Mary Barrett Fruehan Associate Professor
Artistic Director of LSU Opera
Opera
School of Music
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-2504
P: 225.578.3261
F: 225.578.2562
E: mcdugg@lsu.edu

Dugg McDonough is the Mary Barrett Fruehan Associate Professor of Opera and the Artistic Director of LSU Opera, becoming the first recipient of the endowed professorship in the fall of 2006. Starting with Il barbiere di Siviglia in the fall of 2002, he has staged over 25 LSU productions, including 2007’s highly acclaimed performances of Carlisle Floyd’s Willie Stark, which were filmed for the opera’s first commercial DVD, released by Newport Classic in 2008. For LSU Opera’s 2009-2010 season, he is creating new productions of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music and Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, along with two L’Opera Lagniappe programs.

As a professional stage director, McDonough has staged a wide variety of operas, operettas, musicals, and plays, from Monteverdi to Sondheim, for companies ranging from the New York City Opera to the Taipei International Arts Festival in Taiwan. Three recent directorial accomplishments were Gluck’s L’Ile de Merlin ou Le monde renversé for New Orleans Opera Association/Music at Madewood, and Puccini’s Turandot and Madama Butterfly for the Jacksonville Symphony. In 2004, he created a new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in Sofia, Bulgaria, which produced an acclaimed CD recording and a video documentary for PBS.

For four seasons, McDonough served as Staff Stage Director for the New York City Opera, under the leadership of Beverly Sills, and he spent two summers on the production staff of The Santa Fe Opera. For two years, he was Production Manager and Artistic Consultant for the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, collaborating with such notable stage directors as Colin Graham, Frank Corsaro, and Jonathan Miller. As a writer, he has authored the libretto to Ordinary People, a new American opera with music by Robert Chumbley, which received its world premiere staged reading in 2008 at the Maryland Opera Studio.

As a specialist in working with young performers, McDonough has been, for the past seventeen years, Co-Director of the James M. Collier Apprentice Artist Program of the Des Moines Metro Opera. He has also stage directed for The Santa Fe Opera’s Apprentice Program, the San Diego Opera Center, the Young Artist Program of the Florida Grand (formerly Greater Miami) Opera, and the National Company and Education Department of the New York City Opera. As an adjudicator of vocal competitions, he has acted as judge for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, as well as for the Charles A. Lynam Vocal Competition.

In addition to his academic opera work at LSU, McDonough was, from 1985-2002, Associate Professor and Director of Opera Theater at the Boyer College of Music of Temple University in Philadelphia. Other institutions where he has directed and taught include the University of Tennessee, the University of Oklahoma, and the Shepherd School of Music of Rice University.

McDonough holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Duke University, a Master of Arts in Dramatic Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and did extensive post-graduate study in theater history, dramatic literature, and stage direction for opera at Indiana University.