Magdalena Travis has spent the last twenty years crafting performances. Her passion for the performing arts has manifested all over the globe, from the Festival d’Avignon in France to Uganda’s National Theater.
This is Magdalena’s second year stage managing at the Opera Festival of Chicago. She has previously worked on productions at Josh Shaw’s Pacific Opera Project, the Los Angeles Opera, and at the Chicago College of Performing Arts. An aspiring leader in the performing arts industry, Magdalena has interned at the Tanglewood Music Festival; the Creative Visions Foundation; and at Perspective Media in Nairobi, Kenya. She recently made her opera directing debut at CCPA’s Operafest XVI.
A dual Polish-American citizen and champion of women composers, Magdalena has performed works by Grazyna Bacewicz at the Paderewski Music School in Chicago with Michael Drewnowski. She most recently performed a recital program of all women composers, featuring five pieces by Maude Valerie White and Luise Greger of which there are no existing recordings. This summer, Magdalena was awarded Roosevelt University’s Social Justice Grant to start a summer recital series highlighting underrepresented composers, which features local emerging professional singers and dedicated amateurs.