide, and he has pioneered the use of video-projected scenery in productions of The Tales of Hoffman and Der Freischütz.  He has staged H.M.S. Pinafore for Opera Omaha, Trial by Jury for Lake George Opera, and Bernstein's Wonderful Town in Chicago. He assisted Robert Altman with the world premiere of William Bolcom's McTeague in Chicago, and David Alden with Conrad Susa's The Love of Don Perlimplin in San Francisco.  As Artistic Director of Lyric Opera Cleveland, Mr. Field staged a 2002 production of Don Giovanni which was nominated for the Northern Ohio Live Award of Achievement.  Other notable productions at Lyric Opera Cleveland have included a unique Così fan tutte in which the audience votes to choose one of three alternative endings, and Little Women.