Hauke Berheide and Amy Stebbins are an artist duo working in contemporary opera and adjacent forms. Since 2016, they have created two evening-length operas, a children’s concert, and a short silent film with live chamber orchestra score. Their first opera Mauerschau (Bavarian State Opera, 2016) received the Munich Festival Prize. One year later, conductor Oksana Lyniv produced and conducted the opera for the inaugural season of the LvivMozArt Festival in Lviv, Ukraine. Since then, Berheide and Stebbins have received commissions from the Oper Frankfurt, the Augsburg State Theater, and the Düsseldorf Tonhalle. In spite of the disciplinary diversity of their work, Berheide and Stebbins consistently approach their projects from a materialist perspective, oftentimes positioning ostensibly “new” issues—such as influencer culture or “Fake News”—in constellation with similar, historical events.

Berheide and Stebbins also advocate for contemporary opera beyond the stage. They have taught seminars on contemporary opera at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. As writers, they have authored several texts about opera aesthetics and new work development in trade magazines and academic journals. In 2018, the duo co-founded New Opera Dialogues, an international platform focused on contemporary opera aesthetics and best institutional practices.

For the 2024 season, they are creating a site-specific chamber opera with virtual reality components for the Augsburg State Theater. This project is made possible with the support of the MacDowell Colony and the Liz Mohn Culture and Music Foundation.