"With her dramatic tumble of red hair and cello-mello voice, Ms. Fischer sings with a passionate restraint that has no equal in her generation. You didn't want her to stop," so said the New York Times following Abigail Fischer's performance of George Benjamin's Upon Silence with St. Luke's Orchestra at New York Philharmonic's Biennial. Ms. Fischer has 'also received praise for her creation of Mrs. X.E. in Du Yun's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Angel's Bone at Prototype Festival, and Isabelle Eberhardt in Missy Mazzoli's one-woman opera Song from the Uproar with Beth Morrison Projects and the NOW Ensemble.

Following acclaimed performances at Los Angeles Opera and Chautauqua Opera, Ms. Fischer will reprise Isabelle with Beth Morrison Projects at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the 2016-17 season, and with Cincinnati Opera in the summer of 2017. Other engagements in the 2016-17 season include her Italian stage debut in Toshio Hosakawa's The Raven with Orchestra Haydn in Bolzano, Messiah with Duke Chapel Choir and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass and Maurice Duruflé's Requiem with New York Choral Society, and a program of Vivaldi motets with Mercury Houston.

Known for her "serenely captivating" work in opera "and disarming intimacy" (New York Times), Ms. Fischer recently performed the tile role in alternative productions of Carmen at Colorado Music Festival and Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine. She has sung the title role in The Rape of Lucretia with Opera Memphis, the premiere of Lee Hoiby's This is the Rill Speaking with American Opera Projects, Eötvös' Angels in America with Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Angelina in La cenerentola with Union Avenue (in Italian) and Salt Marsh Opera (in English). Other recent premieres included Mrs. X.E. in Angel's Bone and the Mother in Stefan Weisman's Scarlet Ibis at Prototype Festival. With Gotham Chamber Opera, Ms. Fischer performed Testo in Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and Eva in Martinů's Comedy on the Bridge.

A performer of repertoire ranging from contemporary to early music, Ms. Fischer has made a vibrant career as a concert soloist. With the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Fischer performed semi-staged versions of Strauss' Salome and Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream; and with Columbus Symphony she has performed Lieberson's Neruda Songs. She has worked with American Bach Soloists in programs of Vivaldi's Gloria, Handel's La resurrezione, Porpora's De Profundis clamavi, and Bach's Magnificat; REBEL Baroque Orchestra in Mozart's Mass in C minor and Handel's Messiah; and with Early Music New York in programs of Vivaldi motets. She has performed repertoire with the Kansas City Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and Boston Baroque.

Recordings of Ms. Fischer's includes the operas Song from the Uproar (Missy Mazzoli), The Judgement of Midas (Kamran Ince); the oratorios Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass(Boston Baroque), Katrina Ballads (Ted Hearne); the chamber works Mothertongue (Nico Muhly), The Quality of Mercy (Patrick Castillo), and numerous works of John Zorn.

Originally trained as a cellist, Ms. Fischer has worked often as a chamber musician, from Musicians of Marlboro Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, to St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. She has premiered works of Elliot Carter and Bernard Rand at Tanglewood Music Festival, Nico Muhly at Lincoln Center, numerous works by John Zorn throughout the world. A graduate of Eastman School of Music (MM), and Vassar College (BA), Lorenzo di Medici in Florence, Italy (Certificate in Italian language and literature); Ms. Fischer now studies with Stephen King in Houston, and lives with her partner in Greenwood Lake, NY.

Caleb Mayo hails from Marblehead, Massachusetts, and is honored to be making his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut. Stage: Los Angeles: Hamlet (Inner Circle Theatre), Antigone, The Beaux Stratagem (A Noise Within), Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Knightsbridge Theatre); Washington DC: Cyrano, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Rivals (The Shakespeare Theatre); Boston: Twelfth Night (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company), To Kill A Mockingbird (Huntington Theatre Company);Lewiston: Moonshine (The Public Theatre); Film: One-Eyed Monster, Plato's Symposium, The Time Machine, Hoax, The Proposition, 10,000 AD; TV: Criminal Minds; Web: In Tune, For Science. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Drama from Vassar College and has studied with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, The American Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare and Company, Rebel Shakespeare Company and The Beverly Hills Playhouse.

Karen MacDonald is a Boston native and delighted to be making her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut. Last year, she premiered A Soldier's Carol with the Boston Holiday Pops. Her work this past season included 77% ( Martha's Vineyard Playhouse) Sweet and Sad (Gloucester Stage Co.) Ulysses on Battles  ( Israeli Stage) Red Hot Patriot: The Kick Ass Wit of Molly Ivins (Lyric Stage). On Broadway, she understudied and performed the role of Amanda Wingfield in John Tiffany's recent revival of The Glass Menagerie. Other regional credits include Ether Dome, Ryan Landry's M, Good People, Bus Stop, All My Sons, A Civil War Christmas (Huntington Theatre Co.); That Hopey Changey Thing, Doubt (Stoneham Theatre); Other Desert Cities, The Drowsy Chaperone (Speakeasy Stage); Coriolanus, All's Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, Twelfth Night (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company); Long Day's Journey Into Night, boom (New Repertory Theatre); Superior Donuts (Lyric Stage); The Color of Rose (ArtsEmerson); Two Wives in India  (Boston Playwrights' Theatre); The Blonde, The Brunette and The Vengeful Redhead, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Moon for the Misbegotten (Merrimack Repertory Theatre); The Snow Queen, Third (Portland Stage) as well as, Hartford Stage, Berkshire Theatre Festival. A founding company member of the American Repertory Theatre, she appeared in 70 productions, including Endgame, The Sea Gull, Mother Courage, Island of Slaves, No Exit, Olly's Prison, Highway Ulysses, Othello, The Imaginary Invalid, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Internationally, she has appeared at festivals in Asti, Avignon, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Israel and the former Yugoslavia. Nationally she has worked extensively, from Philadelphia's Wilma Theatre to Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Her directing credits include Gidion's Knot (Bridge Rep); An Ideal Husband, Woman in Black (Gloucester Stage) and Dressed Up! Wigged Out!! (Boston Playwrights Theatre). She is the recipient of several Elliot Norton and IRNE Awards for her performances. Ms. MacDonald received both the Robert Brustein Award for Sustained Achievement in the Theatre and the Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence in 2010. A graduate of the College of Fine Arts at Boston University, she was the Monin Fellow at Boston College 2010-11, and teaches Acting to undergraduates and extension school students at Harvard University.

Will Lyman is well known to Boston audiences for his work with many local theater companies. A founding board member of Commonwealth Shakespeare Co., he has appeared there as Brutus, Prospero, Claudius, and last summer's King Lear. He has also been seen at the Huntington in All My Sons, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Dead End; at New Rep in Long Day's Journey into Night, Exits and Entrances, Clean House, and Ice Breaker; at Speakeasy in The Dying Gaul, at Wheelock in To Kill a Mockingbird, at Boston Playwrights' Theatre in The Wrestling Patient (in collaboration with Speakeasy), King of the Jews, and A Girl's War, and at the Nora in Equus and Operation Epsilon. Elsewhere in the U.S. he has performed with the Denver Center, Hartford Stage, Pennsylvania Stage, American Place, George Street Playhouse, and NJ Shakespeare, as well as in several off-Broadway productions in New York. He has narrated in performances with the National Symphony (Ivan the Terrible) and acted in conjunction with the Cleveland Orchestra (Tom Stoppard/André Previn's Every Good Boy Deserves Favor) and the Handel and Haydn Society (Benda's Medea.) Mr. Lyman is a multiple recipient of both Norton and IRNE awards and was honored with the Howard Keel Award for service to the Screen Actors Guild. He was given 2013's Norton Award for Sustained Excellence and 2015's NETC Award. On television he has appeared in episodes of Crossbow, Hull High, Threat Matrix, and Commander in Chief and in the TV movies Meltdown, Our Fathers, Three Sovereigns for Sarah, and George Washington. Feature film credits include A Perfect Murder, The Siege, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Mystic River, Little Children (narrator), and What Doesn't Kill You. He has narrated the PBS public affairs program Frontline since the second season. On a more whimsical note, he also voices the long-running "Most Interesting Man in the World" ads, and has appeared as himself on The Simpsons.

Bill Barclay, a composer, actor, writer, and director, is the Director of Music at Shakespeares Globe Theatre in London and the first American to join the theatre staff in the company's 17 year history.  A Weston, MA native and Shakespeare specialist, he has composed for the Globe (3 seasons), Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts (11 seasons, company member), the Actors Shakespeare Project in Boston (9 seasons, Resident Acting Company member), and the Tanglewood Music Center (4 seasons).  Bill was a member of the Acting Company at The Mercury Theatre in Colchester, England from 2009-2012, and makes his Broadway debut with this season's Twelfth Night and Richard III, starring Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry, as Music Consultant. Bills original musical works include Call of the Wild,Three Sisters, The Hamlet Symphony, Everyman Found, and The Mad Pirate and the Mermaid; his solo performances include Muse on Fire: Shakespeare & the Music of the Spheres, which has been performed over a dozen times across the US and UK. He has performed roles or composed original scores for The Huntington Theatre, SpeakEasy Stage, W.H.A.T., Central Square Theatre, North Shore Music Theatre, the Vineyard Playhouse, The Olney Theatre Center, Connecticut Rep, La MaMa ETC, and Theater Row (NYC), among others. He has held artist residencies at universities across the country, has taught acting at Emerson College and Boston University, and been a guest lecturer at Harvard University. In addition to recurring roles on Showtime (Brotherhood) and PBS, Bill can be seen in the filmsOcean Boulevard and The Time Machine (DreamWorks). In addition to his work with the BYSO, he has collaborated with the ALEA III Orchestra, the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, and the Aurea Ensemble (which commissioned his latest concert work, Five Sonnets to Orpheus), and is a founding member of The Mahagonny Ensemble in Poughkeepsie, New York. A winner of the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship (the largest grant for actors in the US), and the Boston Globe Monologue Scholarship Competition, he is a two-time Elliot Norton Award nominee for sound design, and has twice received Metlifes Meet the Composer Grants. A 1999 Weston High School grad, Bill is an alumnus of Vassar College and the National Theatre Institute, and earned his MFA at the Boston University School of Theatre. His first books as editor will be published this year: The Plays of Jon Lipsky, Volumes 1 and 2 (Smith & Kraus). www.shakespearealoud.com

Cristina Todesco has worked in theater and film for over 20 years. She has designed with Actor Shakespeare Project, ART Institute, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Company One, Huntington Theatre, Lyric Stage Company, New Repertory Theatre, Nora Theater, Orfeo Group, Speakeasy Stage, Stoneham Theater, Wheelock Family Theater, Boston College, Boston Conservatory, Boston University, Harvard University, Suffolk University, Opera Boston, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Summer Play Festival, the Culture Project at the Barrow Street Theater, and the Olney Theatre Center in Maryland. She is the recipient of four Elliot Norton Awards for Outstanding Design for The Clean House (New Rep), The Aliens (Company One), Twelfth Night (ASP) and The Flick(Company One). She was also an assistant art director on the feature film Black Mass, and the ABC pilot "See Kate Run." Prior to designing, she was a scenic artist working on many feature films, including The Crucible, The Spanish Prisoner, State and Main, The Perfect Storm, The Brotherhood, Underdog, 21,  The Pink Panther 2, The Box, Mall Cop, and Zoo Keeper. She worked as a scenic charge for six years at VDA, the Event Design Group, during which time she charged projects and installations with clients that include "Waterfall" for L.L Bean, Freeport, ME, "Bourbon Street" for Jordan's Furniture, Natick, MA, "Arthur, the World Tour" permanent and nationwide traveling shows for the Boston Children's Museum, "The Woods" permanent installation for the Cincinnati Children's Museum, and Houston Grand Opera's Carmen. She is a member of USA Local 829.

Kathleen Doyle is a visual story teller - a costume and puppet designer working in theater, opera, musicals, dance, and film. Kathleen graduated from N.Y.U. with an M.F.A. in Theater Design, and holds an additional Master of Arts in Dramaturgy from Villanova University. Doyle also designs costumes and creates puppets, marionettes, masks, shadow puppets and stop-motion animation films. She is a proud member of USA-Local 829. In 2001 she was awarded a Fulbright grant to Japan. In 2005, she was awarded another Fulbright grant, this time to China and Hong Kong. In 2012, she traveled to Sao Paulo, Brazil where she attended a retrospective of her art and design work at the Casarao de la Cultura. Based in New York, her ebullient designs have been seen all over the city, from The New Victory Theater to The 52nd Street Project, from La MaMa to Here Art Center, from The Joyce Theater to Jazz at Lincoln Center, from New York City Center to The Kennedy Center. Her work has also been seen at Walt Disney World Florida, The Santa Fe Opera and The San Francisco Opera. Kathleen has traveled throughout the world, to dozens of different countries, and served as an International Goodwill Ambassador in Peru. She recently returned from South Korea where she designed puppets and masks for a new musical and from Vietnam where she served as Artist-In-Residence with The Thang Long National Water Puppetry Theater. Kathleen Doyle is a LabWorks Grant Recipient at The New 42nd Street Studios, developing her own original project that will tour eight Hawai'ian Islands next year.

ANTONIO WEISSINGER is a 13-years-old and is thrilled to be reprising his most favorite opportunity in Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream with the BSO at Tanglewood. He started entertaining when he was eight-years-old as Tiny Tim in Humbug (a parody of A Christmas Carol). His favorite roles include Ocean State Theater's Billy Elliot (Michael), Hopkinton Middle School's Hamlet (Hamlet), Wheelock Family Theater's Charlotte's Web (Avery/Youth ensemble), Hanover Theatre's A Christmas Carol (Young Scrooge), Dean College's Bye Bye Birdie (Randolph), North Shore Music Theatre's A Christmas Carol (Peter Cratchit), Wheelock's Trumpet of the Swan (Cygnet), NSMT's Les Misérables (Gavroche u/s), Enter Stage Left's Cinderella (Prince), The Jones Unit student film (Ethan), and The Nutcracker (Party Boy). Tony done commercials for Legos and VISA. He also enjoys singing and has been a finalist in NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) in both Boston and Rhode Island (1st in Classical, 2nd in Musical Theatre), selected for Districts, he has been a featured singer in the Light Up the Night 300th anniversary of Hopkinton, featured soloist at Boston Association of Cabaret Artist's (BACA) 20th anniversary and BACA Youth Development Performance Showcase and has offered his talents to perform at local assistant living facilities and nursing homes. He is so thankful to Bill Barclay, Anthony Fogg, the BSO, and the entire talented cast and crew associated with this magical production. He is also thankful for all his opportunity, and to his family, educators, and friends for their support and encouragement.