Rod Gilfry has sung Hamlet at the Metropolitan Opera and Don Giovanni at houses across Europe. On June 5, he will stand in a 99-seat theater on Sierra Madre Boulevard and become a ghost.
“Haunted,” a one-act dance opera with music by composer Paul Salerni and a libretto by former California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia, comes to Sierra Madre Playhouse for two performances — Friday, June 5, and Saturday, June 6, at 8 p.m. The production falls under the Playhouse’s Opera @ the Playhouse banner, part of its first-ever opera series in 2026, according to the trade publication OperaWire. But what distinguishes it from a standard opera staging is the form itself: dance opera weaves singing, choreography, and chamber music into a single dramatic arc, with dancers carrying as much of the narrative as the vocalist.
The cast assembles musicians with deep roots in the Los Angeles new-music scene — and in Pasadena. Percussionist Nick Terry, a Grammy-winning associate professor at Chapman University, lives in Pasadena and has performed at Art Center College of Design and with the LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series. Pianist Aron Kallay, a Grammy-nominated performer on the faculty at Pomona and Scripps colleges, and violinist Shalini Vijayan, a founding member of the Lyris Quartet, are both fixtures of the region’s contemporary classical circuit. Terry, Kallay, and Vijayan are all members of Brightwork newmusic, a Los Angeles chamber ensemble that Terry and Kallay co-founded. Salerni conducts.
Gilfry, a two-time Grammy nominee, was brought to worldwide attention when he created the role of Stanley Kowalski in the 1998 premiere of André Previn’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” at San Francisco Opera, according to his professional biography. He has since created leading roles in world premieres at the Metropolitan Opera and other major houses. Born and raised in Southern California, Gilfry earned degrees from Cal State Fullerton and USC. He has performed at Pasadena’s Boston Court Performing Arts Center.
The opera adapts Gioia’s narrative poem of the same name — a passionate but doomed love affair wrapped in a ghost story that, according to the press release, “takes a direction no one expects.” Gioia, who served as California’s poet laureate from 2015 to 2018 and as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009, has collaborated with Salerni since 1987, when the composer first set Gioia’s poem “Garden on the Campagna” to music. Their partnership has produced two one-act operas, three narrated Italian fables for orchestra, and 17 art songs, according to Navona Records, which released a recording of “Haunted” in September 2025.
Their first opera, “Tony Caruso’s Final Broadcast,” won the National Opera Association’s Chamber Opera Competition in 2007. “Haunted” premiered at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in March 2019, originally scored for baritone, three dancers, string quartet, and percussion. The Sierra Madre production adapts the instrumentation to violin, piano, and percussion.
Three dancers — Dawson Walker, Avery Zerr, and Ayesha Orange — round out the cast. Jamila Glass choreographed the production, with Orange also serving as assistant choreographer.
Salerni, who holds the NEH Distinguished Chair in the Humanities at Lehigh University, received a Ph.D. in composition from Harvard University, where he studied with the composer Earl Kim. The Philadelphia Inquirer has described his music as possessing “witty musical ideas and instrumental color.” A second dance opera by Salerni and Gioia, “The Room Upstairs,” is in its final stages of creation, according to Navona Records.
Gioia studied music for years and originally hoped to become a composer before turning to poetry. He has collaborated with composers across genres, and his poems have been set to music by artists including Dave Brubeck, Ned Rorem, David Conte, and Paquito D’Rivera, according to his professional materials. As NEA chairman, Gioia created several major musical programs including NEA Jazz Masters, Great American Voices, and the American Masterpieces tours in musical theater, chamber music, and choral music.
Tickets are $35. Sierra Madre Playhouse is at 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, CA 91024. For tickets and information, call (626) 355-4318 or visit www.sierramadreplayhouse.org.
Gilfry has built a career stepping into roles written for him — operas that did not exist until a composer imagined his voice inside them. On a June evening in the foothills, the ghost story will be new again.
