Leslie Dunton-Downer
Leslie Dunton-Downer has written opera libretti, plays, and television documentaries. In recent years she has also written theater pieces for performing artists from Central Asia and Iran, and produced CDs of music from Tajikistan. She studied Ancient Greek at Harvard College, and received a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, where she remained on the faculty until 1996. Founding member of the Cambridge Riverside Players, a group devoted to reading the plays of Shakespeare aloud, and recipient of honors and grants from Phi Beta Kappa, the Sheldon Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Harvard Society of Fellows, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation, Leslie resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Current projects include a second book with British co-author Alan Riding, possibly the best co-author in the world, and the libretto for a new opera by American composer Augusta Read Thomas. Their first collaboration, Ligeia, received premieres in France, Italy, the US, and Russia and, under Jury President Luciano Berio, was awarded The Orpheus International Prize for Best Chamber Opera.
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