An opera composer/librettist, conductor, and songwriter, Michael Ching is the composer/librettist of the opera SPEED DATING TONIGHT! With over one hundred fifty productions since its 2013 premiere at the Janiec Opera of the Brevard Music Center, SPEED DATING TONIGHT! is one of the most popular operas of the 21st century. A similarly structured opera is his RSBE. His new opera, NOTES ON VIARDOT had its premiere at University of South Dakota-Vermillion in 2024. Another new opera, HAZEL MINER premiered at Northern State University in 2025. Michael’s other well known opera is BUOSO’S GHOST. BUOSO is a comic sequel to GIANNI SCHICCHI. BUOSO has been performed at the Florida Grand Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre and OperaDelaware, as well as at California State University-Fullerton and Montclair State University. During the pandemic, he created ALL DRESSED UP (No Place to Go) for L'arietta Productions in Singapore, a series of nine quarantine-related songs which are now part of SPEED DATING TONIGHT!. In 2018-2019, two new one act operas had their premieres, THRIVERS, at Palm Springs Opera Guild, and EIGHT WOODS AND A VAN, at the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre. Additional shorter operas include BIRTHDAY CLOWN at the Savannah Voice Festival, DINNER 4 3 (with librettist Deborah Brevoort) for Fargo Moorhead Opera, and COMPLETING THE PICTURE for Utah Opera’s commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad. As Composer-in-Residence of Savannah Voice Festival, Michael wrote ALICE RYLEY (2015) and ANNA HUNTER (2017) two works with Savannah subjects. The operas premiered together at the 2022 festival. Other works include SLAYING THE DRAGON and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, opera a cappella, recorded on Albany Records. In 2022, Towson University premiered a revised and simplified version of DREAM, with a small orchestration. In 2025, Savannah Voice Festival premiered his CENERENTOLA sequel, A ROYAL FEAST. These operas have free downloadable perusals scores through Michael's blog. The blog also has links to Michael's art songs and arrangements, and his work with poet Reg Huston. Michael's ARRANGEMENTS AND DERANGEMENTS of Schubert and ESSENTIALS (lyrics by Reg Huston) are available through EC Schirmer.
Michael is working on an extensive wiki of his work with Obsidian. It is much more detailed than this website.
Michael is the former Composer-in-Residence at Savannah Voice Festival, a position he now holds at the Taos Opera Institute. He is Opera and Art Song consultant at EC Schirmer Classical and the former Artistic Director of Opera Memphis. He is serving his second term on the board of the National Opera Institute. Michael studied composition with Robert Ward at Duke University and Carlisle Floyd at the Houston Opera Studio.
With a lifelong devotion to the craft of operatic composition learned through the success and failure of over a dozen operas, through composition study, and through years of conducting the standard operatic repertoire; and with a strong interest in folk and country music, Michael is a somewhat of an outlier in the world of new music. Michael lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.