Stage Direction

Ms. Blades is an accomplished stage director with extensive experience in opera and musical theatre. As a faculty member of Peabody Conservatory’s Opera Department (1998–2016), she directed over 25 productions, including the U.S. premiere of Anna Sokolovic’s Svadba – Wedding, a six-women, unaccompanied Serbian-language opera. Her other productions include Così fan tutte, Cendrillon, A Postcard from Morocco, Trouble in Tahiti, Transformations, L'incoronazione di Poppea, Amy Beth Kirsten's Ophelia Forever, and L'enfant et les sortilèges. Her direction has been consistently praised as "fluid," "confident," and "focused."

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From 2015 to 2021, she served as co-director of Opera and Musical Theatre Workshop at Goucher College, where she directed Cabaret, the Musical, Heathers: The Musical, Dido and Aeneas, Little Women, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Suor Angelica, From Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill, Songs for a New World, and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

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As a freelance director, Ms. Blades has worked on productions ranging from world premieres to traditional opera and musical theatre. Her contemporary premieres include Alice, an Operatic Adventure (Music Off Main) and Briscula (Opera Bel Cantanti). Additional directing credits include Daddy Long Legs, The Telephone, The Fantasticks, and They’re Playing Our Song (Live Arts Maryland), Le nozze di Figaro and My Beautiful Galathea (Opera Bel Cantanti), and The Medium (Music Off Main).