Mark Shulgasser, longtime librettist and partner of composer and pianist Lee Hoiby, died November 17, 2025 at his home in Jeffersonville, NY. He was 78.
Shulgasser met Hoiby in 1979 through The Pathwork, a spiritual and psychological practice begun by Eva Pierrakos, and the two shared homes in Manhattan and on a rural spread in Long Eddy, New York until Hoiby’s death in 2011. Shulgasser introduced Hoiby to wide-ranging literary texts, then adapted them, inspiring the creation of a burst of lyrical works that brought a broader audience to Hoiby’s tonal music for voice. Shulgasser adapted two episodes of Julia Child’s television show The French Chef. The result was the 25-minute one-woman operatic piece Bon Appetit!, which premiered with Jean Stapleton as Child in March 1989 at the Kennedy Center. He also edited Ruth Draper’s 1925 monologue, originally known as The Busy Mother. As Hoiby’s The Italian Lesson, the short work premiered in January 1985 featuring Stapleton and the Baltimore Opera Company.
Shulgasser adapted Shakespearean texts, including the libretto for Hoiby’s The Tempest, which premiered in 1986 at the Des Moines Metro Opera, and Romeo and Juliet, Hoiby’s last opera. He also arranged texts by Martin Luther King Jr, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop and Virginia Woolf, among others, for Hoiby songs. Shulgasser directed various Hoiby pieces, including the one-act comic opera Something New for the Zoo in 1988. He served as producer on a 1996 recorded performance of Hoiby’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Stanley Babin and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra.
For several years, Shulgasser hosted Music of the Spheres, a classical music program on WJFF, a Catskills public radio station.
Shulgasser was born July 28, 1947, two months after his parents, Luba (Golante) and Lew, arrived in New York, having escaped the Kovno, Lithuania ghetto in 1944. After a childhood in Manhattan and Queens, he attended Kenyon College, received a B.A. from Hunter College and studied psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is survived by a sister, Barbara Shulgasser-Parker.
A lifelong collector of books, he owned a series of bookstores over the years in West Palm Beach, Florida; Callicoon, New York, and Jeffersonville. All of them had extensive astrology sections, a subject he wrote about in his blog, astrodreamer.squarespace.com. He organized his large personal library by author’s zodiac sign. He will be missed.
Shulgasser met Hoiby in 1979 through The Pathwork, a spiritual and psychological practice begun by Eva Pierrakos, and the two shared homes in Manhattan and on a rural spread in Long Eddy, New York until Hoiby’s death in 2011. Shulgasser introduced Hoiby to wide-ranging literary texts, then adapted them, inspiring the creation of a burst of lyrical works that brought a broader audience to Hoiby’s tonal music for voice. Shulgasser adapted two episodes of Julia Child’s television show The French Chef. The result was the 25-minute one-woman operatic piece Bon Appetit!, which premiered with Jean Stapleton as Child in March 1989 at the Kennedy Center. He also edited Ruth Draper’s 1925 monologue, originally known as The Busy Mother. As Hoiby’s The Italian Lesson, the short work premiered in January 1985 featuring Stapleton and the Baltimore Opera Company.
Shulgasser adapted Shakespearean texts, including the libretto for Hoiby’s The Tempest, which premiered in 1986 at the Des Moines Metro Opera, and Romeo and Juliet, Hoiby’s last opera. He also arranged texts by Martin Luther King Jr, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop and Virginia Woolf, among others, for Hoiby songs. Shulgasser directed various Hoiby pieces, including the one-act comic opera Something New for the Zoo in 1988. He served as producer on a 1996 recorded performance of Hoiby’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Stanley Babin and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra.
For several years, Shulgasser hosted Music of the Spheres, a classical music program on WJFF, a Catskills public radio station.
Shulgasser was born July 28, 1947, two months after his parents, Luba (Golante) and Lew, arrived in New York, having escaped the Kovno, Lithuania ghetto in 1944. After a childhood in Manhattan and Queens, he attended Kenyon College, received a B.A. from Hunter College and studied psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is survived by a sister, Barbara Shulgasser-Parker.
A lifelong collector of books, he owned a series of bookstores over the years in West Palm Beach, Florida; Callicoon, New York, and Jeffersonville. All of them had extensive astrology sections, a subject he wrote about in his blog, astrodreamer.squarespace.com. He organized his large personal library by author’s zodiac sign. He will be missed.
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