Alumnus and current faculty member in the school of music R. B. Schlather, along with his regular collaborator Geoffrey McDonald, have been named on a year-end list of ten pivotal moments in 2015 opera performance in NYC by WQXR radio for their production of Handel's "Orlando" in April. Schlather and McDonald join the faculty at Ithaca College in the Spring Semester to bring their innovative take on opera performance to Handel's "Semele."
"R.B. SCHLATHER: Gotham Chamber Opera's late-summer demise at least had a counterbalance earlier in the year (April) with Handel's Orlando at the Whitebox Art Center that showed just how much innovative operatic talent is out there, starting with stage director Schlather. He flooded this operatic study in madness with modern-day imagery - mightily executed by a cast including Kiera Duffy and Drew Minter and conducted by Geoffrey McDonald. Schlather should have his own opera company." - David Patrick Stearns http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/10-pivotal-moments-2015-opera-and-classical/
Also, Schlather's November production of Philip Glass' "In The Penal Colony" at Boston Lyric Opera was named by Boson Classical Review's list of the Best Performances of 2015: "This production of In the Penal Colony by the Boston Lyric Opera’s experimental Annex outlet, presented only an angular blank wall bisecting the cavernous Cyclorama, yet gave a stark yet moving reading of Phillip Glass’s dark, throbbing adaptation of the Kafka short story... the performance evoked Kafka’s oppressive vision, not just of a century of mechanized cruelty, but of the helplessness of the individual amid the spiritual crisis of a post-Freudian, God-is-dead world. "
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20160101112634319