Robert Frankenberry enjoys a multi-faceted relationship with music as a singer, pianist, conductor, orchestrator, producer, director, and composer. 

He has conducted operas in a Hookah lounge (Carmen, reconfigured for ensemble cast and using his own folk-ensemble orchestration), on and around a cemetery lake (Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice), and on and in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater (Daron Hagen’s Shining Brow). In 2019, he was granted the honor of adapting, arranging, and orchestrating two of Mr. Rogers’ one-act operas for live performance, leading the premiere performances from the keyboard. On stage, he has performed a wide range of roles including Mozart (Amadeus), John Adams (1776), Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos), and the title roles in Don Carlo, The Tales of Hoffmann, Faust, and Willy Wonka. 

A charter member of the New Mercury Collective, he originated the role of Robbie in Daron Hagen’s intimate musical, I Hear America Singing, (also serving as music director and pianist for the premiere production at Milwaukee’s renowned Skylight Music Theatre). Continuing his association with Hagen and New Mercury in the realm of operafilm, he portrayed Orson Welles in the international award-winning Orson Rehearsed (2021) and Cory in 9/10: Love Before the Fall (2023).

Robert was significantly involved with Pittsburgh Festival Opera from 2000 - 2021 in various capacities, including Artistic Administrator, Music Director, and Director of the Hans and Leslie Fleischner Young Artist Program, involved in the creative development, orchestration, and musical direction of: The Tales of Hoffmann – Retold; Carmen; Orpheus & Eurydice (both Gluck and Gordon); Shining Brow (Fallingwater version); Die Schweigsame Frau; Night Caps (also contributing as a composer); Night Caps International; Roger Zahab’s Happy Hour; Gilda Lyons’ A New Kind of Fallout; Dwayne Fulton’s A Gathering of Sons; the world-premiere live-performance adaptations of Mr. Rogers’ Operas; OWOW (Opera Without Walls); a film adaptation of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon (including full programming of his own orchestration); and a complete on-location film of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata. 

He has served on the coaching/accompanying staff at Seton Hill, Duquesne, Carnegie Mellon, and Point Park Universities; the voice faculty at Mercyhurst (where he also acted as bassoon instructor and directed the orchestra) and Point Park Universities; and the Theatre Arts faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. From 2018 to 2020, Robert served as visiting Music Director for the University of North Texas opera program, during which time he conducted productions of The Cunning Little Vixen, Don Giovanni, Regina, Gianni Schicchi, and Le Testament de la Tante Caroline, for which the program garnered one 2nd place and three 1st place awards from the National Opera Association. He also developed the script and created musical arrangements for If I Loved You, the first ever officially sanctioned original dramatic revue using songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein. 

Recent projects in the digital media arena include Verdi by Vegetables for Resonance Works, which was awarded Opera America’s first-ever Digital Excellence award (Education and Enrichment category), for which he provided all the piano tracking and also played the role of Verdi himself; and streaming performance for Music on the Edge of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici’s MONSTERS, Part II: Scylla and Charybdis for narrating pianist (written for and dedicated to Robert). 

Active as an arranger, orchestrator and composer, he has a catalog of adaptations/orchestrations of operas by Offenbach, Mr. Rogers, Strauss, Gluck, Bizet, Verdi, and Ravel; and small-ensemble arrangements of works by Busoni, Hagen, Mahler, Mompou, Prokofiev, Ravel, Satie, Schumann, Strauss, and Stravinsky. In 2012, his arrangement of “Amazing Grace/Ein Schöner Tag” was performed by Bobby McFerrin, Katerina Vesselova, The Wise Guys, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, and a chorus of 65,000 in Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen as the finale of the Ruhr 2010 !Sing–Day of Song!

At the piano, he has premiered many solo and chamber works by living composers, including Eric Moe, Gilda Lyons, Roger Zahab, David Del Tredici, Daron Hagen, Alberto Demestres, David Stock, Barbara White, Juhi Bansal, and himself. He currently performs as a member of entelechron with cellist David Russell and violinist Roger Zahab and Chrysalis Duo with flutist Lindsay Goodman. Rob can be heard singing and playing on the Naxos, Albany, New World Records, Roven Records, New Dynamic Records, and Innova labels, as well as various streaming platforms. He is currently Associate Producer for Resonance Works, Voice Faculty at Point Park University,  and Residency Faculty of the MFA in Music Composition program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.