CLINT BORZONI is an award-winning composer of Ecuadorian and Italian descent. His “highly original yet lyrical music [and] natural gift for melody and harmonic structure” (The Huffington Post) and “sweeping melodies and emotional and dramatic range” (Opera News) have resulted in performances and premieres throughout the United States and internationally.
He has collaborated with librettist John de los Santos on the opera When Adonis Calls. The lyrical opera, fashioned entirely from the poetry of Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, was selected for inclusion in Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers and OPERA America’s New Works Forum. Its sold-out world premiere at Asheville Lyric Opera was followed by a collaborative new production in Chicago between Thompson Street Opera and Pride Films & Plays and a third production at Northwestern State University.
Clint’s second collaboration with de los Santos, The Copper Queen, won the top prize in Arizona Opera’s commissioning program, Arizona SPARK. The opera received three sold-out workshops—two at Arizona Opera and a third at OPERA America—with excerpts also presented at the American Lyric Theater Alumni Concert. In 2021, The Copper Queen was adapted into a feature film that received an International Opera Award nomination, won Best New Director at the Toronto International Women Film Festival, was an official selection of Opera Philadelphia’s Film Festival and the Phoenix Film Festival, and was followed by the opera’s professional stage premiere by Marble City Opera. Arizona Opera is planning to produce the work during its next season.
Borzoni and de los Santos developed their third opera, The Christmas Spider, with The American Opera Project. The opera was premiered by Opera Louisiane and subsequently produced by Ovation West, Marble City Opera, Skylark Opera Theatre, and New Jersey Opera Theater, with a forthcoming production by Opera in the Heights.
Borzoni’s other operatic works include Margot Alone in the Light, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s All Summer in a Day, premiered by operamission and subsequently produced by Opera on Tap; Antinous and Hadrian, commissioned by operamission; and In Love Alone, his seventh opera, written with librettist Judith G. Wolf. The orchestral suite derived from Antinous and Hadrian won the Queer Urban Orchestra’s 2018 composition competition and was later performed by the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra.
He is currently composing his eighth opera, La Callas, with librettist Elizabeth Coppinger. The aria “My Child” was premiered as part of Teatro Grattacielo’s The 10 Faces of Maria Callas. The first act of La Callas was presented at Merkin Hall by Women Triumphant and was later presented as part of Puget Sound Concert Opera’s 2025–2026 season as its only new work. The opera sold out both performances and became the company’s most successful production in its history. Additional excerpts are scheduled for presentation at The Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute.
Mr. Borzoni has composed songs and song cycles for many leading vocalists. He is a four-time prize winner of Sparks & Wiry Cries’ NYC songSLAM and has also received BARIHUNKS’ Best New Song (2015), Best New Solo Work for Baritone (2017), operamission’s cabaret song competition, the Morton Feldman Award, and the Boston Metro Opera Festival Award. He is an alumnus of the American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program (2009) and The American Opera Project’s Composers & the Voice Program (2010), and served as an associate producer for Patricia Racette’s recording Diva on Detour.
In addition to composing opera, art song, and concert music, his musical My Life as a Bald Soprano received an Off-Broadway run at the Midtown International Theater Festival. His film scores for JR VISION have been featured at the Take Two Film Festival, the Miami Short Film Festival, SeriesFest, NewFilmmakers Los Angeles, and Anthology Film Archives.
His music has been presented by Minnesota Opera, the Merola Opera Program, the Glimmerglass Festival, the Bay View Music Festival, the Wintergreen Festival, the Summer Street Festival, St Martin-in-the-Fields, the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland, La MaMa, Symphony Space, Opera Grows in Brooklyn, the New York Youth Symphony, the Walt Whitman Project, the Jacobs School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music, the Mannes School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, Shanghai University, and numerous other festivals, universities, and concert organizations throughout the United States and abroad. Upcoming performances include presentations at Überlinger Musiktage in Germany.
He has received commissions from Arizona Opera, the Delaware Art Museum, the Big Apple Corps Symphonic Band, and BARIHUNKS. He studied with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici at the City University of New York, where he earned an M.A. in Music Composition. His oratorio The Wife of Lot, commissioned by the Gavin Dillard Poetry Library & Archive through a generous gift from Steven J. Schimmel, is part of the permanent collection of the Senator John Heinz History Center in association with the Smithsonian Institution. From 2016 to 2020, Borzoni served as Resident Composer for Musica Marin.