But the incompatibility of the worlds of light and dark are taken as an organizing principle in Santa Fe’s “Tristan,” with subtle projections by Greg Emetaz that build on smart lighting by John Torres. Co-directed by the hotshots Lisenka Heijboer Castañón and Zack Winokur, it contrasts bright white with pitch black, and often dwells in the shades in between…

These kinds of touches are gently allusive, suggesting more of an atmosphere than pretending to some grand interpretation. But that’s the point. Heijboer Castañón, a Dutch-Peruvian director whose credits include assisting Pierre Audi on this opera in Amsterdam, and Winokur, gaining renown as the artistic director of the insurgent American Modern Opera Company, offer something of a welcome to a work that is often treated warily or, ironically, or rendered illegible in impenetrable symbolism…

Heijboer Castañón and Winokur offer no drastic interventions in the plot, just a delicate understanding of it as a tale of intimacies, friendly and erotic alike. What few props exist are lightly used. The spare set, from blueprints by the architecture and design firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero, consists of four angled walls of mottled gray — cutouts evoking a castle tower, say, but no more than evoking it. Carlos J. Soto’s costumes hint at abstraction, rather than declaim distance as a goal.

There is a refreshing feeling of trust to it all, a sensible desire not to get in the way of what clearly remains to these young collaborators a basically human story — and a willingness, perhaps above all, to make space for the music.

The New York Times, Zachary Woolfe

Zack Winokur and Lisenka Heijboer Castañón co-directed a spare, dream-like production that suggested settings rather than showed them. White walls bordered the stage, creating a large box that filled the center space (scenic design by Charlap Hyman & Herrero). This box opened on itself to create the ship quarters of Isolde and Brangäne in Act I. A stormy New Mexico evening, with pink-tinged sunset on one side of the stage and lightning on the other, added its own dramatic elements, as wind billowed Isolde’s gown.

Shadows also played an essential role (lighting design by John Torres), from the entrance of Tristan, which was preceded by the appearance of his imposing shadow on a side wall. In the torrid love potion scene, Tristan and Isolde’s shadows cross one another, foretelling the intermingling of the lovers’ identities in their Act II duet (“Tristan is Isolde, Isolde is Tristan”).

The Classical Review, Charles T. Downey  

The production’s two directors, Zack Winokur and Lisenka Heijboer Castañón, created a stylized, quasi-choreographic gestural language for the performers, simple and often quite beautiful. Naturalistic gesture had no role in this Tristan; Winokur and Castañón gave us myth instead.

Opera News, Fred Cohn

The collective behind the duo, acting like The Wizard pulling strings and making magic behind the curtain, extends to the director and co-conceived Zack Winokur, set designer Carlos Soto, and lighting designer John Torres…Like the performers in Only An Octave Apart, Soto’s set, Anderson’s costumes, and Torres’ lighting blend the best of Old Hollywood, the Golden Age of Broadway, Vaudeville, cabaret, and opera. The production values are high, but the fussiness is kept to a minimum, putting the ethereal spotlight right where it belongs, on the artists.

Broadway World, Cindy Siblisky  

Director Zack Winokur led a febrile production that featured frenetic stylized movement, kinetic choreography (Bobbi Jene Smith), high-contrast lighting (John Torres) and eclectic shorts-to-dinner-jackets costumes (Carlos Solo).  Spun out through it all were poetic texts, by Holocaust survivor Paul Celan, among others, that gave condensed voice to themes of agony and isolation and the consoling power of community and connection.

San Francisco Chronicle, Steve Winn  

“The Black Clown,” at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater as part of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, is full of such unsettling, quicksilver reversals. Adapted by Mr. Tines and Michael Schachter from Langston Hughes’s 1931 poem, this rich, seamless production melds the past and present of African-American history into an electrifyingly ambivalent whole.  Yet as directed by Zack Winokur, with choreography by Chanel DaSilva and sets and costumes by Carlos Soto, this “Black Clown” feels like a natural extension of the single voice — and the divided self — at its center. As such, it becomes both a bravura, in-the-moment entertainment and a haunted, self-conscious questioning of the ways in which it entertains.

The New York Times, Ben Brantley  

Sometimes you watch a production and experience total perfection. Yesterday evening was such a night. Sondheim’s A Little Night Music performed by the Nederlandse Reisopera, an opera company which chose to work on Sondheim musicals (Sweeney Todd was their earlier production), next to classic opera repertoire. And my oh my, what an excellent choice to do so.

Broadway World, Chantal Kunst  

one of the most elegant and imaginative shows seen in New York this season.

Opera News, F.Paul Driscoll  

Grand opera–lavish in scale, setting and voices–certainly has its place, but, oh, the joys of hearing Cavalli and Faustini’s bawdy, early baroque charmer LA CALISTO in a theatre with fewer than 100 seats! The Juilliard Opera did just that, at their Rosemary and Meredith Willson Theatre, in a superbly directed and choreographed production by Zack Winokur that also boasted Juilliard415, the school’s period instrument ensemble, conducted by early music specialist Stephen Stubbs. The production not only proved a great showcase for the singers, dancers and instrumentalists but for the opera itself, which is still infrequently heard and should be better known.

Broadway World, Richard Sasanow 

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