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David F. Ostwald

Assistant Professor Emeritus of Music

David Ostwald has directed more than 170 productions of operas and plays in academic and professional venues in both the U.S. and abroad. A specialist in teaching acting to singers, he was appointed head of the opera program in 1983 in the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College. He directed all of the program’s productions, including The Magic Flute, Scarlatti’s Eraclea, and Haydn’s The World on the Moon. He has also taught at the Juilliard School, Queens College/CUNY, and the University of California, Berkeley, and in the summer programs at Aspen and Wolf Trap.

After retiring from Purchase in 1999, Ostwald wrote Acting for Singers: Creating Believable Singing Characters, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2005. Currently, he is directing for such companies as West Bay Opera and the San Francisco Lyric Opera and offering workshops and residencies on how to create believable singing characters.