Opera Hispánica presents the New York staged premiere of KLARA, a chamber opera in four haikus, on Friday, February 28, 2025 at 7:30pm at National Sawdust in Brooklyn. General admission tickets are $40 and can be purchased at https://www.nationalsawdust.org/event/opera-hispanica-presents-klara-2-28-25. Students may purchase discounted tickets in advance with the code STUDENTSATNS.

Presented by Opera Hispánica, the premier opera company in the US focused exclusively in the Hispanic perspective, and in collaboration with National Sawdust, Divaria Productions, CUNY City Tech and New York City Opera, and with partial support from the Spanish government through Acción Cultural Española, and from OPERA America’s NYC Opera Grants: Support for Small-Budget Companies made possible with the generous support of the Howard Gilman Foundation, this production will be directed by acclaimed Broadway director and choreographer Richard Stafford. With lyrics and music written by internationally renowned Spanish composer and conductor Pedro Halffter, KLARA will immerse the audience in an immediate and current reflection on the development of artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. These performances, part of National Sawdust’s banner 10th anniversary season, will feature soprano Ashley Galvani Bell as Klara, dancers Laura Henning, Jordana Rosenberg, and Amanda LaMotte, with pianist Silvia Santinelli and Pedro Halffter himself at the piano. Immediately following the performance, there will be a panel discussion exploring the impact of artificial intelligence on our society, featuring the composer and celebrated professor Panos Mavromatis (NYU); Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ludovic Righetti (NYU); and religious leader Swami Sarvapriyananda, who regularly speaks around the world on the relationship between artificial intelligence and consciousness.