Michael Dellaira’s works integrate the classical and popular, opera and music-theater. His monodrama Maud, a winner of the first ASCAP Morton Gould Award, was also awarded First Prize from The Society of Composers, while his recording for rock group (Annette) was a Billboard Magazine Top Album Pick. His opera Chéri (after the novel by Colette on a libretto by playwright Susan Yankowitz) was a finalist for the 2006 Richard Rodgers Award in Musical Theater (administered by The American Academy of Arts and Letters) and was developed by The Composers Chamber Theater, American Opera Projects, The Center for Contemporary Opera and The Actors Studio. A guitarist and songwriter in several rock groups in the 60’s and 70’s, his first formal studies in composition were with Robert Parris in Washington, D.C.; he then went on to study with Milton Babbitt and Paul Lansky at Princeton University, where he received his Ph.D. and, as a Fulbright Fellow, with Goffredo Petrassi at L’Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome) and Franco Donatoni at L’Accademia Chigiana (Siena). A recent recipient of a Jerome Foundation commission, he has also received awards from the American Composers Forum, American Music Center, Cary Trust, the Ford and Mellon Foundations, and New Jersey Arts Council. He has taught music at The George Washington University, Princeton University, and Union College, and is recorded on CRI, Opus One and Albany Records. He is currently Composer-in-Residence at the Center for Contemporary Opera (New York) and is at work on an opera based on Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent, with a libretto by J.D. McClatchy, a joint commission by the Center for Contemporary Opera, San Antonio Opera, and Long Leaf Opera.