Composer and librettist Richard Wargo has been lauded by The Philadelphia Inquirer as a “fresh new voice in American opera” and by Opera News as “a born opera composer.” A native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, he graduated from the Eastman School of Music. He is a two-time recipient of the Belin Arts Scholarship and has received grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Richard served as composer-in-residence of Milwaukee’s Skylight Opera Theatre, where his opera Ballymore was premiered and recorded for PBS. Subsequent performances of Ballymore include productions by the Wexford Festival Opera in Ireland, Chelsea Opera in New York City and the North Carolina School of the Arts. In May, the cast and orchestra from the 2025 North Carolina production reassembled to make a studio recording of the opera, set for future release. Wargo’s A Chekhov Trilogy was premiered by Chautauqua Opera in 1993 and since then has received numerous productions. “The Music Shop,” the third segment of the Trilogy, has received hundreds of performances, in the US and abroad.

Richard has served as Artistic Director of The Sembrich, a museum and performance venue in Bolton Landing, NY, since August 1990. In November of 2015, Wargo was awarded the “Order of Merit” medal for his work at The Sembrich by the Polish government at the Lviv Opera House in Ukraine.