Richard B. Beams is the founder and director of Opera con Brio (www.operaconbrio.com). He has been teaching opera history and opera-related courses for over forty years, the last thirty-five primarily through Opera con Brio which he founded as an opera-education program for adults in the Boston area in 1979. This program has offered over 60 different courses, ranging from studies of individual composers (Verdi, Rossini, Mozart, Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Mahler, Strauss, Wagner, Puccini, Britten, Berlioz) to period and history courses (The Age of Bel Canto, Russian Opera, French Opera, Classical Literature and Legend as Opera, Shakespeare and Opera, Wagner’s RING: Music, Myth, and Meaning.) For years these courses were also available to Pine Manor College students as Directed Studies. Mr. Beams has also led numerous opera tours, both for Opera con Brio and for other organizations. Among the many tours have been the following: The Salzburg Festival, The Rossini Festival (Pesaro, Italy), The Bayreuth Festival, The Glyndebourne Festival, The Glimmerglass Festival, The Aldeburgh Festival, The Santa Fe Festival, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Recent tours: Donizetti Bicentennial Tour to Northern Italy (1998), The Halle and Gottingen Handel Festivals in Germany (1999), Bellini tour to Sicily (2002), Rossini tour to Italy (2003), Vivaldi’s Venice (2008), Haydn Bicentennial Tour to Berlin (2009), Britten Tour to England (2010), Wexford Opera Festival, Ireland (2011), Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires (2012).

Mr. Beams is also a frequent lecturer on opera. In addition to lectures for the University of New Hampshire and various independent organizations, he has lectured for such opera companies as The Omaha Opera, The Sarasota Opera, The Handel and Haydn Society, Opera North, Boston Baroque and The Opera Company of Boston. For fifteen years he was the regular pre-opera lecturer for The Boston Lyric Opera. Mr. Beams has been a recipient of two NEH Fellowships and was on the advisory board of the Boston Concert Opera, The Berkshire Opera Company and The Boston Chamber Music Society as well as a consultant to Opera World Inc.