The Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning operas of librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell are among the most successful in the contemporary canon.  A prolific writer, Mark has created 45 opera librettos, lyrics for 7 musicals, and the text for 12 song cycles and 7 oratorios. He received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Opera Association and was inducted into the OPERA America Hall of Fame in 2026.

 

His works include Silent Night, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, The Shining, Elizabeth Cree, As One, Stonewall, Sanctuary Road, A Thousand Acres, Edward Tulane, Unruly Sun, The Cook-Off, The Manchurian Candidate, Stone Soup, A Sweet Silence in Cremona, Later the Same Evening, The Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare, Approaching Ali, A Letter to East 11th Street, A Year to the Day, Volpone, and Bastianello/Lucrezia, and the musicals, Songs from an Unmade Bed, The Audience and Splendora.

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Mark has received many other prestigious prizes for his work, including the first Kleban Foundation Award for Lyricist, four Grammy nominations, two Richard Rodgers Awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, three Drama Desk nominations, a Jonathan Larson Foundation Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, the first Dominic J. Pelliciotti Award, and a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts.  

 

Recordings of his works include: The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (Pentatone), The Shining (Pentatone), A Nation of Others (Lexicon Classics), Émigré (Deutsche Grammophon), Sanctuary Road (Naxos), Silent Night (Naxos), As One (Bright Shiny Things), Volpone (Wolf Trap Records), Bastianello/Lucrezia (Bridge), Rappahannock County (Naxos), Later the Same Evening (Albany) and Songs from an Unmade Bed (Ghostlight).

 

Mark is also an advocate for contemporary American opera and serves as a mentor for future generations of writers through such organizations as the American Opera Project, American Lyric Theatre, and Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative. In 2020, he created and funds the  Campbell Opera Librettist Prize,  the first and only award for opera librettists. The award is given annually and administered by OPERA America. In 2022, he helped create and is funding the True Voice Award, administered by Washington National Opera, to help with the training of transgender opera singers.

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