Sotto Voce is a collectively run opera company based in Buffalo, NY. Sotto Voce’s mission is to celebrate the power of the human voice, collaborate across artistic disciplines, and present music drama in innovative performance contexts that reimagine familiar stories and bring to life new ones. Our repertoire consists of both canonical and new dramatic vocal works and our performances feature regional, national, and international talent.
Our vision
Sotto Voce is an opera collaborative for creatives.
The members of our team are not only highly trained vocal artists, but innovators passionate about bringing operatic works to life in new ways. Our interpretations of classic shows are thoughtful and fresh. While our fresh takes aim to make the art form more accessible to the uninitiated, opera lovers never fear! Long-time opera fans are always impressed to hear that our vocal artistry preserves the full, rich, and expressive colors of a truly traditional Italian vocal style that is rarely heard in opera houses today.
Our collective work environment also supports learning and growth for performers’ at many different stages of their vocal journeys. Through sustained nurturing of our artists’ vocal health + technique, as well as coaching in musical + dramatic decision making, working with us becomes so much more than just the opportunity to put on a show. Ours is a space where young, emerging, alternate route, and seasoned artists are equally welcome and where full artists – not just their voices, but their unique personal skill sets – are welcomed into the collaborative process.
Our live productions always include cinematic elements, and we also produce music videos and full productions for our YouTube channel. Rather than presenting opera in theatres built for other art forms, we intentionally seek out acoustically and architecturally interesting venues that help shape our site based staging.
With the help of our board members and volunteers, we also host pre- and post-event receptions that welcome our audiences into our community. Sotto Voce is, in a word, “artisanal” opera.
Our Directors:
Sotto Voce is currently led by husband and wife team Dr. Jessie Downs and Dr. Alex Huddleston. Jessie is a soprano and music director from Morristown NJ and Alex is a film and stage director from St. Louis MO. The two met in Buffalo 9 years ago when they began their doctoral studies in Music Composition at UB. Jessie and Alex’s long-standing artistic collaboration and compositional background serves as the basis for Sotto Voce’s innovative approach to opera. To read more about what each of our Directors brings to Sotto Voce’s unique productions, read their Directors’ Statements under OUR CORE TEAM!
Our History:
Sotto Voce was originally founded as a contemporary music vocal collective in 2016 by Dr. Jessie Downs. Although the collective’s focus was always on celebrating the power of vocal music-making, it initially carried out its mission through the presentation of works primarily by living composers. While many of Sotto Voce’s earlier performances were presented in concert formats, some of the earliest Sotto Voce projects also foreshadowed the organization’s move towards music drama – such as a living installation of Julius Eastman’s “Buddha” at the Burchfield Penney Art Gallery and a sharing of Pauline Oliveros’s “Sonic Tonic” as a participatory opera at The Cass Project. In 2021, the collective ventured into the world of opera proper with the premiere production of Jessie Downs’s The Second Sight.
Sotto Voce was officially incorporated in August 2023 as an opera company focused on reimagining canonical repertoire. In its first season, Sotto Voce presented three main stage productions. The first of these was Incantations, a fundraising gala at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo (UUCB) in October 2023 that presented Sotto Voce’s vision of “opera nouveau.” In February 2024, the company presented their first full canonical production – W.A. Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The opera’s two performances at UUCB featured original short films inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 interpretation. These short films in English, coupled with lush live singing in German, breathed new life into an old tale. This was followed in June 2024 by Giacomo Puccini’s Suor Angelica presented at St. Joseph’s University Parish. In Sotto Voce’s presentation of this dramatic masterpiece, attention was drawn to the similarities between the opera’s story and the stories of modern day Troubled Teen Industry survivors by incorporating pre-recorded audio from survivor interviews into the staged production.
To kick off their 2024-25 season, Sotto Voce again hosted a Fall Gala at UUCB – a celebratory evening of operatic scenes, original music videos, food, and the presentation of a Lifetime Achievement award to local opera legend Frank Scinta. In March of 2025, the company presented Gaetano Donizetti’s bel canto masterpiece, Lucia di Lammermoor at the First Presbyterian Church of Buffalo to critical acclaim. In July of 2025, Sotto Voce worked together with visiting Korean ensemble Studio frische Klänge, the Avanti! chamber orchestra, and the UB Department of Thatre & Dance to present “Grit and Silk: the Voices of the Gayageum and Debussy,” a special concert event featuring Claude Debussy’s 30-minute opera, L’enfant prodigue, with an original introduction comprised of traditional Korean instrumental music, Debussy art songs, dance, and pantomime.
Check out our EVENTS page for information about our 2025-26 season offerings!
Past community outreach events have been presented at the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing
Arts, Canterbury Woods Gates Circle retirement community, the Town of Amherst “Let’s Do Lunch”
series, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo’s Casual Concert series, BTPM’s Classical Live on
Stage series, at Amherst Middle School in collaboration with the Amherst Symphony Orchestra, at Trinity
Church on Grand Island, and at the University at Buffalo.
Sotto Voce 