The Barber of Seville

Peruvian-American Mezzo-Soprano KELLY GUERRA, fresh from her fall 2024 debuts at both the Metropolitan Opera as a Niña in Golijov's smash hit Ainadamar and as Jo March in Adamo's Little Women at Fort Worth Opera, where she received glowing reviews such as "beautifully meets the immense musical and dramatic demands of the role, bounding with energy while producing an unfailingly gorgeous vocal performance" (OnStageNTX) is praised for her versatility as a performer.

Other recent engagements include a debut as Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri with Anchorage Opera, and appearances in Il barbiere di Siviglia, María de Buenos Aires, Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, Zorro, Scalia/Ginsburg and the title role in Luisa Fernanda.

Praised for “the easy caramel syrup of his voice” (Opera Today), Mexican-American baritone Armando Contreras is quickly becoming a standout in the world of opera.  In the 2024-2025 season, he joins Pacific Opera Project as the title role in Antonio Cagnoni’s Don Bucefalo, appears as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia with Opera Las Vegas, and will sing as the baritone soloist in Ein deutches Requiem by Johannes Brahms with the Larimer Chorale. He recently joined the Crested Butte Center for the Arts for concerts including as Guglielmo in an abridged version of Così fan tutte.

In the summer of 2023, Mr. Contreras made his company debut with Cincinnati Opera as Lt. Roberto Gonzalez in the stage premiere of The Knock. In the 2023-24 season, Mr. Contreras sang the roles of Hemingway and Santiago in the world premiere of The Old Man and the Sea with the Beth Morrison Projects at both Carolina Performing Arts and ASU Gammage, joined the Omaha Symphony as the Baritone soloist in Brahms’s Requiem, performed as Older Thompson in Glory Denied with the Cleveland Institute of Music, and joined Arizona Opera as Zazueta and Moncada in excerpts from Zorro. 

In the 2022-2023 season, Mr. Contreras performed Dandini in La Cenerentola with Kentucky Opera, the role of Cesar Chavez in a workshop of Dolores, a new opera by Nicolas Benavidas based on the life of civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, performed recitals with Colorado State and Pikes Peak Opera League, and returned to Salt Marsh Opera to sing the role of Papageno in The Magic Flute.

GRAMMY & MAC Award winning Baritone Adelmo Guidarelli is excited to return to Opera Las Vegas for his 6th production! He is one of opera’s busiest singing actors sought after for the Italian character parts in operas by Donizetti, Rossini, and Mozart such as the title role in Don Pasquale, Dulcamara in The Elixir of Love, Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola, Bartolo in The Barber of Seville and Le Nozze di Figaro, Leporello in Don Giovanni and Don Alfonso in Così Fan Tutte. Other notable roles include Falstaff in Falstaff, Gianni Schicchi in Gianni Schicchi, the Sacristan in Tosca, Benoit and Alcindoro in La Bohème, and Sulpice in The Daughter of the Regiment.

In addition to opera, Mr. Guidarelli landed two national TV commercials for SONY’s PS4 Pro “Opera Campaign,” one of which debuted during the 2018 Super Bowl game day coverage on NBC. He is also part of the SONY MBA (Music Business Association) catalog singing the seasonal hits “A Christmas Toast” and “Sing Your Song.” His debut solo album titled “Treasured Songs of Italy & Germany” spawned an International Association of Independent Recording Artists (IAIRA) certified International #1 hit for his dual language version of “Funiculi, Funicula”, and he is a voting member of The Recording Academy.

Joshua Hughes, lauded for his “full-voiced, highly expressive, bass-baritone pipes” (Theatre Eddy’s), \\\"powerful lyricism” (Texas Classical Review), and \\\"brilliant vocal range” (DC Metro Theater Arts), has performed in opera, operetta, theatre, cabarets, and concerts ranging from Gilbert and Sullivan to Mozart to Verdi. A recent Vegas transplant, Joshua made his Opera Las Vegas debut as Don Basilio in Rossini\\\'s Il barbiere di Siviglia and has appeared as the bass soloist in J.S. Bach’s Ich habe genug, Cantata BWV 82 and Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Las Vegas Sinfonietta. Previous credits include the U.S. premiere of Carlo Coccia’s Matilde (Pantarotto) with Opera Southwest, La Traviata (Dottore Grenvil), Don Giovanni (Masetto & Commendatore), and Der fliegende Holländer (Daland) with West Bay Opera, The Pirates of Penzance (Major-General Stanley) and Iolanthe (Lord Chancellor) with Lamplighters Music Theatre, and Il barbiere di Siviglia (Fiorello), Tosca (Sciarrone), Alma Deutscher’s Cinderella (Minister), and West Side Story (Baby John) with Opera San José. He has performed internationally at Hong Kong Disneyland and across the United States with San Francisco Opera, American Baroque Opera Company, Dallas Bach Society, Young Victorian Theatre Company, Victorian Lyric Opera Company, Opera in Concert, Orchestra of New Spain, and Lyric Opera Baltimore.

Norman Espinoza, a Bass originally from San José California, has performed internationally and with numerous opera companies around the country. He is a graduate from San José State University where he obtained both his M.M. and B.M. in Vocal Performance.

Recognized for his powerful low notes, he has sung for Opera San José, Livermore Valley Opera, Lyric Opera Orange County, Opera Las Vegas, Opera Modesto, Berlin Opera Academy, Montefeltro Music Festival in Italy, and was recently a Chrisman Studio Artist for Opera Santa Barbara.

Roles Norman has sung include: Colline, Alidoro, Mustafà, Reverend Hale, Leporello, Il Commendatore, Sparafucile, Bartolo, Dr Grenvil, Seneca and Sarastro to name a few.

Norman now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife/new born son and works closely with Opera Las Vegas. He's also a Gondolier Singer for the Venetian Resort and he would love to take you on a ride on his gondola in Las Venice!

Claudia Affan is an emerging soprano residing in Las Vegas. She holds her BM in vocal performance from Auburn University, where she studied with Dr. Matthew Hoch. She has an MM from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she continues her studies. Affan was a studio artist with Opera Las Vegas for their 2024-2025 season, and is pleased to return this season. Her operatic roles include Jenny Slade in Robert Ward’sRoman Fever, Sam in Emily Clements’sLetters to Lily, The Daughter in Michael Torke’sStrawberry Fields, Kitty Hart inDead Man Walking, Clorinda inLa Cenerentola, and Berta inIl barbiere di Siviglia. Her concert work includes Handel’sMessiah and Mozart’sRegina coeli, K. 108. Affan has received awards at the state, regional, and national level from NATS, the Vann Vocal Institute, MTNA, and Alabama Federation of Music Clubs. She studies voice with Dr. Linda Lister.

Praised for conducting with "steady acumen and considerable aplomb" and "awesome control” (Opera Today), Joshua Horsch is an extremely versatile operatic and symphonic conductor.  A two-time winner of the American Prize in Opera Conducting, Joshua serves as Music Director and Principal Conductor of Opera Las Vegas. Joshua’s recent and upcoming conducting engagements include appearances with Washington National Opera, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Des Moines Metro Opera, Opera Orlando, Opera Idaho, Opera Baltimore, Greensboro Opera, Mobile Opera, Pacific Opera Project, and Tri-Cities Opera.  With a diverse repertoire of over sixty operas and a broad spectrum of orchestral and choral works, Joshua has recently held positions as a conductor and pianist/coach on the music staff of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Austin Opera, Detroit Opera, Florida Grand Opera, North Carolina Opera, Opera Saratoga, Pensacola Opera, the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Newport Music Festival. Joshua studied conducting and piano at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Pennsylvania State University, and Ithaca College.

Named as one of Musical America’s Top 30 Innovators in Classical Music, Josh Shaw is the Founding Artistic Director and CEO of Pacific Opera Project (POP), which has been described as "L.A.'s most exciting new opera company." Over the past twelve seasons, Shaw has directed over 50 productions at POP, including The Rake’s Progress, Ariadne auf Naxos, La Calisto, Tosca: A Moving Production; and La Boheme: AKA “The Hipsters”. A frequent librettist for English updates, his Star Trek inspired Abduction from the Seraglio and Nintendo inspired Magic Flute AKA #SuperFlute have gained national attention and have been produced at multiple companies, shattering attendance records.

Since turning his attention to directing in 2011, Shaw has directed over 100 productions at companies including Opera Santa Barbara, New Orleans Opera, Opera Orlando, Festival Opera, Gulfshore Opera, Intermountain Opera, Salt Marsh Opera, Opera Neo, and Opera in the Heights. His Barber of Seville at Opera Santa Barbara was described as "riotously funny" and "thoroughly amusing from overture to final bow." His work as a director has been described as "brave and unflinching," "ingenious," "relentlessly and adorably rambunctious," and "with enough good comic ideas for at least three productions." As a producer, Shaw has been praised for his "supreme savvy" and "high level of production quality" with "the power to enthrall and captivate audiences."

Recent projects include a new English adaptation of Die Fledermaus at Gulfshore Opera, a ground-breaking production of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta starring “The Blind Soprano” Cristina Jones, and the US Premiere of Vivaldi's Ercole su'l Termodonte. One of the busiest directors during Covid, Shaw directed more than a dozen productions during the pandemic including US staged premieres of Gluck’s La Corona and Il Parnaso Confuso, a drive-in Don Pasquale for Opera Santa Barbara, and an updated Cosi– “Covid fan tutte” set in 2020. Other recent projects include productions of Don Giovanni, La Gazzetta (Rossini), La Traviata, Guillaume Tell, The Mikado, and Tabasco: A Burlesque Opera, a newly rediscovered operetta by G. W. Chadwick, last performed in 1894, which was described as "delightful, packed with humor, and a feast for all the senses" by The New Orleans Advocate. In addition to directing the production, Shaw also wrote a new book and additional lyrics for the project that celebrated the McIlhenney Company’s 150th anniversary.

Beyond the rewrite of Tabasco, Shaw has written several English version libretti including a Wild West setting of Die Lustige Witwe, a contemporary setting of Die Schauspieldirektor, a production of Die Zauberflöte set in the world of 1990s video games, Covid fan tutte, a Star Trek inspired Abduction from the Seraglio, a 1930s Hollywood Fledermaus, and a groundbreaking production of Madama Butterfly sung in Japanese and English, a co-production of POP and Opera in Heights (Houston).

This season, Shaw directs Into the Woods for Intermountain Opera, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Don Giovanni at Gulfshore Opera, La Rondine at The Southern Illinois Music Festival, The Pirates of Penzance at POP, Falstaff at Salt Marsh Opera, and Tosca at Opera Orlando.