Composer Geoffrey Hudson and librettist Alisa Pearson were students together at Oberlin College. Meeting again in Boston six years later, they quickly discovered a mutual fascination with insects. Their first creative collaboration—a cycle of songs about ants, fireflies, and beetles—only whetted their appetites for future bug-inspired work. They first hatched the idea of The Bug Opera in 2001, inspired in part by the success of a new children’s opera program at the Vienna State Opera.

Composer Geoffrey Hudson’s music has been performed across the United States and in Europe. His recent commissions include Meeting Ground, a concerto for string quartet and orchestra commissioned by the American Composers Forum’s Continental Harmony project; First Among Equals, a concerto for viola and chamber ensemble; Daydreamer, a solo flute piece commissioned by Christina Jennings; and a film score for Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. His music includes choral works, several sets of solo songs, chamber works for strings and piano, and orchestral works. The Bug Opera is his first opera. In June 2004, his viola concerto was featured at the 23 rd International Viola Congress in Minneapolis. Daydreamer was performed at the 2004 National Flute Association Convention in Nashville. In addition to his work as a composer, Hudson is music director of Pioneer Valley Cappella (Northampton , MA) and Quabbin Valley Pro Musica (New Salem, MA), and a faculty member at Greenwood Music Camp (Cummington , MA). Hudson received his undergraduate degrees from Oberlin College , where he studied American History and composition (with Richard Hoffmann). He earned his Master’s degree at New England Conservatory, where his principal teacher was Malcolm Peyton. He currently lives in the hills of western Massachusetts.

Librettist and soprano Alisa Pearson grew up in Boston and spent five of her childhood years in Vienna, Austria . As a Rotary Scholar, she returned to Vienna in 1995, where she quickly made a name for herself as a talented interpreter of modern music and the traditional repertory. After years of championing contemporary music as a performer, Pearson turns her hand to writing for the first time in The Bug Opera. Her sensitivity to language that sings well, her theatrical instincts, and her keen sense of character—honed over years as a stage performer, lend her stage-writing a natural ease. As a soprano, Pearson has performed leading roles in opera and film, including the English language premiere of Peter Maxwell-Davies’ Resurrection at the Wiener Jugendstil Theater and in Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Glasgow. She portrayed the title role in a film of Mozart’s Zaide, and subsequently appeared in the title role of Ignaz Pleyel’s opera Die Fee Urgele. She and was highly lauded for her performances in the premiere of Bernhard Lang’s der blutige ernst at the Vienna Burgtheater. She earned her bachelors degrees in Biology and Voice at Oberlin College. She completed her graduate studies at the Eastman School of Music, where she received a Master’s degree, a Performer’s Certificate for Artistic Excellence, and won the Eastman concerto competition with Samuel Barber’s Andromache’s Farewell