Seattle Opera Blog

Aidan Lang To Become Seattle Opera’s Third General Director

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:34:00 +0000

Today Seattle Opera announced that Aidan Lang will succeed Speight Jenkins as General Director.

Aidan Lang
Photo by Rick Dahms

Respected in the world of opera for leadership positions with New Zealand Opera, Glyndebourne Opera Festival, the Buxton Festival and Opera Zuid, Lang will join Seattle Opera full-time in March 2014, and will then become the company’s third General Director when Speight Jenkins steps down on September 1, 2014.

John Nesholm, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, announced the appointment: “On behalf of the Board of Trustees and the search committee, I want to welcome Aidan Lang to Seattle Opera. All of us are extremely confident that Aidan is the right choice to lead the Company into a new era, building on the incredible artistic successes of predecessors Speight Jenkins and Glynn Ross. Aidan’s exciting combination of artistic, theatrical and business experience, matched with the enormous potential of our company and its people, suggest a very exciting future for Seattle Opera.”

“Seattle Opera has been my life for the last thirty years,” said Speight Jenkins. “As we head into the 50th anniversary season, my focus will be on the future – working closely with Aidan to transfer leadership of Seattle Opera in a seamless manner. I commend the search committee on their hard work and excellent decision. I embrace and celebrate their choice. I know that Aidan’s breadth and depth of experience, from the artistic to the business side of leadership, will be an unbeatable combination and an invaluable asset to Seattle Opera going forward.”

“Seattle is an international city known for both its leading edge technology and world-class arts institutions,” said Aidan Lang. “Seattle Opera is one of the world’s most respected opera companies and Speight Jenkins is, quite simply, a legend in our business. I am honored, energized, excited and definitely humbled by the opportunity to lead the company in this next chapter.”

Since 2006, Lang has served as General Director of New Zealand Opera, with a goal of ensuring that every production is theatrically stimulating and musically ambitious. Working collaboratively is a top priority for Lang, and during his tenure New Zealand Opera implemented a series of collaborations with such companies as Glyndebourne, Opera North, and Welsh National Opera, bringing exciting productions from directors Nikolaus Lehnhoff (Jenůfa) Tim Albery (Macbeth) and Christopher Alden (Turandot) to New Zealand. In addition to bringing productions in, Lang made it a priority to develop the capacity to build productions in the country, establishing New Zealand’s first ever opera production workshop. This achievement has resulted in international co-productions with Scottish Opera (L’italiana in Algeri), Victorian Opera (Serse), and this year’s Der Fliegende Holländer with Opera Queensland in Australia. Future international co-productions are also underway with Cape Town Opera, West Australian Opera, Opera Queensland, State Opera of South Australia and Victorian Opera. Lang’s collaborative approach has also reaped significant rewards in the business area. With the expansion of the company’s reach to include Christchurch, in addition to its performing centers in Auckland and Wellington, Lang has rebranded New Zealand Opera as a truly national company, one that serves the entire country. The Company’s success over the past few years has been noticed, and the partnership Lang spearheaded with Creative New Zealand (the country’s national arts development agency) resulted in significant increases to its core grant funding, securing long-term financial stability for the company.

Prior to leading New Zealand Opera, Aidan Lang held artistic leadership positions at Buxton Festival, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Glyndebourne Touring Opera and Opera Zuid in the Netherlands. Concurrent with these leadership positions, Lang was a sought-after freelance director working around the world. Among other productions, he directed the first Brazilian production of Wagner’s Ring at the historic Teatro Amazonas in Manaus. Other noted productions include Le Comte Ory (Welsh National Opera), Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (Lisbon), The Turn of the Screw (Salzburg) and the British premieres of The Magic Fountain by Frederick Delius (Scottish Opera) and Cornet Christoph Rolke’s Song of Love and Death by Siegfried Matthus (Glyndebourne). As Artistic Director of the Buxton Festival, Lang expanded the Festival to include Baroque and contemporary music, tripled its audience attendance and delivered significant operating surpluses in each year. He was a key part of the triumvirate senior management team at Glyndebourne, where he held dual positions for nine years; he succeeded in developing a unique identity for Glyndebourne Touring Opera, distinct from the larger Glyndebourne Festival, and continuing the company’s tradition of nurturing young singers. Concurrent with his positions at Glyndebourne, he was appointed the inaugural Artistic Director of Opera Zuid, a newly-created touring company based in the Netherlands. During his leadership, Opera Zuid’s impact and the quality of its work were such that the company received national funding and is now a permanent fixture of operatic life in the Netherlands.

Born in 1957 in the UK, Lang is a graduate of The Tiffin School and the University of Birmingham. He will relocate to Seattle with his wife of 23 years, the former soprano Linda Kitchen, and their 16 year old daughter Eleanor. In addition to his operatic leadership skills and international directing experience, Lang is an accomplished musician, having studied clarinet since the age of 8.

Meet Our Singers: MARGARET JANE WRAY, Sieglinde & Third Norn

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Murphy) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:21:00 +0000

Margaret Jane Wray has been a part of this particular Ring production since it began in 2000, singing the roles of Sieglinde and the Third Norn. She relishes the opportunity to return to these roles that have been changed and shaped by her time in Seattle, and to sing what she believes is the most beautiful music in the entire Ring.

What do you like about this production and the opportunity to come back to it?
It’s such a beautiful production. When the curtain opens, the scenery takes your breath away. The second thing would be Stephen Wadsworth, who is a wonderful director, very detail-oriented and positive. He’s friends with the singers and he cares about us and he works with us to be the best that we can be. It’s also Seattle Opera, it’s Speight, who always assembles a wonderful cast. Even though the cast has changed a bit over the years, it’s like a family. Also, Seattle is a wonderful place to work, especially during the summer.

You’re not the first to say it’s like a family. Why would you say that about this particular production?
As Wagnerians we’ve worked together in other cities. Lots of us have just come from New York for their Ring and we see each other around the world, so there’s a Wagnerian family. And we spend a long time in Seattle. Three and a half months for some people. You get to know people. We bring our children and husbands and wives and that’s part of the charm of it, too.

What kind of impact does the long rehearsal period have on the final production?
We’re so well rehearsed by the first dress rehearsal that we’re ready to go. You might not have had as much time with the orchestra as you’d want but you’re ready to go. With what’s happening in opera and in the world, rehearsing is now a luxury. I just did a production of a huge role, one of the biggest roles in the soprano repertoire, and I got one run-through in a room before I went onstage.

This Ring is incredibly detail-oriented, and that’s why it’s so successful. There is a lot of meaning between the characters, lots of tension on the stage, and you don’t see that in every Ring. I’ll go out on a limb and say this is the best Ring I’ve ever been in and I’ve been in many.

Margaret Jane Wray as Sieglinde
Chris Bennion, photo

Why is Sieglinde a character that many can sympathize with?
Probably because she’s an innocent. She’s been taken advantage of and abused, breaks out of a terrible situation and gives birth to a hero. She’s not a god, she’s human. For me, musically, she easily has the most beautiful music in the Ring. It’s just glorious music and it’s very satisfying. I’ve never gotten sick of singing it, and I feel like she’s a part of me. Her music comes back at the end of Götterdämmerung and people remember.

To some of the Ring's best music, Margaret Jane Wray (Sieglinde) thanks Brünnhilde (Janice Baird) and prophecies that Siegfried will someday thank her in person
Chris Bennion, photo

Can you characterize how the role has evolved over the years?
I had sung Sieglinde only once before I did the first Seattle production in 2000, so I was still a newbie. Until you get 10-15 performances under your belt on a particular role, it’s still considered new. Especially a big Wagnerian role. In my first production I did not have the detailed direction that I got from Stephen, so in some ways I felt like Seattle was my first time through. He really dug into it much more deeply, which was eye opening to me. Over the years we continue to dig and continue to layer the character, and as a singer I think my voice is stronger. I’m more confident as a singer.

Luretta Bybee, Margaret Jane Wray, and Stephanie Blythe as Norns #1, #3, and #2
Rozarii Lynch, photo

You are also a Norn in the first scene of Götterdämmerung. How do you shift gears?
It’s a totally different thing. It’s a short scene, but it’s extremely important because it sets up the whole of Götterdämmerung. It’s always fun to rehearse with Stephanie Blythe and Luretta Bybee. We have a sisterly rapport, so when we get to sing together, it’s always a warm and fun time.

Do you have a favorite Ring memory?
It was the second year. We drove out to Seattle, and I could not stay awake in the car. One of my colleagues, Lori Phillips (she’s covering Brünnhilde this summer) was pregnant at the time, and we were having a chat and she said, “I think you’re pregnant.” I said, “Don’t be silly!” And so, of course, I went and I took a test and I was pregnant. I remember my husband and my young son, who is now 17, jumping up in the air and saying, “Oh my gosh, that’s fantastic.” I was thinking, “I’m going to have morning sickness while I’m trying to rehearse Sieglinde!” I didn’t have morning sickness, but I remember I could not stand the smell of salmon.

Given that this is Speight’s last Ring, could you offer any thoughts on his influence on your career?
I owe a lot to Speight. I can’t imagine him retiring for one; he’s such a force of nature and he has built something so special out here in Seattle. He has kept me each year and that has meant a lot to me. He has been steadfast for me and one of the most important people as far as my career is concerned. I have been very humbled by his faithfulness. My pledge this year to him is just to have the best possible Ring we can have and enjoy every minute of it and thank him for being such a great General Director.

Meet Our Singers: RICHARD PAUL FINK, Alberich the Nibelung

noreply@blogger.com (Seattle Opera) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:54:00 +0000

With our focus this week on the Nibelungs, let’s chat with THE Nibelung of “Ring of the Nibelung,” Alberich. Played by Richard Paul Fink at every Seattle Ring performance since 2000, Alberich is the tragic antihero of Das Rheingold and also appears in important scenes in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. American baritone Richard Paul Fink first appeared at Seattle Opera as Carlo Gérard in Andrea Chenier in 1996. His other Italian role here has been Amonasro in Aida (in 2008); in Seattle he sings more often in German, including (in addition to Alberich) Klingsor in Parsifal, Don Pizarro in Fidelio, and Jochanaan in Salome. Fink spoke with Jessica Murphy about balancing comedy with tragedy for this remarkable character, the wild physicality of the role, and Alberich’s love for alliteration.

Could you describe Alberich for a Ring newbie?
I basically describe him as being Sméagol, the Gollum character in The Lord of the Rings, with the physical activity but without the voice. Alberich is the person who takes the gold from the bottom of the Rhine River. He starts as this Joe Sixpack, and the power of the ring, of money and control, start to possess him. The strength of that drug becomes all-consuming.

Alberich (Richard Paul Fink) vocalizes his agony when Wotan (Greer Grimsley) rips the ring away from his hand
Rozarii Lynch, photo

When Wotan takes the ring, I let out this primordial scream. My angst is over the loss of that drug; I’m in withdrawal after that. My constant question to directors is “Does Alberich evolve or devolve over the course of the Ring? Does he become more human, or do you want Alberich to become a bug on the wall?

How does Stephen [Wadsworth, director of Seattle’s production] answer that question?
Here he evolves a little bit, becoming more human over the course of the cycle. Stephen is very much into the human emotions.

Richard Paul Fink sings Alberich's curse in 2009

Has your interpretation changed over the years?
Yes. When to go, playfully, over the top...and when to focus. There is comedy with Alberich. Wagner included comedy in the Ring: slapstick, a pie in the face still works. Watching Alberich slip and slide while he chases the three Rhine Daughters is just as funny now as it was forever. The duet between Mime and Alberich is so much fun in the Seattle production. We are throwing little bean bags (we call them “dragon scat”) back and forth across the valley at each other. You need moments of levity because it makes what follows more serious. If all you have is serious and intense, you lose intensity. I also really love the stillness and the simplicity of what we’ve done with Alberich in Götterdämmerung.

Alberich (Richard Paul Fink, left) and Mime (Dennis Peterson, right) squabble over the corpse of Fafner while Siegfried is in the dragon's lair
Chris Bennion, photo

What do you like about coming back to the Seattle production?
The naturalism. Seattle has one of the last naturalistic Rings. And the people in the cast and crew are all old friends. A lot of our children have grown up together. When we first started staging this, our children's big question was, “Whose house is the sleepover going to be at tonight?”

You do a back flip, right?
I’m 58 years old and I plan on doing it again.

How did this tradition get started?
In the Seattle Rhine set, what I call “Old Smokey,” there are all these pigeon holes so you can get handholds and footholds to climb it. But they hadn’t figured out how I would get down. I asked for a crash pad back so I could do a back flip off the back platform. Then the tech crew mounted a special handle on the back of the central rock in the first scene, so I can hang on it and let myself down. They reinforced all the pigeon holes—really, the tech staff was so nice and supportive, doing everything and following through with my quirky little requests. We spray my seat with silicone so that I slide down faster.

The swimming Rhine Daughter Flosshilde (Jennifer Hines) taunts Alberich (Richard Paul Fink) in one of his most acrobatic scenes
Rozarii Lynch, photo

Are you that physical in other productions?
Being agile and as physical as possible makes you more confident as a performer. When I’m asked to enter on the prow of the Dutchman’s ship, I feel better about standing up there because I know I can handle even more extreme situations. I was just singing Rigoletto in Kansas City, and one night the heel of my shoe caught on a step as I was entering and I rolled down eight steps, into the middle of the stage by accident. But, being trained to do pratfalls, I knew I could handle it as soon as I felt myself falling. And then I got up and sang “Cortigiani!” In the Met Nixon in China, which is now on DVD, I did backflips and falls as the girls kicked me and punched me and knocked me around.

It goes back to being mascot for my high school for two and a half years...and even before that. In my neighborhood, growing up in Ohio, the kids would play “fight the invisible man,” and we’d judge each other on who fought the best: who took better punches, better pratfalls. Around that same time, with mom and dad I did a lot of camping, at a little Ohio Indian campsite there was a bullwhip on the wall and we bought it and I practiced with it–I’d go out in the yard and snap the tops off dandelions. I learned how to climb a tree with it, Daniel Boone-style. It’s that same training that has evolved over the years; I use a whip quite extensively in Das Rheingold. I give a little whip lesson to the Nibelungs because you have all these children, and it’s really loud, so I tell them, “I am in control of this, it’s going to make a loud sound but it’s not going to hurt you. If you want to cover your ears, great! That’s what we want.”

Alberich (Richard Paul Fink) threatens Mime (Dennis Peterson) with his whip when the craftsman is delinquent in delivering the magic helmet Alberich had him forge
Rozarii Lynch, photo

How do you want the audience to feel about Alberich?
Please don’t look at Alberich as being evil or malevolent from the very beginning. He’s not. His life experiences make him what he is. I always approach any character, especially villains, as multi-dimensional characters. So don’t think about him as a cardboard cutout. I have to believe what he is saying, or else the audience won’t either. Honesty, that’s what it’s all about.

What about how Alberich sounds?
In the beginning Alberich uses alliterations. Wagner really loves alliterations and the dotted rhythmic figure that infects his speech pattern. After the curse, he moves away from that, and by the time you get into Siegfried, you have these much, much longer vocal lines. I always I love the way we stage Siegfried in Seattle—Alberich is just sitting on the rock, in total darkness, like he’s been there forever, waiting for something to die.

Meet our RING Singers: LURETTA BYBEE, Valkyrie and Norn

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 17:00:00 +0000

As this summer’s festival performances of Wagner’s Ring approach, we’ll be introducing Seattle Opera’s fantastic singers, Wagner’s memorable characters, and production elements such as the music, the costumes, and the sets on this blog and on our social networks. Let’s begin, today, by checking in with one of our singers, Luretta Bybee, who—like many in the cast—plays multiple roles in different Ring operas. Luretta made her Seattle Opera debut in 1990 as several characters in another epic opera, War and Peace. She has also been a memorable Carmen, Dame Quickly in Falstaff, and Klytämnestra in Elektra for the company; she made us laugh, as Wowkle in La fanciulla del West, and cry, as Paula in Florencia en el Amazonas and Amanda in Amelia. 2013 marks the fourth summer that Luretta, and her family, spend in Seattle working on our Ring. When she’s not in Seattle Luretta, who is Chair of Vocal Arts at New England Conservatory of Music, plays a major role in the development of the next generation of opera talent.

Luretta Bybee gave a powerful performance creating the role of Amelia's mother Amanda in Amelia in 2010
Rozarii Lynch, photo

You’ve been a Valkyrie in this production of the Ring for many years.
Yes, the first time I was involved was in the 2001 Die Walküre, I sang Schwertleite. I sang that role again in 2005, and switched to Waltraute (in Die Walküre) last time, in 2009. This summer I’m back to Schwertleite again.

What do you remember from that first experience, in 2001? What were the headlines?
That may have been my first time working with Stephen [Wadsworth, the stage director], and I was a bit overwhelmed by the detail of the staging. And I remember the amazing camaraderie of the people involved. And another thing—my husband, Greer Grimsley, who is singing Wotan now. But he sang Donner and Gunther that summer. And it was a different experience living with a Donner-Gunther than a Wotan!

How so?
For Greer, singing Gunther was a little bit like wearing the wrong size clothes. Mentally and emotionally, he was already heading towards Wotan...he was a good team player, that summer, but I think he was itching to tackle the bigger role. It took him two years to learn it, during which I coined the phrase "Wagner widow."

Eight of the Valkyries are surprised to see Brünnhilde approaching, not with a dead man, but with a live woman
Chris Bennion, photo

When I remember Ring summers gone by, it seems like the nine of you are ALWAYS rehearsing that Valkyrie scene. Is there any scene, in any opera, more dense in terms of the staging—the thousands of tiny details that add up to make it so entertaining?
The only thing I’ve ever done that compares was the Peter Brook Tragedy of Carmen. I did that in 1987, and I can still remember the staging—it was that detailed, that specific. Within a very tight framework, Brook convinced us that in fact we had a great deal of artistic leeway as performers. And though the challenge was much greater as an actor, he was absolutely right. The same is the case with this Valkyrie scene.

Does Stephen Wadsworth’s staging of the Valkyrie scene change from year to year, as the cast changes?
No, in fact, another singer had done my part, Schwertleite, in 2000, when Seattle Opera did a half-Ring with just Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. So in 2001, I was put into the part and followed her blocking. In the years since, I’ve helped other women who were new to the scene. We share this swashbuckling, swaggering attitude; that’s the tone for the scene—at least until Brünnhilde enters.

Sometimes it can be hard to tell all the Valkyries apart. Could you remind us: which one is Schwertleite?
She has a great sense of humor, and is always trying to evoke a response with her sisters.

Luretta Bybee (Schwertleite) amuses her sisters in 2005
Chris Bennion, photo

You like getting a rise out of them...like in that moment when you kiss the severed head.
Yes, I think they appreciate my sense of humor. The thing is, Schwertleite is grounded. If she’s laughing, everything is okay.

How did you and Stephen develop this personality for your Valkyrie?
Stephen is so empathetic. There was a framework, but he gave me the leeway to improvise a little bit, and as soon as I started playing with these body part props we had for the scene, he loved it and said, “Go with it!”

And is Waltraute, the Valkyrie you sang in 2009, very different?
Yes, she’s more serious, more of a stoic personality. She has a leadership role among the sisters—that much is written in the music and text.

Luretta Bybee (First Norn), Margaret Jane Wray (Second Norn), and Stephanie Blythe (Third Norn)
Chris Bennion, photo

Now, many of these years you’ve performed both as a Valkyrie and a Norn.
Yes, I sang the First Norn in 2001 and 2009, and I sing it again this summer. The Norn scene is incredibly detailed, too, but it’s easier than the Valkryie scene. Probably because the three of us—Stephanie [Blythe, the Second Norn] and Margaret Jane [Wray, the Third Norn] and I are incredibly close. We know each other so well, that makes it very easy.

Can you compare the Norns’ scene to the Valkyries’?
The Valkyries tend to be very outward-looking; they’re aware of everything external. The Norns are the opposite—all reflective, inward-looking, remembering. The Valkyries are looking to conquer and move forward, while the Norns want to go back to a better time. They sense that the end of something great and important is at hand.

Luretta, put on your voice teacher hat for a moment and let me ask you: what does it take to be a great Wagner singer?
To be perfectly honest, what it takes is, you have to be born with a great Wagner voice. You can’t train someone to sing Wagner. In my opinion we have a lot of ersatz Wagner singers, people who are trying to be Wagner singers. Particularly with this push in today’s world, to have opera singers who look like Hollywood stars. [Stage Director] Giancarlo Del Monaco once said, “If you have no horses in the stable, a donkey becomes your best horse.” What’s exciting to me about many of the Seattle Ring cast who are returning—Greer, Stephanie Blythe, Richard Paul Fink, Daniel Sumegi—is that they’re thoroughbred Wagner singers. The real deal.

Luretta Bybee, left, sang Mary in 2007 in a Seattle Opera Flying Dutchman which starred Jay Hunter Morris as Erik and Greer Grimsley (painting, at back) as the Dutchman
Chris Bennion, photo

Do you sing much Wagner?
Not a lot. I sang a small role in Flying Dutchman, and I’ve sung Fricka in Das Rheingold. I have a strong lower voice, which is necessary for Wagner, ‘cause you can get lost in the orchestra.

One thing I find that separates Wagner singers from others is the ability to sustain a longer phrase. Wagner requires stamina. They’re so long—both his vocal lines and his operas!

The story of the Ring is a family affair, and your own family has long been involved with this production. Could you tell us a little about how the three of you participate in the Seattle Ring?
Well, it’s changed over the years. In 2001, Greer sang Donner and Gunther, and our daughter Emma, who was 9 that summer, was a Nibelung. The next time we did it in Seattle, Greer switched over to Wotan and Emma...I remember one thing from that summer, Emma will kill me for telling this story, but it was so amazing to watch her start to understand what it was all about. She’d never heard Wotan’s Farewell, and the first time she heard it, in rehearsal, she started to cry—who doesn’t, at that music?—but she was a teenager with her friends, and so tried to hide the fact that she was crying! Later, she said to me, “Mom, that’s the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard, I want Daddy to sing that at my wedding!” But Greer’s response was: “No, I couldn’t possibly get through it.”

And then in 2009, Emma was 17, and Stephen invented a supernumerary character for her, the “Lady in Black” in Götterdämmerung. She appeared in Stephen’s Dutchman, too, in ’07: this punk kid with an attitude.

Is there anything in particular you’re looking forward to about this summer?
We’re looking forward to all being together and being home. Seattle is home, and the Ring is like a family reunion for us, being together with all these people we love. We’re feeling so grateful that we’re here, and healthy, and able to be together.

Letter from Beijing

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Murphy) — Fri, 24 May 2013 19:49:00 +0000

While Seattle Opera was having what looks like it must have been a fantastic Wagner's birthday party, I (Jonathan Dean, Seattle Opera's Director of Public Programs and Media) and Kelly Tweeddale (Executive Director) have been having an extraordinary week here in Beijing. We are here as guests of the NCPA, the biggest opera house in China, for the 5th Eorld Theatre Forum. Representatives from opera houses in Italy, Germany, Belgium, England, Poland, Hungary, Finland, Oman, Australia, the US, and several important theaters in China (including Shanghai, Hong Kong, Chongqing, and Wuhan) all gathered here this week, to enjoy a wonderful performance of Nabucco at the NCPA and to participate in several day-long discussions of such issues as the training of young opera artists, the worldwide celebrations of the Verdi and Wagner bicentennials, and the challenges and opportunities facing the opera industry in China.

The fantastic Plácido Domingo made his NCPA debut as Nabucco, a thrilling performance he will sing again later this summer in Verona. He was joined by an all-Chinese cast, including the wonderful bass Liang Li as Zaccaria, Sun Xiuwei as Abigaille, Yang Guang as Fenena, and Jin Zhengjian as Ismaele. Eugene Kohn conducted the chorus and orchestra of the NCPA. Their "Va, pensiero" was particularly moving. The production, by Gilbert Deflo, exploited the great technical capacities of the theater, and I particularly enjoyed the projections, by Sergio Metalli, which told the story of the arrogant Babylonian king's hubris and the vengeance of Jehovah. It was Domingo's genius to make us still care for this crazy old man.

In addition to the fascinating discussions we've been having with the remarkable people who have gathered in Beijing, Kelly and I have managed to squeeze in a little sight-seeing. Here I am, with a new friend I met in Behai Park, a beautiful area north of the Forbidden City.

And here's Kelly, about to enter the wild market street of Wangfujing.

She's been a terrific tour guide, as it's my first time in China and her third year participating in the World Theatre Forum. She also had the opportunity to travel to Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, in 2009 as part of a cultural exchange program. Music crosses every border!

Many thanks to Ma Wenjie of the NCPA, who helped arrange our visits to China, and who has been translating for us, along with the expert staff of the NCPA.

Jonathan Dean Speaks About Wagner in Beijing

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:00:00 +0000

Hi, I'm Jonathan Dean, your faithful Seattle Opera blogger and supertitles-guy, here to wish everyone a great Wagner's birthday and to share with you a little of the amazing week I have coming up. Over the 18 years I've had the good fortune to work for Seattle Opera, I've had many unusual adventures; but this week surpasses them all. I am traveling to Beijing, along with Seattle Opera Executive Director Kelly Tweeddale, to participate in the World Theatre Forum at China's National Centre for the Performing Arts. In honor of Wagner's bicentennial this Wednesday, I've been asked to speak about the Ring, our signature work here at Seattle Opera. The National Centre for the Performing Arts, just off Tiananmen Square, is China's biggest opera house. They've been presenting lots of western operas, although they haven't done the Ring...yet. Kelly and I are thrilled to be going to the NCPA, and I hope to check in with you later in the week and report on our experience.

For now, here's what I'm planning to say at the forum. (It was necessary to write this speech ahead of time so it could be translated into Mandarin, since many of the attendees are coming from opera companies around China. I can usually make myself understood in Italian, French, and German--languages which I translate into English for Seattle Opera's supertitles--but I haven't yet gotten very far with Mandarin!)

Jonathan Dean speaking before Seattle Opera's 2009 Ring
Alan Alabastro, photo

The Challenges and Rewards of Presenting the Ring
By Jonathan Dean

Dà jìa hăo! (Thank you so much.) It is a tremendous honor to me and to the city of Seattle that I have this opportunity to speak to you about Wagner and Der Ring des Nibelungen, today, as May 22, Wagner’s 200th birthday, dawns in the Far East. I am here on behalf of Speight Jenkins, General Director of Seattle Opera, who unfortunately couldn’t be here at the World Theatre Forum today because, in about 24 hours, when May 22 concludes in the Far West, he’ll be cutting a giant birthday cake at a tremendous birthday party for Wagner in Seattle.

I could tell you a lot of things we’ve learned at Seattle Opera about putting on a good production of the Ring; I could tell lots of entertaining (and sometimes horrifying) stories about things we’ve learned the hard way, about how NOT to present the Ring: stories about prop malfunctions, casting mistakes, ill-conceived designs, orchestral problem-spots, and, of course, special effects disasters, including the mermaid who swam into a dragon by mistake and the magic fire that burned a little TOO brightly.

But in Wagner’s honor, I’d rather talk today about why. Why did Glynn Ross, the founding General Director of Seattle Opera, decide in 1973 that our fledgling company should attempt to scale this Mt. Everest of the opera world? Why are we still putting it on, forty years later? Why do so many opera lovers become Ring fanatics, following productions of Wagner’s Ring to the ends of the earth, forever yearning, like Goethe’s Faust, for some unattainably perfect ideal production? What is this hunger people have, to experience this mighty work and make it their own, to find new ways of listening to it, approaching it, thinking about it? Why, for so many of us, is the Ring the work we’d take with us to a desert island—the one opera I wish everyone had a chance to attend?

To begin with, the Ring is unique—unique in its challenges and in the rewards it offers. There is nothing else like it in the world of music: nothing so vast in ambition and scale, so organically unified, and yet so popular and accessible. In drama, film, and narrative fiction there may be works of art that have much in common with the Ring; but because the Ring tells its story through music, such comparisons are ultimately meaningless. The Ring is one of a kind, like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, Dante’s Commedia, or the Xī Yóu Jì. We pursue it because it is very large and we are very small, and we know our lives will be richer if we engage with even a little bit of this amazing work.

No opera has so much in it. It touches pretty much every field of inquiry the mind can pursue: it is at home in every department at a university, every section in a newspaper. Wagner took a wondrous legend from ancient northern Europe, arranged it into drama following the theatrical tradition of ancient southern Europe, and with the most compelling music hitherto created in the West told stories that explored all the issues of his nineteenth-century European world. But these are today’s issues, too. Political issues, about the warring of the tribes and nations, about labor and capitol, power struggles between competing ideologies. And psychological issues—stories about people from broken homes, about messed-up relationships between parents and children, about love and sex and marriage and unfulfillable need. And philosophical issues: a story that questions the nature of good, the origin of evil, and that climaxes in the death of a god. In the 19th century, the Ring may have been a parable about industrialization, the most pressing issue of the day in Wagner’s Europe; for our 21st century, it certainly is a parable of environmental degradation, an issue which concerns us all. No matter who we are, we continue to find our story in the Ring.

The Ring manages to show us ourselves in the most curious way—it takes us away from our lives in order to show us our lives. Although it is attractive, at surface level, with its cast full of wonderful characters, dramatic situations, huge orchestra, and glorious voices, the Ring is too big for superficial acquaintance. Its vast size demands a commitment: you have to undertake the journey and enter its world. And as it whisks you farther and farther away from the world you thought you knew, the stranger and more wild and weird its situations get, the more you discover yourself and what is most important in your life.

We saw this feature of the Ring in a dramatic way in Seattle when we did a production of Das Rheingold, the first opera of the Ring, for elementary school children, ages 8, 9, 10 years old. For the thousands of children who became fascinated by this opera, Das Rheingold wasn’t about gods and dwarfs and giants and mermaids: it was about teasing and bullying, very real issues in the lives of every child in America. It may be easier to talk about poor loveless Alberich than your own wounded heart; but it turns out they’re the same thing. Alberich only exists in us.

The Ring rewards all those who dare enter into it and find themselves. And its rewards are also its challenges, for the Ring is nothing if not challenging.

The Ring poses enormous challenges to everyone involved. It challenges the singers, the orchestra, every department backstage, and even the audience. In America, where television and now social networking encourages short attention spans, some people find the commitment necessary to be a member of the audience for the Ring daunting. But that’s fine, Richard Wagner understood that situation, even in the 19th century, and made that choice. He envisioned a Festival Theater situation where the audience would have made a pilgrimage to his temple of art; and he would reward them for their sacrifice, for taking all that time and coming all that distance, with a work of art that was bigger, more complex, and more engrossing than what was typically offered up at their opera houses. In my experience, this question of audience commitment takes care of itself: those who shy away from the Ring are probably not ready for it; and those who are ready develop a hunger to experience the work and participate in the community that gathers around its week-long production. To put it in terms of the story, you have your timid Mimes, cringing forever inside their little caves; and also your bold Siegfrieds, ever eager for new challenges, mountains to climb and dragons to defeat. Those are the opera-goers who will rise to the challenge of the Ring, and there’s no stopping them.

The Ring is a challenge for the performers. There are no more difficult pieces that an orchestra will ever play in an opera house than the Ring. In Seattle, we’re fortunate today because of our long history with the work; our Seattle orchestra started playing the Ring a generation ago. So the musicians have the piece in their fingers (or their lips, if we’re talking about the horn players who perform Siegfried’s famous call); they’ve worked on it every few years, and many of its trickiest passages are in their muscle memory. For some, the great challenge is no longer the technical difficulties of the music, but instead the focus and stamina this vast work demands.

The singers face the same challenge and more. Vocally, singing the Ring is exhausting—it’s all night every night for many of the performers. Voices with the requisite steel to cut through Wagner’s enormous orchestra don’t grow on trees, and it can be a challenge for Young Artists Programs to identify and nurture them properly. That's why Seattle Opera inaugurated our International Wagner Competition in 2006, a competition which returns next summer.

And, although the Ring needs extraordinary voices, the performers must be better actors than they are musicians, or else the operas don’t quite work. More so than almost any other opera, the Ring is a play set to extraordinary music. Ultimately, Wagner was more interested in drama than in music, so one of the greatest challenges with the Ring is staging it properly. Each of the scenes, each of the acts, each of the operas is long and complex. Each of the scenes requires a strong beginning, a middle that ramps up the tension, and a satisfying ending. Until that shape is felt by all the artists working on the production, the scene is not ready for the audience. That makes for a challenge!

The magic tricks that go into the Ring—the dwarf that turns into a toad, the sword that cleaves an anvil apart, the dragon and earth goddess and magic fire, are literally the stuff of legend. They must not only delight the audience: it’s best to surprise the audience at each of these moments, since many will know the story and may be expecting some kind of magic trick. Getting these tricks to succeed, so that the audience squeals with joy, can be incredibly challenging. But that’s fine, we love those challenges and we will continue to rise to them as we create Ring cycles in the years to come!

It is tempting to think of the Ring as something like the nearby Great Wall, or the Great Pyramids of Egypt, you know, a phenomenon which has been there so long, and which is so vast, that its future will likely look much like its past. But that is the wrong way to think about the Ring. It hasn’t always been there—it’s only 137 years old, and it has already changed enormously over those 137 years, just as it has changed the culture around it. The Ring first revolutionized the way operas were written, then planted the seeds for cinema, and, in the years following the Second World War, changed the way all classical theater is produced in the west.

Even in remote Seattle, the Ring has meant different things over the course of its 40 year history. The company’s first Ring, which had an enormous romantic appeal not just to classical music buffs but to ‘70s hippies from up and down the west coast, might strike us as a bit simple nowadays. I can’t speak to this production from personal experience, but from my research I can tell you it was a straightforward fantasy of mythic monsters, Valkyries with winged helmets and gods in tunics, and beautiful lighting effects. I get the sense that this was a Ring that seized people’s hearts, but not necessarily one that challenged their minds. Our second Ring, which we presented between 1985 and 1995 (when I worked on it), was influenced not only by the many conceptual productions then the norm in Europe, but by the alienation-theater of Bertolt Brecht. Although you might think that Brecht would make an odd bedfellow with Richard Wagner, the pairing proved inspired: the ironic distance afforded by the staging kept the mind ever alert and focused, while the music continued to command our emotions. And our third Ring production, which premiered in 2001 and which begins rehearsal today, seeks to build on the successes of these previous productions: to enchant the heart with dazzling beauty while drawing the mind logically through Wagner’s gripping story. Technological advances in stagecraft enabled us with this production to represent the true organic chaos of nature onstage in a way that audiences find extremely satisfying—and, what’s most important, in a way that supports the storytelling.

What comes next for the Ring in Seattle? And in the world? The future of this work is up to us. It’s up to us to embrace its challenges, to meet its demands, and to reap its rewards. There are solutions that others have tried in the past; some of them have worked, others haven’t worked so well. Our responsibility is to find solutions that are ours, with whatever tools are at our disposal. We must continue to try to give life to this extraordinary work and make it available to people. Although the recent economic slump has meant that there isn’t as much opera being produced in America as there was even ten years ago, the Ring is still more accessible, to more people, today than ever before in its history. And I want to see that access continue to expand.

What are we to do with the Ring? If the story itself is any guide, we cannot just put the Ring back in the river—the cycle will simply start all over again. Nor can we hoard it, like greedy dragons in our cave, or use it to pay off old debts, like the irresponsible gods. Let us do something nobody in the story ever managed to achieve—let us find a way to share the Ring, so that people everywhere can benefit from its magic. Thank you, xiè-xiè.

CONNIE YUN Explores New Lighting Technologies

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:54:00 +0000

Connie Yun has been working on the lighting of Seattle Opera productions ever since Ring 3 began catching opera-lovers’ eyes a dozen years ago. As Lighting Designer for our current double-bill, she chose to light La Voix Humaine entirely with new LED fixtures and projections, and to light Suor Angelica with more traditional tungsten-halogen incandescent lights. This ingenious and resourceful artist told me a little about the new technologies available to today’s lighting designer—and how she uses these technologies to reach her goal, which is theatrical story-telling.

Connie, how did this unusual dual-technology lighting situation come about for this double-bill?
We’ve been working with LED lights for some years now; we first bought fixtures for Don Giovanni in 2007, and perhaps you remember the pyramids of The Magic Flute in 2011. For this double-bill, we thought, what if we distinguished between the two pieces, one more modern and one more traditional, by applying this new technology to La Voix Humaine? After all, it’s an intimate, one-person show which afforded us the freedom to experiment.

Seattle Opera's 2011 Magic Flute, Lighting Design by Duane Schuler
Rozarii Lynch, photo

What equipment did you end up using?
Because the technology is changing so rapidly, Assistant Lighting Designer Amiya Brown worked with Richard Carlson, President and CEO of PNTA (Pacific Northwest Theatrical Associates) to put together a rental package for this production. That way Seattle Opera was able to use some of the newest fixtures without investing in technology which will rapidly become obsolete. Specifically, for La Voix Humaine we’re using five ETC SourceFour LED Lustr+ lights and three Vari*Lite VLX3 moving lights. Plus our Barco projectors and some additional arc source moving lights to highlight the furniture, the bathroom, and her hallway.

Nuccia Focile stars in La Voix Humaine, lit with LED lights by Connie Yun
Elise Bakketun, photo

How are the new LED lights different from good old-fashioned incandescents?
As you probably know from buying light bulbs at the grocery store, lighting everywhere is shifting away from incandescent tungsten. LED lights are electroluminescent, using electrical current to excite electrons and release energy as photons. Now, some people don’t particularly like the new LED or the compact fluorescent lights; I even know people who have hoarded and stashed old tungsten incandescent bulbs because they prefer that quality of light. You might compare them to people who prefer listening to recorded music on vinyl instead of digital compact discs.

Unlike incandescent light, which emits a light with a high color rendering index, LED only gives you a narrow wavelength range of light at a time. The high-end new LED equipment gets around this limitation by mixing a higher number of colors. Some of the lights we rented from PNTA, for example, use Red, Green, Blue, Amber, Indigo, Cyan, and White LED’s, or combinations of those seven colors. (Although, don’t think that LED White is truly white—it’s often a blue LED light filtered through a yellow phosphor coating.)

Each of the new fixtures is more expensive than traditional theatrical lights, but there are cost savings. Since an LED fixture can change colors, you don’t need to work with gels and you don’t need to hang as many fixtures. The same LED fixture can illuminate a cool night-time scene and then a bright daylight scene. So we spend less time climbing up and down ladders and more time programming the computers! The fixtures don’t emit as much heat, which ends up affecting heating and cooling costs in the building, not to mention the comfort of the performers. And they seem more efficient, in terms of electricity use: the maximum wattage draw of a Source Four LED fixture is 130 watts, compared to 750 watts for a conventional tungsten fixture. (Or, comparing lumens per watt, the LED fixture scores 31.7 lpw to tungsten’s 18.3 lpw.)

So is this new technology going to take over lighting grids at opera companies worldwide?
If it helps us do our job, which is, after all, telling the story. A day may be coming when we can invest fully in this technology, but we learned something interesting: it’s not bright enough, yet. We deal with huge distances in big American opera houses: we may be throwing light 40-100 feet instead of the 18-30 feet you need to project in a smaller theater. With La Voix Humaine we were able to make that work, since this is an intimate one-person show taking place in a small space. But it might not work so well with a bigger opera.

It occurs to me that these LED lights might be very useful if you were producing opera in a repertory situation, where you had different operas each night. With the LEDs, you can cut down on the number of fixtures—those repertory house lighting grids get crowded!—and still have a full range of colors.

It seemed to me you worked very hard on lighting La Voix Humaine. Almost every time I peeked into rehearsal, you were there, taking notes.
It’s such a personal story—so much in that opera depends on the singer and the director, they have to make it up in rehearsals. Being with them in rehearsal helped me gain empathy for the character in Voix, because—to be honest—I didn’t at first approach her with a great deal of sympathy. Post-feminism, it’s easy to shake your head and wonder, “What the hell is wrong with this woman?” It can be challenging for modern women to relate to such a character.

On the other hand, this is a very moving, human story about heartbreak and the loss of identity. Everyone wants to be loved. And it can be hard to find yourself again, after a breakup. For me, the rehearsal process helped me connect to the character Nuccia Focile has created and care deeply about her.

Nuccia Focile in La Voix Humaine; Lighting by Connie Yun
Elise Bakketun, photo

She looks so beautiful, in the light you’ve given her.
Yes, and her follow-spot is an LED light! Many people can’t tell the difference. We found a color that worked well for Nuccia’s skin tone, and that striking purple negligée, and we turn it on her as soon as she gets up from the bed at the beginning of the opera.

Now tell us about the little Cocteau image she sketches, before she gets up from that bed.
Right, Cocteau drew that image himself. Chris Reay [Associate Technical Director] animated it by taking just the line drawing, recording the image of the drawing being erased step by step, and then playing the video backwards so it is drawn instead of erased. We project that animation with one of our Barco projectors.

From Seattle Opera's La Voix Humaine
Elise Bakketun, photo

Incidentally, those Barcos also project the wallpaper and the carpet. Chris and I were studying Cocteau’s films and we noticed that he often uses interesting wallpaper, in Les enfants terribles or Orpheus. So we found some vintage wallpaper, scaled it up so it’s a bit surreal—bigger than you would find in a real hotel room—and we project that on the wall and the floor. When you’re projecting, it’s best to come at your surface on a perpendicular, which means the Barcos that project the pattern on the floor are hanging directly overhead, from the line sets. Each projector weighs 110 pounds—it’s a good thing we built a sturdy housing for them!

Sing Along with Seattle Opera on May 22!

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Murphy) — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:27:00 +0000

All ages, voice types, and shower singers welcome! Join Seattle Opera for a community sing-along on the occasion of Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday. Enter our contest for best Ring character costume and give your best—or most creative—rendition of Brünnhilde’s “Hojotoho” war cry. (Both male and female Valkyries are invited to give us a “Hojotoho!”) Distinguished judges, including General Director Speight Jenkins, will award prizes.

This free event takes place May 22 at the Seattle Center Armory.

“What fun we’ll have celebrating the human voice, and the wild characters of our signature work, Wagner’s Ring, on the composer’s bicentennial,” says Sue Elliott, Director of Education at Seattle Opera. “Everyone is welcome—from those who’ve never before sung a note in public to professional singers. Unleash your inner diva and join us for an unforgettable night of music and joy.”

The celebration begins at 7:00 pm and goes until 8:30 pm (registration from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm). If you prefer to come prepared, register in advance and receive a link to the music (scores, pronunciation guide, and recorded excerpts).

Beth Kirchhoff leads a backstage chorus (Rozarii Lynch photo)

Seattle Opera Chorusmaster Beth Kirchhoff will lead all participants in the Wedding March from Lohengrin, the Entrance of the Guests from Tannhäuser, the Carnevals-Lied from Das Liebesverbot, and—in honor of Verdi’s bicentennial, also this year—the “Libiamo” from La traviata.

Birthday cake generously donated by New Renaissance Cakes.

Audience Voices: An Interview with Sister Kathleen Ross

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Murphy) — Sat, 04 May 2013 21:00:00 +0000

Puccini placed the drama of Suor Angelica behind the walls of a cloistered convent in the 1600s, though most nuns these days are out and about in the world and many religious orders have shed the traditional habit worn by cloistered nuns. While preparing the “Audience Voices” column for our upcoming Seattle Opera program, I had the good fortune to speak with a nun who has dedicated her career to education and providing access to education for a rural population. Dr. Kathleen Ross, who is a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, was the founding president of Heritage University in Toppenish, WA. She was named a MacArthur Fellow (the one popularly known as the “genius award”), and also happens to be a violinist and a lover of classical music and opera. You’ll see part of our conversation in the program when you come to La Voix Humaine and Suor Angelica; here is the full interview.

How were you first introduced to opera?
My mother loved the opera. She had lived in San Francisco and Washington, DC, while she was serving as a physical therapist in the army in the 1930s, and she had the opportunity to go to an opera or two. She became devoted to the Saturday morning Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. My mother was sick a lot and so even as very young children my sister and I cleaned the house on Saturdays, and we had to be finished running the vacuum cleaner by 10 o’clock in the morning because we had to have the opera on. We could hurry real fast and get the work done, which positioned us especially to enjoy the music.

Do you have a favorite opera?
I have a favorite opera and a favorite piece of opera music. My favorite opera is Turandot. I got to hear that opera live with Beverly Sills in the lead role. It was performed at the Pasadena Community Center, not at an opera house, but they did a good job. I love the music and I think the story has a symbolic meaning on a spiritual level about love that I really like a lot. And the music matches it perfectly.

Turandot, Seattle Opera, 2012 (Elise Bakketun photo)

My favorite piece of opera music is the intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni. The day I was leaving for the convent—this was 1960 with the old rules and regulations where I didn’t know the next time I would be able to come back and visit my family—I said the last thing I wanted to do before we went out to the car was to put on that record and play it. That was my goodbye to my home. To this day it carries such spiritual depth for me.

That’s such a beautiful moment.
It was. Every time I can picture myself saying goodbye.

It’s amazing how music can bring you right back to a moment.
That’s true.

How do you explain what you love about opera to people who haven’t seen it?
I think I usually just say, “Try it, you’ll like it. It’s an experience.” For several years someone gave money so we could take one or two students from Heritage University to the opera in Seattle. I remember students saying, “Oh, I wouldn’t have missed that for anything. It’s not at all my kind of music, but it was such an engaging experience. Everyone should experience it.”

What do you love about the art form?
What I enjoy the most is that it combines several art forms: the visual art of the costumes and the scenery and the musical artistry. Of course all art has some appeal to your emotions, but because opera combines all of those things, it can be very emotionally involving, which makes me feel like the whole person is involved in participating. It’s interesting that one of the core mission statements of the Sisters of the Holy Names is to work for the full development of the human person. That phrase—the full development of the human person—is a theme we choose for ministries and maybe that’s what makes me especially sensitive to and delighted with that involvement of the whole person in that art form.

Suor Angelica, Seattle Opera, 2013 (Elise Bakketun photo)

Suor Angelica opens with a depiction of a typical—maybe even stereotypical—day in the life of the convent. I wonder how you react to stereotypes of convent life.
I have two reactions. The scholar in me says, well, there was an era in history when there was some truth to that stereotype. Many aspects of life 200 or 300 years ago had a great deal of regimentation. You can’t exactly impose our insights and viewpoint from the 21st century on what that was then. But convent scenes from that time tend to be oversimplified. There was a lot more human interaction going on than comes across but still, it’s a different era with different values.

On the other hand, I think many people don’t know any nuns now and so they don’t know that sisters’ lives have evolved as lives in the 19th and 20th centuries have evolved. Now we dress like ordinary people around us.

I understand you play the violin. When did you start playing?
I studied music from the time that I was about seven, starting on the piano. I attended Holy Names Academy in Seattle, which still has a wonderful music department. There was a sister who had been raised in San Francisco and was kind of a child prodigy, and she came around to our classrooms in the third grade and played the instruments. I loved the violin, so I went home and I said, “Daddy, I don’t want to take piano anymore, I want to take violin.” Well there must have been some experience in his past with someone who started violin lessons because he said, “Oh, honey, you cannot play the violin at home. I’m not going to pay for that.” So I begged and begged, and finally he said, “OK, I’ll make a deal with you. I will pay for the lessons if you never play at home. I’ll come to your recitals, but you can’t play at home.” So I went early to school for the next eight years. I was practicing 2- 2 ½ hours a day and became fairly proficient. I played in the school orchestra, and also in the Thalia Community Orchestra, and a chamber group that played around town. People used to ask us to play for weddings and receptions. I had some great experiences and certainly enjoyed it a great deal.

And your dad kept up his end of the bargain?
Absolutely, he came to all of the recitals. By the time I got to be pretty good I don’t know that he would have minded so I did play sometimes before he got home from work.

You were the founding president of Heritage University in Toppenish. Is your love of the arts reflected in the university?
To the extent that our resources and our location have made it possible, yes. For instance, as we have been able to move from portables in a very old elementary school building to new buildings, one of my criteria was that the new building needed to incorporate some art elements from the native culture. We’re located on the Yakama Indian reservation, and we needed beautiful spaces that would inspire our students. An interesting consequence is that, although there’s lots of graffiti in town nearby, we have never had a problem with graffiti here. I think it’s because the space is artistically designed and elicits a sense of beauty and peacefulness and contemplation.

I have tried from the beginning to expose people to the beauties of classical music. We don’t have a music department here, but Central Washington University, which is about an hour and a half north of us, has a wonderful music department. We’ve had people from there come down and perform here as well. We got the Philadelphia String Quartet to perform on campus during several of our early years.

We do offer courses in literature and music appreciation, and we actually have a visual art major. Fifty-five percent of our undergraduates are Hispanic, mostly Mexican immigrant families, and there’s a really strong tradition of visual arts from the Mexican and the Native American heritage. So students have to take two classes in the arts as a part of their core. We’re looking to provide local people who had no opportunity for higher education the overall experience of a higher education with liberal arts that would help them find their meaning in life and also find their career so they might help their families get out of poverty.

What do you do for Heritage University now that you have stepped down as president?
I am running a new institute here at Heritage, called the Institute for Student Identity and Success. I love the acronym, ISIS. The purpose of it is to turn research into materials and ideas that will help first generation low-income students succeed in college. Nationally they’re dropping out at 2 or 3 times the rate of non-first generation students. So we have a couple of different projects going. One is providing opportunities for students to build their sense of meaning and spirituality in a nondenominational way. We have a labyrinth on campus and various activities that let people think about their meaning in life without the activities being connected to a particular religious heritage. We have Native American students, students from many different Christian religions, some Hindu and a few Muslims and a few Jewish students. The second project is preparing materials for faculty at colleges and universities that would give them strategies to help these first generation students be successful.

One of the last things I did in the presidency was to negotiate the first comprehensive dictionary of the Sahaptin [Ichiskiin Sinwit] language in collaboration with the University of Washington Press. I feel so good about that book. We had a faculty member who had been teaching for us for a number of years who was a native speaker. She had been collecting words for 40 years and then a UW linguist started working with her, so they put together a major publication.

Our Earth, 2013 (Alan Alabastro photo)

One of our new Our Earth operas features some of the Ichiskiin Sinwit (formerly known as Sahaptin) language.
That’s neat. Maybe we could even bring a couple kids over from here to hear it.

Merridawn Duckler Interviews Bernard Uzan

noreply@blogger.com (Seattle Opera) — Thu, 02 May 2013 18:40:00 +0000

Guest Blogger Merridawn Duckler, a Portland-based opera fan and writer, became a fan of Bernard Uzan when she attended the Carmen he directed for Seattle Opera in 2011. She has an interview with the director which will be published in this summer's issue of Cerise Press. She checked in with him recently about his work on our current double-bill, La Voix Humaine and Suor Angelica.

Q: We cherish opera for its complex human relationships, expressed in interwoven voices, but La Voix Humaine features a single performer. What directorial challenges did this present, if any?
A: La Voix Humaine presents many challenges—you need an exceptional singing actress to deal with the false simplicity of the piece; you need to establish what is not heard by the audience (what the man on the phone is telling the woman to provoke these reactions and these emotions); and staging-wise you have to be very inventive in order to find reasons and ways to move in this small room and not become too static.

Bernard Uzan working with Nuccia Focile at a rehearsal of La Voix Humaine
Alan Alabastro, photo

Q: You are French-Tunisian; La Voix Humaine is the work of two Parisian artists, Poulenc and Cocteau. Do you have anything in common with them?
A.: We actually have many things in common: love of theater, love of French literature and music. Even if they belong to a generation just before mine, I have been strongly influenced by Cocteau and the idea and style he brought in his writings, movies, etc... How can we not be influenced as artists by a movie like Beauty and the Beast?

Q: Are you often influenced by film?
A: Yes, I was and I am a film fan. Sometimes when I direct opera, I use lighting like a close up in a movie, and images of films are always present when I work. Too often audiences believe that an opera director just directs traffic on stage, but our work is certainly more than that and very often it is like directing a movie in intimate scenes.

Q: Yes, I consider you a particularly psychologically astute director. But I am also wondering about Suor Angelica. It was written as part of a triptych. What is gained or lost by performing only one part of the three operas?
A: Nothing really is gained or lost. Each opera of the Trittico is totally independent, and dramatically and musically stands on its own—three masterpieces for their own reasons.

Maria Gavrilova (Suor Angelica) works with Bernard Uzan while the offstage chorus prepares for a musical entrance at rehearsal
Alan Alabastro, photo

Q: La Voix Humaine and Suor Angelica are at either ends when it comes to cast size—does this cause a little craziness, going from one to the other?
A: Every opera has some moments with 50 people and some with one or two singers, so no, the rehearsal days are the same.

Q: Are women harder to direct than men?
A: I love this question! Absolutely not. I will say that you can have difficult and delightful people in both men or women singers.

At a rehearsal, Bernard Uzan discusses the double-bill with Speight Jenkins; Lighting Designer Connie Yun looks on
Alan Alabastro, photo

Q: Do you enjoy bringing lesser known works to audiences—what it the best and worst of that?
A: I like the idea to have an audience exposed to an unknown (to them) work because it creates in them a revelation, an understanding, or a new emotional moment. After all, that is why we do this métier.

Merridawn Duckler is a senior fellow at the Attic Institute, a prominent teacher of fiction and nonfiction, and a leading member of our Individual Consult Group. She has published in Carolina Quarterly, Georgia State Review, and Main Street Rag among others with current work in Isotope, Green Mountains Review, Narrative and Night Train.

May 15, 2013: GiveBIG to Seattle Opera!

noreply@blogger.com (Seattle Opera) — Wed, 01 May 2013 22:23:00 +0000

On Wednesday, May 15, Seattle Opera will participate in GiveBIG, a 24-hour community-wide challenge to give generously to nonprofit organizations through The Seattle Foundation website. Last year, because of your generous support, Seattle Opera was 10th place out of over 1,200 nonprofit organizations for the total amount received.

On May 15, your gift to Seattle Opera will be doubled!
Thanks to a special challenge grant, your donation to Seattle Opera through GiveBIG will be matched dollar for dollar.

How does GiveBIG work?

Donations must be made through the Seattle Foundation website between 12:00 a.m. (midnight) and 11:59 p.m. on May 15, 2013 to count towards GiveBIG
Win a Golden Ticket: Throughout the day individual donors will be chosen at random to have an additional $1,000 and a round-trip Alaska Airlines ticket donated to the organization that received their donation. The winning individual will receive a $100 gift card to Starbucks. Give early in the day to increase your chances!
At the end of the day, Seattle Opera will receive a pro-rated portion of the “stretch” pool (For example, if we receive 5% of the total donations, we will receive 5% of the “stretch” pool.) Last year, the “stretch” pool was $800,000.

What can my gift do for Seattle Opera?

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Photo © Chris Bennion 2009

Meet Our Singers: ROSALIND PLOWRIGHT, La Zia Principessa

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:59:00 +0000

Rosalind Plowright sings the mezzo soprano role of Angelica’s aunt, the Princess, in our upcoming production of Suor Angelica. But thirty years ago, at La Scala, Plowright sang the soprano role of Angelica herself. Plowright is an inspiration—a great Verdi soprano who reinvented herself as a mezzo, a fully-wired modern diva (check out her new website at www.rosalindplowright.com) and a powerful actress with a rare gift for finding sympathy and vulnerability in the most extreme characters. She very kindly took some time the other night to speak with me about her characters, about Twitter, and about whether or not Suor Angelica could happen today...

Rosalind Plowright as Klytämnestra in Elektra

Thanks for participating in our Seattle Opera social networking...I notice you’re among the ever-increasing ranks of opera singers who tweet! (Follow Rosalind at @raplowright!)
I haven’t been doing it very long, but it’s fun! And good for networking. I do find it difficult to fit everything into those 140 characters and of course, once you join a social network, all your privacy goes out of the window!

I love how you succinctly describe yourself on Twitter: “Opera Singer, (specialising in Witches, Bitches, Bags & Hags), actress, teacher, mother and fell walker. Loves cappuccinos and good wine.” What is fell-walking?
[Laughs] Oh, it’s an English thing. You know about our beautiful Lake District, in the north of England. It’s not as huge or dramatic as your Olympic Peninsula here, but it’s very beautiful. The mountains are lower, so we call them “fells.” My husband and I go up there twice a year, knees permitting. We rent a little cottage, put on our ruck-sacks and go out fell-walking.

And this isn’t backpacking, overnight, carrying your tent and sleeping-bag...
No, no, day hikes. The fells are wild, and the scenery is wonderful.

And it’s different from walking the trails in southern England, the Cotswolds ramble...
It’s nothing like that. The fells are the highest part of England. We also have Mt. Snowdon in Wales and Ben Nevis, up in Scotland. Those are major mountains.

So, will you go out to our Olympic National Park while you’re here?
I did last time! I had a three-day gap between performances so we went out to the Olympic Peninsula. I remember once we came to a sign that said, “If you meet a bear, here’s what to do,” and I totally freaked out! [laughs] I thought, I don’t know if I really want to be out here!

Rosalind Plowright at Seattle Opera as Klytämnestra in Elektra
Bill Mohn, photo

Now, changing the topic to opera, you were amazing as Klytämnestra in Elektra in 2008. People around here still talk about that performance, particularly how you managed to make this grotesque horror so vunerable and sympathetic. Does she have much in common with your role in Suor Angelica, this Zia Principessa?
Not really. Klytämnestra is a murderer, isn’t she?

Yes, but with good reason.
[laughs] I don’t care! The Principessa is a devout Catholic! She wouldn’t murder anybody.

Rosalind Plowright as the Zia Principessa in Palermo
Photo from www.rosalindplowright.com

No, she just psychologically tortures her poor niece for years and years...I’ve never seen anything so sadistic as the way you treat Suor Angelica...it’s worse than Scarpia!
That’s what [director] Bernard Uzan told me to do, you know, to just treat her with...total disdain. I would say that both La Zia Principessa and Klytämnestra are regal and powerful. As I play Klytämnestra there are some areas where she totally loses control. Vocally the roles are quite different. The Zia Principessa is not long, but it’s very exposed. Klytämnestra is not quite as intimidating.

That’s interesting; the Zia Principessa is more in control, Klytämnestra is more scattered. Certainly the words are just tumbling out of Klytämnestra...
...whereas the Principessa knows exactly what she has to say...

...and takes her time to do it.
Yes, absolutely.

Rosalind Plowright and Maria Gavrilova rehearse the scene between Angelica and her aunt for Seattle Opera's performance
Alan Alabastro, photo

So in terms of grandeur, there’s a similarity. I love the acting side of all my roles and I love doing the character roles, these old ladies. I’m having much more fun now than when I was a soprano, playing the tragic heroine (as was mostly the case). There were many occasions when the director just left me to my own devices and as most of Verdi’s music requires the stand-and-sing delivery, for me that was very frustrating as I wanted to do more. The best thing I ever did was an Aida in Frankfurt by a cult German director called Hans Neuenfels. The production was extremely controversial, actually...

You sang Aida, or Amneris?
Aida, in this case. That’s another opera, like Suor Angelica, where I’ve done both roles. Neuenfels had set it in a museum, Aida was a chambermaid, and the King was a mummy that had been dug up. The last scene was especially shocking, for instead of being entombed, Aida and Radames were gassed. Not a good idea in 1981 Germany, or perhaps it was, because it caused such a scandal there were queues around the house every night.

You get juicier acting roles playing these older mezzo characters. You’ve sung Jenůfa— Kostelnička. And there’s one in Kat’á as well—Kabanicha.
No, I haven’t done that one yet. I do another Janáček role, Mila’s Mother in Osud. It’s a very short part but she has this completely manic scene, only about 3-4 minutes, and it’s fantastic. It’s a rarity—a wonderful, wonderful piece! It needs to come back into popularity.

What fun to play all these horrible, horrible characters!
Yes, well, the part I love the most is not horrible. That’s another nun, Mme. De Croissy in Dialogues of the Carmelites. Again, a very regal person and the role sits perfectly in my voice.

Rosalind Plowright as Mme. de Croissy in Dialogues of the Carmelites at Stuttgart Opera
Photo from www.rosalindplowright.com

Have you ever done the less regal—the crazy old bag lady type, Azucena, or maybe La Frugola in Il tabarro?
No, I haven’t. I never did Azucena. I did Leonora many, many times; it was my calling-card, I recorded it with Giulini. I would have liked to have sung Azucena but having had so much recognition with Leonora, perhaps people didn’t think I was right for it...that’s fine. The closest I did to this kind of character was the Beggar Lady in Sweeney Todd, we did it at Covent Garden with opera singers playing every character.

Now when you were speaking with Fred Plotkin, who wrote an article for our Suor Angelica program, you said that Suor Angelica was perhaps your favourite Puccini opera.
Well, I love all of Puccini’s operas. I sang Tosca many times, and Manon Lescaut. Suor Angelica is certainly up there with them. You know, I was taught by nuns, I went to a Catholic primary school and then a Convent school, so I had nuns as teachers all the way. Some of them were real battle-axes and some of them were very endearing. So I did get some insight into convent life which I think helped when I sang Suor Angelica. I thought the piece was a real gem, I still do, especially that final chorus, it’s heaven. I adored the music so much that I found it very hard to sing. I got too emotional.

What are your other Puccini roles?
I’ve done Madama Butterfly...in some aspects that felt physically wrong. It was a very controversial production for its time, directed by Ken Russell...do you remember him, the film director?

Oh, yes! Mahler and Lisztomania and all those...
Well, he did not want the conventional look-alike geisha, and he certainly got it with me!! He did this production, first in Spoleto, USA, and then later in Houston where I sang it. He set it in World War 2 and of course being set in Nagasaki, at the end, the atom bomb went off! The Houston audience was very shocked!

Once in Italy Ken Russell ended up with a death threat when he made Mimì a drug addict. It caused a huge scandal and I think he was banned from working in Italy again. Behold, recently I was watching Netrebko singing Mimì in Salzburg, and what is she? A drug addict! But back then, you couldn’t do that and especially in Italy....these operas were sacred.

Times change, values change. Speaking of which, do you think there’s a ‘moral to the story,’ with Suor Angelica?
Never really thought about it being “a moral” as such.....Don’t get pregnant out of wedlock? Is that what you mean? The thing is, we don’t know the circumstances by which Angelica got pregnant. She could have been raped. The opera doesn’t say. But at the time the story took place, (the latter part of the 17th century) religion ruled and punishments were very severe for that sort of thing.

Rosalind Plowright in rehearsal as the Zia Principessa
Alan Alabastro, photo

I find myself sitting here and being judgmental about la Zia Principessa, calling her a cold, unfeeling, hypocritical monster, but...what if she’s right?
Well, it would be difficult to update this story to the present day...although...

When I was at music college in the late ‘60s I had a friend who got pregnant. This was back in the days of free sex and drugs and hippie morality. When her baby was born he was taken away from her and she never saw him again.

Just recently they finally closed the last Magdalene Laundry in Ireland that was run by nuns. This was a place where girls who had been promiscuous were sent to “pay for their sins” and in most cases there family disowned them. There was a film, based on a true story, made about it called The Magdalene Sisters, and it’s absolutely shocking what the nuns made these poor girls go through to pay penance for what they did. So I don’t know, maybe you could set the story of Suor Angelica in the present. This situation with the Magdalene Laundry is based on the same morality.

What happens to the Zia Principessa after she walks off the stage here? Does she just go home and live her life and forget all about Angelica?
I think it would always haunt her. I think...she loved her sister very much and I think she’s done this for her sister, for Angelica’s mother. This child has brought disgrace upon this family, and she cannot forgive her.

Now that you’ve been both a soprano and a mezzo, tell us the truth: who has more fun?
Mezzos. Maybe it’s my age and experience but now when I perform I feel less pressure. I’ve nothing to lose!! I’m enjoying it so much more now. As a soprano there’s so much pressure. You have to hold everything together and sit on the top of those huge Verdi ensembles. I enjoyed it at the time but there was also a lot of angst. Now I’m delighted to take a back seat.

Meet Our Artists: Maestro GARY THOR WEDOW

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:34:00 +0000

Gary Thor Wedow is back to conduct our double-bill of La Voix Humaine and Suor Angelica. Wedow first came to Seattle Opera in 2007 to lead the earliest opera yet the company has yet presented, Handel’s Giulio Cesare. He made plenty of Seattle converts to this world of Baroque opera, and has returned to conduct Gluck (Orphée et Eurydice and Iphigénie en Tauride) and Mozart (Die Zauberflöte). I checked in with him the other day about his own deep history with “Voix” and “Suor,” as we call them backstage, what the two pieces have in common, and how they relate to the Baroque music he’s conducted in Seattle. And, as always happens when you speak with Gary, I learned something fantastic--in this case, about the role played in the creation of La Voix Humaine by Maria Callas!

Maestro, this is wonderful—your first non-18th-century opera in Seattle!
I know, can you believe it!?

Do you conduct a lot of 20th century operas?
Yes, I’ve done several world premieres—I’m doing a new opera this fall at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, a multimedia performance piece, Biennale. I studied with a big Liszt pianist, Jorge Bolet, so I’ve also done lots of Romantic nineteenth century music. The opera I’ve conducted the most is actually Carmen! I actually came to Baroque music backwards—my first love was not Baroque music. But, as the Buddha says, “Those who do not go smiling toward their fate are dragged!”

Chorusmaster Beth Kirchhoff, l, and General Director Speight Jenkins, r, pay close attention to Maestro Gary Thor Wedow at Suor Angelica rehearsal
Alan Alabastro, photo

So Baroque music has been your fate, to some extent, and not just in Seattle, where you’ve done these wonderful Gluck and Handel operas for us, and Messiah for the Symphony...
Yes, my first job out of conservatory was with the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston. And I knew very little of that repertoire, so for me it was a learning process.

I would think that if you live mostly in a Baroque musical world, with its strict formal patterns, this shapeless 20th century prose thing which is La Voix Humaine must be...a bit bewildering.
Oh, you said it. But I also find it reminscent of Monteverdi and Cavalli. It has sections of free or semi-free recitative mixed with these incredibly beautiful and lyric, but relatively brief, outbursts of melody. And that’s the nature of early Baroque opera. It’s very much like Rameau. It’s interesting, in Italian Baroque opera the recitatives are set, however hapharzardly, or with elaborate rhythmic configuarions, in common time. And with a genius like Handel they’re often breathtaking. But in French opera of the same period, in the eighteenth century, composers like Rameau and Lully wrote their recitatives in ever-changing meters, to reflect the prose and the stress of the text. And that’s exactly what Poulenc does.

Gary Thor Wedow in rehearsal
Alan Alabastro, photo

It seems like the subject of this opera, the donna abbandonata, was popular in the Baroque. Didn’t they all write operas or monodramas about Arianna, deserted by Theseus, or Dido abandoned by Aeneas?
Oh, very much. We were talking in rehearsal the other day—Bernard [Uzan, the director] asked, “Why is it called La Voix Humaine?” Which really got me thinking, and I looked it up, and it turns out “La voix humaine” was a phrase coined by Lamartine in the nineteenth century in a poem in which he said, basically, the human voice is the greatest vehicle for expressing the torment of the soul. Cocteau then came to that expression via the Dada-ists, who used that concept, after World War 1, to express a new kind of soul’s anguish, in the aftermath of this awful new war.

And you think that concept, the power of the voice to express that existential torment, would have resonated with Monteverdi or Cavalli?
Yes, they all understood the expressive potential of the voice, Monteverdi even tried to categorize it: how different tessituras, different rhythmic patterns reflect different emotional states. And it’s all here. [pats score of La Voix Humaine.]

Now, bringing the discussion from the seventeenth century all the way to the twenty-first: is La Voix Humaine a gay opera?
[Laughs]

Because I was discussing this question with Nuccia Focile the other day, and she suggested that her character could very easily be a man!
Well, yes. There’s been a lot of speculation about that, and Cocteau when he wrote the original play was in his personal life going through a difficult time with Jean Marais, his longtime partner. So...probably, yes. It turns out that Cocteau had volunteered to make a recording of the play himself in the ‘30s, but it was considered inappropriate for a man to be saying these lines!

Jean Marais and Jean Cocteau at the Venice Film Festival, 1947
Collection Pierre sur le Ciel

But more than that, it’s the universal human soul. The feelings in this opera could be about anyone. Maybe it had its kernal in a gay incubator, with Cocteau and Marais...but a student once asked Denise Duval, the first soprano to sing the opera, this question, and she said, “No, no, no, no, no, he wrote it about me! I was having a horrible time with a break-up, so Poulenc wrote it about me!” Did you know that the impulse for Poulenc to write the opera came from Maria Callas?

No, I didn’t know that!
Yes, Poulenc dedicated the score to his publisher, Dugardin, who was a close personal friend. Poulenc and Dugardin were at La Scala for the world premiere of Dialogues des Carmelites, in 1957, and they went to another performance with Callas and Di Stefano, the very famous performance where she stepped forward in front of him to take a solo bow, and the story goes that Dugardin turned to Poulenc and said, “You know, what you really need to do is to write a one-person opera, for her!” And Poulenc said, “No, no, not for her, but for Denise Duval.”

Maria Callas and Giuseppe Di Stefano
www.fanpix.net

And who was Poulenc breaking up with at the time?
Oh, I don’t know, he had several friends. But to the question, more seriously, there are several places in the text where, if you speak French, there’s a double entendre...when she says, “People wouldn’t understand our relationship...now that we’re breaking up, they’ll drag us through the sewers.”

What do you think these two operas have to do with each other?
There’s obviously a betrayed, lonely, sad lady at the core of both operas. But for me what has been wonderful is to find in Suor Angelica Puccini at his most French. He uses many techniques of the impressionists: parallelism; planing, which is these beautiful chords all in a row; orchestration reminsicent of Debussy, etc. I find that in terms of the composition the pieces are tied together in a very interesting way. They use similar harmonic languages and similar orchestral effects. And that hadn’t occurred to me when we began talking about this double bill.

Gary Thor Wedow with Head of Coach-Accompanists David McDade at the piano at La Voix Humaine rehearsal
Alan Alabastro, photo

So how will you and the orchestra shift gears, from the Poulenc to the Puccini, during the performances?
I told the orchestra, “French music is Chanel, a Chanel suit. Simple lines, everything restrained. Italian music is Versace. Beautiful, exotic colors, lack of restraint, more portamenti.” So, although they’re made from the same vegetables, these are two very different stews.

Have you conducted these operas before?
The last time I conducted Suor Angelica, actually, I was in college! And—this was also long, long ago—I used to play for Miss Massachusetts, who would put this negligée and a telephone in the trunk of her car, and we’d drive to these clubs all over the east coast, and perform a 25-minute version of La Voix Humaine with me at the piano! So yes, I’ve had a longtime relationship with these two wonderful operas.

Excellent, we look forward to hearing what you do with them now!

Seattle Opera Creates New Dragon for EMP Museum

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:50:00 +0000

Seattle Opera’s good friends and neighbors at the EMP Museum opened their dazzling new exhibit “Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic” to the public today. Visitors to the museum are able to get up close and personal with Adalinda, a beautiful dragon caught on a recent excursion to the North Cascades by the talented artists at Seattle Opera Scenic Studios.

Adalinda in her new home.
EMP Museum, photo

Seattle Opera’s team, who have created an entire zoo’s worth of dragons and other beasts for the opera stage over the years, gave us a sneak-peek at how Adalinda (named by popular vote on EMP’s website) was born. We spoke with Michael Moore, Manager of Seattle Opera’s Scenic Studios, about this marvelous monster.

Michael Moore giving Ring 3’s Fafner a check-up
Seattle Opera, photo

Michael, tell us a little about Adalinda and her lair in EMP’s new “Fantasy” Worlds of Myth and Magic” exhibition.
Yes, our shop worked on three main elements: the dragon’s head assembly (including a head, a wing, and a clawed foot), the cave in which the slumbering dragon resides, and the dragon’s tail. The animatronic dragon seems to be asleep, with a wing that crosses over her body and moves up and down slightly as she breathes. If a visitor gently touches her tail, the dragon’s left eye may open and she’ll make a soft purring sound. But don’t roughhouse with her tail...I’ve tried it, and she doesn’t much like it.

Associate Resident Designer Phillip Lienau with a model of the Dragon’s Lair at EMP’s new exhibit.
Elise Bakketun, photo

What is she made from?
A great variety of materials, including wood, steel, aluminum, various types of both rigid and flexible foams, plus fabrics, upholstery materials, synthetic skin, and two glass eyes.

Lead Scenic Artist Rick Araluce explains how Adalinda’s skin is created.
Elise Bakketun, photo

How much does this dragon weigh?
Adalinda tips the scales at a relatively svelte 240 lbs. (on an empty stomach).

How big is she?
The dragon’s head is approximately six feet long. If she were to open her jaws, she would have a “bite” just a bit bigger than a Great White Shark. The dragon’s claw has a grasp of 18”, her tail is about the length of an adult saltwater crocodile, and if she were to open her wings, they would stretch to more than 36 feet; slightly more than the wingspan of a Cessna airplane.

Master Scenic Artist Kitty Kavanaugh with Adalinda’s claw.
Elise Bakketun, photo

How many dragons have you created over the years?
Over the past 35 years, we have built three different productions of Wagner’s Ring, so we have plenty of experience fashioning Fafners! Ring 1, in the ‘70s, starred a hefty dragon which crawled half-out of its cave on its belly. For Ring 2, we used a different dragon each time we did the cycle—three completely different dragons! Seattle Opera Scenic Studios also created a dragon for a Los Angeles Opera production of The Magic Flute. And of course there’s the fully-articulated dragon for Ring 3, which will be onstage at McCaw Hall this summer. We’ve built various other creatures for the stage, but with Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic, our dragon count is now up to seven.

Michael Moore installs Adalinda’s animatronics
Alan Berner/Seattle Times, photo

To see all of Alan Berner's photos for the Seattle Times covering Adalinda's installation, CLICK HERE.

EMP Museum's new "Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic" is the first exhibition of its kind to examine the proliferation of the fantasy genre in literature, film, television, and video games. From classic folklore to epic tales of good and evil, the exhibition content spans more than four centuries and includes an authentic 16th century suit of armor, rare costumes from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, and original hand-edited manuscript pages from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Meet Our Singers: MARIA GAVRILOVA, Suor Angelica

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:48:00 +0000

Russian soprano Maria Gavrilova makes two important debuts on May 4, 2013—her Seattle Opera debut, and her role debut as Suor Angelica. In fact, it’s the first time anyone sings Suor Angelica at Seattle Opera—like La Voix Humaine, Suor Angelica is new to our stage. This delightful young woman, who has sung many heroines of Italian and Russian opera at the Met and at the Bolshoi, told me a little about growing up in a theatrical family and about the overwhelmingly powerful music she sings in this opera.

You’re new to Seattle Opera—welcome! Can you tell us a little about Chelyabinsk City, where you grew up in central Russia?
Yes, it’s in the Ural Mountains, in central Russia. Lots and lots of factories, very industrial—so much so that the city has had lots of problems.

Including this recent meteor, which devastated things in March. Do you get back there very often, to see family, for example?
Yes...my husband’s family. There are not many left in my family. But my husband’s family is there, and every summer we go to Chelyabinsk and stay with them.

Is there an opera company in Chelyabinsk?
Yes, a very small but pretty opera house. Sometimes they’ve invited me to sing there, which is nice.

Maria Gavrilova rehearsing Suor Angelica
Alan Alabastro, photo

So do you make your home in Moscow?
Yes, I have an apartment in Moscow, and a little country house outside the city.

And you do a lot of work in New York, at the Metropolitan Opera...
Yes, I rent a little apartment there. Just near Lincoln Center, because while I have sung quite a few roles at the Met in scheduled performances, I very often cover roles, and if something happens to my colleague, I may have to be at the Met in ten minutes—always be prepared!

How old were you when you first began singing?
My parents were both singers, so I more or less grew up in the theater. I sang, first in choruses, and studied voice and piano when I went to college in Chelyabinsk. I was 23 years old when I went to Moscow Conservatory. And after three years, the Bolshoi theater invited me to be a Young Artist there.

You’ve sung a great deal at the Bolshoi, and at the Met. What’s your favorite theater?
It is very nice for me to perform in Moscow, at home. I don’t particularly like to fly.

And it’s a long way from Moscow to Seattle...we appreciate very much your making the trip! Now, you’ve sung many Puccini soprano roles: Mimì, Cio-Cio-San, Tosca, Manon Lescaut. What about La fanciulla del West?
Not yet!

And Suor Angelica, now, for the first time. Which has been your favorite?
I know people like to answer that question...but I really can’t answer it. Each role is me; this is my blood, these are my emotions, every inch.

Maria Gavrilova (Suor Angelica) and Rosalind Plowright (the Princess) rehearse the powerful scene at the heart of Suor Angelica
Alan Alabastro, photo

Is there one of them that’s easier to sing than the others?
I can’t really call any of them easy; but Suor Angelica is shorter than the others. And there’s so much in it; it’s so powerful. If you even begin to think how sorry you are for this girl, you start to cry. And then, that’s it, you can’t sing.

Now, there aren’t too many operas in which you get to play a nun...
Well, I’ve sung Khovanschina, by Mussorgsky, I played this character of Susanna, who’s a religious fanatic. Not an orthodox nun, in terms of the actual Russian church. In fact, a very ugly, nasty, terrible person!

Maria Gavrilova as Susanna in Khovanschina at the Met
Ken Howard, photo

In Suor Angelica, starting with the exit of your aunt, it’s just you alone onstage until the end of the opera. You sing your aria, “Senza mamma,” then build up to this wonderful, agonized, mystical death scene. How do you pace yourself through all of this?
Ah, but this is Puccini’s genius. It’s paced brilliantly—a little bit forward here, more emotion, more passion, and then you pull back, and give a little less.

Do you have a favorite moment in there? I like the section beginning “La grazia discesa dal cielo...”
Oh, of course... [sings]...you stay with this joy, and it’s so beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!

"Suor Angelica knows how to prepare remedies for all ills from the plants of the garden," say the nuns in Suor Angelica. Maria Gavrilova in rehearsal
Alan Alabastro, photo

And then she goes and poisons herself!
Oh, but that is not what she thinks. She thinks she is finally going to be with her son.

Ok, for her it’s a happy ending. And meanwhile, out there in the audience, we’re crying our eyes out!
Yes, sorry about that!

No, after all, that’s why we go to Puccini operas. We look forward very much to hearing you do it.

Meet Our Singers: NUCCIA FOCILE, Elle

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:09:00 +0000

What a thrill it was yesterday to sit down with the great Nuccia Focile, who sings the only character in La Voix Humaine at Seattle Opera this May. Focile told me a great deal about performing this fascinating Poulenc work, new to the company. Seattle Opera first fell in love with the soprano when she sang Tatyana in Eugene Onegin in 2002. She has since lit up our stage as Mimì in La bohème, Nedda in Pagliacci, Iphigénie in Iphigénie en Tauride, and Violetta in La traviata.

In La Voix Humaine Focile portrays a nameless woman (known as “Elle,” or “She,” for convenience) desperately attempting to stay connected on the telephone with an unseen lover who has moved on. She gradually comes to accept her situation, and the opera concludes with the devastating words, “My sweet darling...I'll be brave, let's finish. Hang up. Hang up quickly. I love you, I love you, I love you...” Appropriately enough, when we spoke yesterday the diva’s iPhone 5 (in its sparkly pink case) lay on the table between us! Technology may have advanced since Poulenc first wrote this opera, in 1959, but human relationships, alas, are no easier.

The many phases of "Elle": Nuccia Focile in rehearsal for La Voix Humaine
Photos by Alan Alabastro

Nuccia, how is our production of La Voix Humaine different from the production you sang in London in 2010, at Covent Garden?
First of all, in London I sang the opera in English, so that the audience would feel immediately connected to the text. The text is so important in this opera. But nobody was happy with the English translation, so we did a lot of hard work adapting it, changing rhythms and notes here and there. We had six weeks rehearsal, and the entire first week we didn’t do any movement, just sat at the table—like rehearsing a play!—analyzing the text, making sure the translation was accurate and that it would work musically. It was laborious, but necessary.

Would you say it’s preferable to sing the opera in French and use supertitles, as we’re doing in Seattle?
Yes, I relearned it from scratch to sing it now, and I love it even more in French. Now I can’t imagine it being sung in another language. The [French] text and the music fits together so naturally. The music is so French, the taste is so French, you know?

Now, you were born in Sicily...when did you first start studying French?
I studied a little bit in high school. But I’ve sung a fair amount of French opera—the Iphigénie here, Juliette of Gounod, Manon—and have always studied every role with a French coach.

What else in this production is different from London?
The size of the theater. In London we did it in the Royal Opera House 2, the Linbury Studio Theatre, which is an intimate space. There isn’t an orchestra pit, so the orchestra was behind the set. There was a see-through panel, so they could see me onstage acting, and I had a few monitors so I could see the conductor, Gary Walker.

Nuccia Focile in La Voix Humaine at Royal Opera Covent Garden
Photo by Tristram Kenton

Another Gary!
Yes, conducting this opera is challenging, because you have to be so precise. Gary [in London] did a fine job, and our Gary [Thor Wedow, who conducts in Seattle] is perfect, absolutely wonderful.

Yes, he’s got the precision but also the heart. We’ve heard that in everything he’s done for us, like the Iphigénie en Tauride he did with you in 2007.
There’s this fantastic combination, with Gary, of being precise and faithful to the score, yet he allows all the emotions to happen. Because with this score you have to be so meticulous. Everything, the tiniest little details, are written there. If you are faithful to the score, most of the work is done for you. If you really do what is written, if you analyze every bar. All the intentions—dramatically, musically, emotionally, it’s all there. But it’s up to the interpreter to pay attention and trust what’s in the score.

Gary Thor Wedow conducted Nuccia Focile in Iphigénie en Tauride at Seattle Opera in 2007
Photo by Bill Mohn

Speaking of “trust,” let me ask you about the many silences in this opera. Bernard [Uzan, the director] has written out what the man on the other end of the phone is saying in each of those silences, and he’s been carrying on the other end of the conversation with you in rehearsal. Did you know that would be part of this rehearsal process?
Oh, yes, because we did the same type of work in London. Every time she is silent, he is speaking; or when she answers a question, you need to know exactly what he asked. I write down all the lines in those silent moments, for what he is saying, what the operator is saying, or this annoying lady that keeps coming into the conversation because the phone lines get crossed! It’s important, in rehearsals, to have someone say the lines out loud. It’s the only way, really.

At La Voix Humaine rehearsal, l to r: Conductor Gary Thor Wedow, General Director Speight Jenkins, Lighting Designer Connie Yun, Director Bernard Uzan, Assistant Director Ben Smith, Nuccia Focile
Photo by Alan Alabastro

But then you get to the performance, and the person calling out those lines is gone, and all you have is a rest with a fermata over it...
...and then you panic! [laughs] You need to find the courage in yourself to sustain the silence. That’s why you need to know exactly what his words are, so it’s realistic—the pause cannot be just waiting, it has to make sense. Some of the silences are longer, some shorter. Poulenc says when he wants it “très longue,” for example.

That’s fascinating, that you describe it as courage...
...to sustain complete silence onstage.

Is it you or Gary [Thor Wedow, the conductor] who ends the silence? The way it’s written, sometimes the orchestra comes in first...
Yes...it all depends on how I react to the silence. There are moments where the orchestra is anticipating her emotions and then she joins in with them; and there are moments when she starts the new idea, the new emotion, and they catch up with her. It’s a real dialogue. Maybe I take a breath, to give my answer, and Gary is waiting for that and then comes in with the orchestra. He has to be act the role along with me for the reactions to be organic.

Nuccia Focile was rejected mercilessly in her Seattle Opera debut when she sang Tatyana to the Eugene Onegin of Vladimir Chernov
Photo by Chris Bennion

Could a performer who’s never been through a break-up do a good job performing La Voix Humaine?
It’s a good question...although you could ask that of any opera. If you have experienced a situation, in your own life—which in this case, I have—it adds sincerity, when it comes to expressing those feelings. Because those paintful memories are there. You don’t have to imagine what it might be like; it’s direct, it’s automatic. So in a way, it does help. On the other hand, the negative side is that you can let the emotion take over too much. Then it affects your concentration, your voice...

It seems to me this opera is so unbearably real, particularly to our late-twentieth early-twenty-first century lives. Who hasn’t been on this dreadful phone call, at the wrong end of a romance?
This woman is so real. She is around the corner, in every city, in every place.

Do you think the woman in the opera is really Francis Poulenc, the composer? That he was writing about himself?
All three of them—Jean Cocteau, who wrote the play originally, Poulenc, and Denise Duval, the soprano who did it the first time—all of them can see themselves in this role. And yes, this is also a story about two men.

“Elle,” the female character, can also be read as a stand-in for a man?
Yes, there are lots of moments in the text, we’ve been discussing it in rehearsals, where it comes across as a relationship between two men. She talks about how society wouldn’t understand, how quick people are to judge...it’s subtle, but it’s there.

Nuccia Focile as Violetta in La traviata at Seattle Opera in 2009
Photo by Rozarii Lynch

That’s interesting, I think in the ‘30s, when Cocteau originally wrote the piece, you did that all in code. It flew over some people’s heads, while others knew exactly what you were talking about.
Of course. But it works, because love is love. In my case, “Elle” is a woman, it’s the end of her relationship, and this is their farewell phone call. Every woman can connect to this, can see a little bit of herself in this story, even if she has not gone through such a dramatic thing.

Cocteau hasn’t given us a whole lot of specifics. Have you added more details to the story—who he is, how they met, what he does for a living, etc.?
Yes, we had to figure out the beginning of the story, as we go to enact the end of their story. So we believe that she is the one who initiated the relationship, that Sunday in Versailles. She went to him. She said she didn’t care about anything, she wanted to take the risk; she implies that she thinks it’s better that she’s had these five years of happiness, with him, even though now she has to pay the price. If she had to go back, she’d do exactly the same thing. We believe he’s a lawyer—we talk about a case that he’s on—and that she doesn’t have a profession. She says, “These five years I’ve lived through you.”

He’s been paying for her apartment, like that?
Yes, but more: he’s the only thing she’s had, these five years. He has been the air that she breathes. So when she loses him, now, she has lost everything. And he is to marry someone else tomorrow. My character didn’t expect this to happen so soon. She knows he is planning to take his new wife to Marseilles, and she begs him: “Please, do not take her to the same hotel where we used to go.” And he says, “Yes, of course, I promise.” And it’s so sad in that moment—she says, “Thank you, thank you for being so understanding, you’re such a nice man.”

I love how Cocteau and Poulenc have set it up with all this space between what they’re saying to each other and what the situation really is. I love how they lie to each other!
I think he is lying the whole time. Even when he says, “No, of course I won’t take her to that hotel.”

That’s where he takes her. Oyyy.
Ouch!

How true, though! And earlier in the opera, when she lies to him about having attempted suicide... she doesn’t tell him, at first. And he lies to her about where he’s calling from.
Right, he’s obviously at a party—“Oh, tell your neighbors to keep the music down!” she says, though she knows he isn’t at home. It’s wonderful. Just today, in rehearsal, Gary was saying: “This score is like an onion. You peel and peel and peel, and there are so many layers before you get to the actual core.” There’s so much in the score, and so much between the lines.

Do you have a favorite musical moment in this opera?
I like each time we hear the love theme...when she remembers Versailles, and how happy they were together. You can see, in my score [shows her score] each time that theme plays I wrote a little heart! I’m that pathetic! And this wonderfully sentimental waltz, which we hear when she begins to tell the truth about how she took all the sleeping pills.

That’s one of the real lyric effusions in the score.
And that music returns, when she begs him not to take the woman to ‘their hotel.’

What’s the best way for an audience member who is new to this opera to prepare?
Well, the music is very direct. But you have to understand the text first. So I think it’s worth it to read the libretto, so you can understand what she’s talking about.

It’s an opera that will repay the audience’s close attention. I’m so glad I have the chance to hear it multiple times!

Meet Our OUR EARTH Artists: Pete Rush, Set & Costume Designer

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:21:00 +0000

At our free Earth Day Celebration on Saturday, audiences will have a chance to see and hear the first two operas of our new Our Earth trilogy, performed by Seattle Opera’s singers and Youth Chorus and the Seattle Youth Symphony. Eric Banks composed the lush scores for Irene Keliher’s engaging libretti. Today we check in with the set and costume designer for Our Earth, Pete Rush, who has transformed familiar Northwest landscapes and animals into vivid theatrical visuals that our team can use in a wide variety of spaces. Join us for this weekend’s show at Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion.

Pete, thanks for your distinct and personal work on Our Earth. Now, how did you get involved with this production?
Kelly Kitchens, the director of Our Earth, called and said, “I’m doing this project with Seattle Opera, and I think you’re the best person to work on this.” Particularly because the challenge was to do both costumes and scenery. There aren’t necessarily a lot of designers who do both.

Seattle audiences first saw Pete Rush's sets and costumes for OUR EARTH when Heron and the Salmon Girl premiered at Town Hall in February
Alan Alabastro, photo

Why is that so rare?
It’s like two different brains. Even in the same production, with sets you’re dealing with spatial awareness and the physical world, and with costumes you’re dealing with character and storytelling. And it’s two very different processes—as a scenic designer you do a lot of work up front, developing sketches and models, and you send it away and it gets built and boom! there it is. Whereas a costume designer is more in the trenches throughout the whole rehearsal and tech process: acquiring clothes, building costumes, fitting them, making adjustments up to the last minute based on quick changes, things that flop around that shouldn’t, things like that.

Have you done more of one or the other, sets or costumes?
Prior to moving to Seattle—I moved here about seven years ago—I did a lot of scenic design, I would say more scenic design than costume design. But when I came to Seattle, the first job I got was as a costumer, and since then people have predominately considered me a costume designer.

It’s all about how you get introduced! Do you yourself have a preference?
I’m happy to do one or the other. It’s actually really challenging to do both for the same production: it’s double the work! And double the focus; you have to be looking at two different things, giving both the same amount of attention.

Yet I’d think that there would be fewer opportunities for friction, than with a collaboration...
Yes, it’s a dream to be able to create a completely comprehensive world, where the clothes really do match the scenery. Conceptually, that’s a joy. But it’s also great to collaborate with other designers. We do all tend to get on the same page.

"Daydreams" by Pete Rush, an installation for Eight Square Schoolhouse in Dryden, NY
Pete Rush, photo

Now on your website I was impressed by an installation you had done, in Dryden, NY, inspired by the creative imagination of a child in school. As a designer do you approach a show aimed at young audiences differently than you would a show aimed at adults?
Yes, it is different. Younger audiences love being challenged to use their imaginations; they love when things are used in surprising or unexpected ways. And of course they love lots of color and movement and texture, things you’d imagine kids would appreciate. And, with theater or opera for young audiences, often you have fewer resources in terms of time and money, which forces a designers to be more creative.

Our Earth is your first opera, but you’ve designed a lot of Shakespeare. How are they different, in your experience?
That’s interesting, sometimes people lump these types of theater together sometimes because you may be dealing with big period costumes, or aiming for opulence, over-the-top pageantry. I’ve done a lot of contemporary Shakespeare, though, where that’s often not the priority. One big difference, I would say, is that in Shakespeare, the physicality of the performers is intense. In opera the performers may be dealing more with their voice and less with running all over the place climbing things. You have to take that into account.

Sets for Heron and the Salmon Girl by Pete Rush

Now for Our Earth, in talking with Irene Keliher, our librettist, we learned that there were some elements of local native lore that went into the story—people who can transform into salmon, a trickster raven, things like that. Did such elements influence your thinking in terms of sets and costumes, too?
Local indigenous art, yes. We looked at a lot of the woodcut art that comes out of this area, and it influenced the scenic design. We wanted to render these locations—mountains, lakes, ocean water—in a way that was very stylized, with this line art that almost looks 3-dimensional, like it could have been cut out of wood. Bold, thick lines with primary colors; taking something that’s natural and organic and reducing it to its basic shape. In terms of the costumes, though, I looked less at Native American representations of these animals and more at the actual animals themselves.

Oh, I see...you didn’t go after the way a local artist would represent a raven on a totem pole or a mask, for instance.
No, but we paid attention to the actual species who inhabit this area: their colors, for instance, bringing those colors into the costumes. The Great Blue Heron, for instance.

Heron (Sonia Perez) and Salmon Girl Alitsa (Rachel DeShon) in Heron and the Salmon Girl
Alan Alabastro, photo

Do you have a favorite animal costume you created for Our Earth?
We have the challenge here of transforming human characters into salmon. And it has to happen onstage, instantaneously—in about one second!

That’s right, you mentioned quick-changes just a second ago!
I think we came up with a pretty good solution for that—there are layers, they have their salmon costumes on under their human costume, they pull it off and there’s the shimmery, sequin-ey salmon layer...

Parr (John Coons) and Alitsa (Alexa Jarvis) transform into salmon to leap up the rapids in Rushing Upriver

I loved that moment, in Heron and the Salmon Girl, when Alitsa drops her coat and becomes a salmon.
There’s only that one change, in the first opera, and we have two such moments in the second opera and more coming up for the third. That’s been a fun creative challenge.

Another practical consideration for you: we’ll be presenting these operas this weekend in Fisher Pavilion, on a nice stage and with an orchestra, but these operas are getting around! They’ve already been to lots of schools all over the area...
Yes, the entire production has to pack up and fit in the back of two cars. So it’s been designed to store compactly, not to be heavy, to be set up easily and quickly and taken down again.

The set for Our Earth transforms rapidly from open sea to cityscape to forest.
Alan Alabastro, photo

You’ve found a good solution for the set with these banners...
Yes, this is the first project I’ve done with those. We went to a company that creates mainly displays for tradeshows, and it’s like a big windowshade, and you can print whatever you want on the banner. It’s wonderfully versatile; this way we have four units which we can use for three different operas and not have to deal with a lot of complicated, bulky scenery.

One last question: would you tell us a little about your work with TeenTix?
Right! I’m a co-manager of an arts access program, TeenTix, I’ve been doing it for four years now. We offer teenagers (13 to 19 years old) opportunities to attend arts events all around the city, with day-of-show tickets, for $5. The program is run through Seattle Center, and I’m really passionate about it. The future of arts and arts participation resides in introducing young people to the arts, getting them to try it out, getting them hooked. That way they’re willing to take risks as they grow up and look at all kinds of arts with a critical eye and a sense of openness. The program is doing very well. We currently have about 17,000 members, and we’re growing more popular with each season.

Meet Our OUR EARTH Singers: Alexa Jarvis, Salmon Girl & Raccoon

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:31:00 +0000

Earth Day is this weekend, and Seattle Opera is celebrating, with our friends and partners at The Nature Conservancy, Seattle Youth Symphony, Classic KING FM, and Seattle Center, by creating new work! Join all of us for a fun, free, family-friendly Earth Day Celebration on Saturday April 20 at Seattle Center's Fisher Pavilion--with performances of our two OUR EARTH operas by Seattle Opera's adult singers, Youth Chorus, and the Seattle Youth Symphony conducted by Stephen Rogers Radcliffe. Fisher Pavilion opens at noon; we'll hear the first opera, Heron and the Salmon Girl, at 1:30, and the sequel, Rushing Upriver, at 3 pm.
Joining the cast of OUR EARTH is soprano Alexa Jarvis (photo, left, by Michelle Moore), who plays Alitsa, the Salmon Girl, as well as an untrustworthy raccoon. (We checked in with our other soloists in February.) A Seattle native, Alexa shared with us a little about her background, the characters she plays, and her favorite approach to salmon.

Welcome to OUR EARTH, Alexa! This series of operas, created by Seattleites Eric Banks (composer) and Irene Keliher (librettist) is all about this area. And you've got deep roots here, no?
Yes, I was born and raised in Seattle on Queen Anne Hill, but moved to Magnolia in high school. My mom, sister, and I used to go down to the beach on Puget Sound and walk along the sand flats. Sometimes the flats stretch two or three miles deep on a low tide!

Puget Sound Beach

What do you like most about being a Seattleite?  
I love to ski, so having the access to a ski hill an hour away in the wintertime is SO wonderful. I also love the rain. Nothing beats the crispy air during a good rain.

How did you first become involved with music?  
My first musical experience was with the Northwest Girlchoir, and when I got older I joined Vocalpoint! Seattle. In Vocalpoint! we sang everything from Fleetwood Mac and Jackson 5, to works with the Seattle Symphony in their seasonal concerts and on Grammy-nominated recordings. Simultaneously, I was involved in The Onions, the advanced jazz choir at my high school (Seattle Academy), and took classical voice lessons on the side.

When did opera first become part of your world?  
In 2008 I moved to Chicago to attend DePaul University School of Music. It wasn’t until I was pursuing a music degree that I discovered my love for opera. I think the pinnacle of this discovery was when I was nineteen seeing Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde for the first time at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. It is my favorite opera to this day.

What's a favorite experience you've had as a performer?  
A performing highlight for me was singing Francis Poulenc’s Gloria last year as the soprano soloist in Chicago. Poulenc is one of my favorite French composers. (I can’t wait to see La Voix Humaine at Seattle Opera in May!) I also had a ball singing the National Anthem at the Sonics vs. Lakers game in 2007. You don’t realize what a little breed of human you are until you stand next to a pro basketball player!

Alexa Jarvis in Seattle Opera's Turandot
Elise Bakketun, photo

Now, tell us about your previous experience with Seattle Opera.  
When I was a junior in college I wanted to learn what went on behind the scenes of an opera company, so I applied to Seattle Opera’s Education Department and was accepted as a summer intern in 2011. After I graduated college the following year, I moved back to Seattle and began singing in the chorus of Turandot, and again, in the chorus of La Bohéme this past March. I can now say that I have sung in 18 live performances on the McCaw Hall stage! As a soprano myself, watching the Turandots, Liùs, Mimìs, and Musettas sing was such a gratifying learning experience. I studied their process and watched their growth from the rehearsal studio onto the stage. I never took a moment for granted. Night after night, when Elizabeth Caballero sang the high C at the end of Bohéme’s Act 1, I was awestruck backstage every time, hungry someday to feel what she was feeling in that moment.

Alexa Jarvis backstage at Seattle Opera's La Bohéme
Alexa Jarvis, photo

Who is Alitsa, and how does she change over the course of the two operas you’ll be performing on April 20?  
Alitsa is not your normal fourteen-year-old: she is a salmon-girl! At the drop of a hat, she can transform from a human into a salmon. With this special power, she is a strong-willed adolescent girl who is eager to explore. However, if a salmon-person stays a human for too long, she grows ill. This is what happens to her salmon-brother, Parr, in the first opera, Heron and the Salmon Girl. Alitsa has to be the strong younger sister while she helps Parr get better in the city, but in Opera #2, Rushing Upriver, Alitsa begins to grow weak herself, for she has been walking as a human for too long. Now it is up to Parr to save her.

What is your favorite part in these operas to sing?  
I love Parr and Alitsa’s duet at the end of Heron and the Salmon Girl. She sings “My brother, my only brother, I’m sorry it has taken so long. I brought your medicine, will you please come home with me?” The way the parts overlap in the drifting 11/8 time-signature is brilliant and parallels with the raw emotions the siblings are feeling. In Rushing Upriver, my favorite part is when I get to play the Raccoon and jump around singing about scrounging for food in garbage cans and picnic sites.

What research have you done to play a raccoon? 
I’ve sifted through many pictures to see the different ways Raccoons carry themselves--sometimes on two paws and other times on four. They often look very hungry and guilty. What I’ve tried to do is pick a personality that I want to portray and run with that. While my character Raccoon is a garbage scraps kind of gal, I still want her to come across as sassy and persistent.

Has playing a salmon onstage changed your attitude toward them?
No question. After playing a salmon on stage and watching how different predators (orcas, heron, raccoons, and coyotes) prey after my character, I recognize more than ever the stiff competition between predators and civilization for salmon. However, I’ve loved salmon since I could walk, and I don’t think I’ll stop eating it, but perhaps choose an alternative meal sometimes.

Juvenile salmon are known as "parr," as is the character in OUR EARTH
Photo courtesy of The Nature Conservancy © Bridget Besaw

What’s your favorite way to prepare salmon?
A close friend of mine turned me onto this fresh and yummy recipe:

Grilled sockeye salmon with lemon and dill

1 lb. wild Sockeye Salmon
1-2 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. lemon juice, plus wedges for serving
1 tsp. minced garlic or 1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 - 1 tsp. dried dill
salt and pepper to taste
aluminum foil

Preheat grill.
-To make a pan out of foil, make aluminum sheet slightly larger than the piece of salmon. Take 1 inch on each side and fold over. Stand each side up and connect corners to form the shape of a pan. Place foil pan on a flat cookie sheet or pizza pan.
-Pat salmon dry and place in the foil pan. Poke holes all over the top with a fork. Squeeze on lemon juice, then pour on olive oil and then sprinkle with spices. Let marinate for 15-20 minutes.
-Slide the foil pan with salmon onto the grill. Grill on medium heat until done, usually 10 minutes per inch of thickness. Salmon should flake when done and separate easily from the skin.
-Serve with fresh lemon wedges.

Rehearsals Begin for the Double Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:32:00 +0000

Today is the first day of rehearsal for this spring’s extremely exciting double bill of La Voix Humaine and Suor Angelica! As I post this, Maestro Gary Thor Wedow is downstairs in our rehearsal studio with the cast, getting the tempos and musical entrances organized with all the nuns at Suor Angelica’s convent. Everyone at Seattle Opera was delighted to meet newcomer Maria Gavrilova, the Russian soprano who is singing Suor Angelica for us. This wonderful performer, well-known at the Met in New York and the Bolshoi in Moscow, is not only making her Seattle Opera debut, she’s making her role debut as Puccini’s loving, suffering nun. (Listen to Gavrilova sing an aria of Cio-Cio-San’s HERE.) If you’ve never before heard Suor Angelica, you’re in for a great treat. I’ve loved this ravishingly beautiful opera since I was a kid--I remember listening to an LP of Joan Sutherland singing it whenever I needed a little tenderness in my life—and I know Gavrilova’s performance will be overwhelming.

Nuccia Focile sang La Voix Humaine for Covent Garden in 2011
Tristram Kenton, photo

Meanwhile, our costume shop is ready to fit Nuccia Focile, who sings “Elle” in La Voix Humaine, with a new costume, a dainty negligée designed for her by Melanie Taylor Burgess. Rosalind Plowright, who plays Suor Angelica’s aunt, was telling me that she and Focile were on the same plane from London to Seattle the other day--and that as they were landing at Seatac airport, in the middle of that surprise hail-storm Saturday afternoon, an enormous lightning-bolt that crackled past their plane heralded the return of these two great divas to Seattle in the grandest style!

Rosalind Plowright as La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica in Palermo
Teatro Massimo, photo

Focile made her Seattle Opera debut as Tatiana in Eugene Onegin in 2002, and in recent years has sung Iphigénie in Iphigénie en Tauride, Nedda in Pagliacci, and Violetta in La traviata for us. Plowright, a British singer who had an extremely distinguished career as a soprano before transitioning to mezzo soprano, first appeared in Seattle in 2008 as a memorable Klytämnestra in Elektra. She impressed us, in that production, with her ability to make a traditionally unsympathetic character real and sympathetic, and I can’t wait to see her bring this skill to bear on Angelica’s chilly Aunt.

We’ll check in with these performers, and others involved in our production, over the next three weeks as we prepare for opening night of this unusual double bill. For now, let me leave you with a special treat: in 1983, Rosalind Plowright, then a soprano, made her La Scala debut as Suor Angelica. A telecast of that production is available:

Since she now sings the mezzo role of Angelica’s aunt, Plowright is in the unusual situation of intimately knowing two roles in the same opera! The last time this situation happened at Seattle Opera was also the last time we presented an opera with everyone in the case from the same gender: the year was 2001, and the opera was Billy Budd. Richard Stilwell, who had sung Billy at the Met in 1978, sang the First Lieutenant, Mr. Redburn, in Seattle.

From Seattle Opera's 2001 Billy Budd: Christopher Maltman as Billy, Richard Stilwell as Mr. Redburn
Gary Smith, photos

Our Young Artists Talk about "Viva Verdi!"

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Murphy) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:47:00 +0000

The Seattle Opera Young Artists have spent an entire season singing Verdi’s operas. They celebrate the great composer’s bicentennial in our "Viva Verdi!" concert on April 6—a dynamic evening featuring some of Verdi’s greatest music. The beginning of La traviata, the magnificent overture to La forza del destino, “Va, pensiero” from Nabucco, the arresting “Storm Scene” from Rigoletto...and that’s not all. What more could one ask for in a single performance?

2012/13 Seattle Opera Young Artists: Tenor Theo Lebow, Mezzo-Soprano Deborah Nansteel, Baritone Hunter Enoch, Soprano Dana Pundt, Bass-Baritone Matthew Scollin, Mezzo-Soprano Sarah Larsen, Pianist/Coach Christopher Lade
(photo by Alan Alabastro)

The fine young musicians of our Young Artists Program shared some of their thoughts with me—what they’ve learned, what they’ve found challenging, and how Verdi has changed them.

Dana Pundt starts the concert with what she calls Violetta’s tour de force. Violetta’s first aria in La traviata is the most challenging music Pundt has sung with the program all year. “It’s very exposed in places,” she says, “has high-flying acrobatics in others, and requires an incredible legato almost throughout.”

Dana Pundt and Sarah Larsen in La Cenerentola
(photo by Elise Bakketun)

Mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel is getting the opportunity to revisit a role she first sang in 2011 as a Young Artist in San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program. Eboli in Don Carlo is a role she loves. “It is a big sing, and it is a very dramatic role so that makes it challenging,” she says. “But it is one of the most exciting scenes I’ve done.”

Theo Lebow in Fidelio
(photo by Elise Bakketun)

Usually a singer has only one challenging role to learn for a performance. Theo Lebow has three! The New York-born tenor plays Alfredo in La traviata, Don Carlo, and the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto. “The challenge for me,” he says, “is balancing myself through three very demanding roles. The vocal writing is daunting, requiring a lot of conservation.” The rehearsal and training, he says, has taught him to pace himself as he transforms from ardent suitor to doomed prince to self-interested ladies’ man.

Pianist/Accompanist Christopher Lade, who is back for his second year as a Young Artist, will make his conducting debut with this concert, leading “Oh dischiuso è il firmamento” from Nabucco. “I'm just looking forward to working with the orchestra and accompanying Sarah Larsen,” he says.

Sarah Larsen in Madama Butterfly
(photo by Elise Bakketun)

In addition to singing Fenena’s aria from Nabucco, Sarah Larsen is looking forward to embodying Preziosilla in La forza del destina. “She gets to sing several rousing, zesty numbers,” Larsen says, “‘Rataplan’ being the most famous of all. The challenge of ‘Rataplan’ is one of ensemble—the chorus and orchestration are very crisp, so one has to be mindful of rushing the tempo. This is probably my favorite piece to sing on the concert.”

Hunter Enoch is also looking forward to singing an evening that ranges from ensembles to individual roles. “As a young singer, it is infrequent that one is fortunate enough to sing this music outside of a chorus situation. The music is amazing, and I am so glad that I have had this opportunity to sing it…I have learned a lot about the inner game of singing as well.” Enoch takes on Verdi’s tormented jester in the final scene from Rigoletto, and also sings music for Barone Douphol, Fra Melitone, and Rodrigo in Don Carlo.

Deborah Nansteel, Dana Pundt, and Theo Lebow in Verdi's King for a Day
(photo by Elise Bakketun)

Matthew Scollin is most looking forward to singing the role of the assassin Sparafucile in Rigoletto. He has enjoyed the opportunity so sing the “heavier” roles of Verdi, as compared to Mozart, for example. His main takeaway from a year with Verdi applies to every role he’ll ever sing. “I’ve learned that I need to have something to say when I’m singing,” he says, “not just go through the motions.”

Dana Pundt, too, has taken something meaningful and lasting from a year with Verdi. “I feel that I’ve rediscovered my reason for singing,” she says. “After being preoccupied with technique, study, and accuracy for so long, it’s become something artistic and fulfilling once again.”

Join us on April 6. It’s a performance you won’t want to miss!

From the Peace Corps to Seattle Opera: Meet ANDERSON NUNNELLEY, Seattle Opera Intern

noreply@blogger.com (Seattle Opera) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:21:00 +0000

Hello, Seattle Opera friends and fans! My name is Anderson Nunnelley and I am currently the Artistic Administration Intern here at Seattle Opera.

It has been an exciting past few months working in the offices of such an energetic and contemporary opera company. Within this position I have had many opportunities to learn about opera and the performing arts industry, but assisting with the upcoming celebration of Verdi’s bicentennial—the commemorative “Viva Verdi!” concert presented at Meany Hall this Saturday, April 6, by our Young Artists Program--has stood as one of the more rewarding projects. Having the chance to sit in on production meetings, observe rehearsals, and assisting with preparing this concert has shown me how much music is a uniquely preserved and cherished art.

Music has always been an important part of my life. An affinity for music at an early age led me to study music after high school. At Chicago College of Performing Arts, I not only fostered my own personal connection with music, I confirmed my decision to devote myself to music professionally.

Training Malians to make homemade mosquito repellant from the Neem tree (to prevent malaria)

But I did not start my professional journey in music at Seattle Opera—in fact, I was about as far away as you can get. After college, I was presented with the opportunity to serve in the Peace Corps in Mali, West Africa. Upon researching an exciting place that was to be my home for two years, I was happy to find out that music in Mali was not only central to the culture, it has close ties to the creation of American blues.

Learning and living in such a beautiful place as Mali and coming to understand Malian culture better has been one of the most rewarding and enriching experiences of my life. Mali is filled with warm and kind people whose culture is deeply rooted in song and dance. Life in Mali is enveloped by a music that is closely tied to its country's identity and history. Many communities across the country have strong cultural traditions specifically connected with song and dance: griots, for example, people who are ministers of history and cultural identity communicated through story and song.

Anderson and Fran Keita, Chief de village (Dugutigi in Bambara/Village Chief) in Deguela, Mali

As turmoil in Mali escalated and led to the evacuation of the Peace Corps last April, there has been a great deal of press about the transgressions that Mali and its people have had to endure. These reports were especially troubling given that for many years Mali was such an influential country in West Africa representing peace and democracy.

A report in particular that made a lasting impression on me since leaving Mali was when I first heard that music was banned in the North of the country. Beyond all the adversity that has befallen Mali and its people, I was devastated to learn that the trouble would impact the culture by attacking its music. To silence music in Mali would be to destroy a society’s way to communicate, survive, learn, and prosper.

NPR had a story just a week or so ago about the situation among musicians in Mali today:

Since the French invasion and liberation of northern Mali, music has been restored. Music is universally necessary. It influences our humanity, our social relationships, it preserves our past and reflects current times. Ethnic groups in Mali have buried their daggers to write songs of peace and hope in an effort to reunite the country--a testament to the power of music and the people of Mali’s faith in it.

At first glance, one might not find my service in Mali directly relevant to the world of performing arts in Seattle Opera. What is the connection between the two experiences? In a word, music. Music, the performing arts, and opera in particular, evoke humanity’s most potent truths: they tell and show us our stories, our societies, our relationships and emotions.

Anderson with host father and brothers during the three month Pre-Service Training

After living in a rural West African village, miles away from rehearsal halls and concert stages, I could not have been more properly placed in a country that nourished an appreciation for music. Mali and its people showed me so much more about myself and love for life and music. My experiences there fortified me with a certain strength of will and helped me come to the conclusion that music is an irreplaceable part of our society and our lives.

Anderson with one-year old Amadou Keita

So it has been an honor to intern with a company as reputable as Seattle Opera: not only a great educational opportunity, but a chance to promote my passion for music and the performing arts. The creative collaboration and support among the departments here has made my position within the Artistic Department a most rewarding experience and offered me valuable insights into an industry filled with brilliant artists and creators alike. Witnessing the inner workings of the Young Artists Program at Seattle Opera, I’ve been granted a great perspective on how a company helps develop aspiring artists.

It has been extremely rewarding to follow the progress, from the beginning of my internship to the creative culmination this weekend. This project has involved each and every one in a broad variety of departments at Seattle Opera, and it gives me hope for the perseverance of the performing arts.

Today, Verdi is one of the most popular opera composers. Our Viva Verdi! concert offers both music you will propably recognize such as La traviata and Rigoletto , as well as music that may be new to you. I have loved "Va, pensiero" and "La Vergine degli angeli" for a long time and am looking forward to hearing them live. It has been exciting, over the course of rehearsal, to see the young artists bring a refreshing vitality to these pieces. Artistic Director Peter Kazaras has helped them focus on aspects of text and story to discover subtleties. These tools help connect us to the music and capture not only the great moments in Verdi’s work but also the superb artistry of these maturing singers.

Music really does play a lasting and irreplaceable role in so many diverse cultures and societies, around the world and throughout time. Discovering, preserving, and connecting people with such beautiful music and emotion as that in this program honoring Verdi confirms the importance and overwhelming influence that music has on our human experience.

Malian youth in the village of Zana

(Photos by Anderson Nunnelley)

Kazaras and Garman Introduce "Viva Verdi!'

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Murphy) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:05:00 +0000

On April 6, Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program will perform a unique Viva Verdi! concert. Following on the heels of a successful production of Verdi’s King for a Day—indeed, the Seattle performance at Benaroya Hall sold out—the Young Artists are ringing in the end of the 2012/13 season with a dynamic sampling of Verdi’s operas.

2012/13 Seattle Opera Young Artists: Baritone Hunter Enoch, Mezzo-Soprano Deborah Nansteel, Pianist/Coach Christopher Lade, Mezzo-Soprano Sarah Larsen, Bass-Baritone Matthew Scollin, Soprano Dana Pundt, and Tenor Theo Lebow
(Photo by Alan Alabastro)

Listen to the voices of our Young Artists on SoundCloud.

The Seattle Opera Chorus and the Seattle Opera Young Artists Orchestra will join the Young Artists onstage. The concert will be semi-staged, meaning there won’t be sets and costumes, but you’ll be able to follow the stories because of the acting and supertitles.

Here to answer questions about Verdi, the concert, and the origins of the “Viva Verdi” rallying cry are Peter Kazaras, the program’s artistic director, and Brian Garman, the program’s music director.

What does the “man in the street” need to know about Verdi?
Kazaras: The person in the street needs to know that Verdi's music is so special (as Verdi himself well knew!) that when he was preparing the premiere of Rigoletto at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, he made sure NOT to give the tenor the famous 3rd act aria, “La donna è mobile,” until the dress rehearsal. He knew that once the tenor sang it in rehearsal, the gondoliers would have it memorized by the time the performance was over. And according to legend, this is precisely what happened! His music is irresistible. And you will hear “La donna è mobile” in our concert…but not if you stay in the street!

Peter Kazaras
(Rozarii Lynch photo)

What does Verdi mean to you?
Garman: No other composer understood the human voice as well or wrote for the voice as well as Verdi. He was a consummate melodist; no one else (except for Bellini, perhaps) was able to take a simple musical element—a scale, for example—and so easily spin it into a dramatic or heartbreaking melody. Above all, he was a man of the theater, and almost every bar of his operas is written with the drama in mind.

Brian Garman
(Rozarii Lynch photo)

Who made the musical selections and how?
Kazaras: Brian Garman and I both made the musical selections. It was really about fitting together the puzzle of which voices could do which pieces. For example, we have two mezzos in our current program—but there are not that many plum lyric mezzo parts in Verdi operas. Most of Verdi’s mezzo roles tend to be meatier and heavier, like Azucena in Il trovatore or Amneris in Aida. So we have pieces like Fenena’s beautiful aria from Nabucco, which is appropriate for a younger and lighter voice, and also the “Rataplan” from La forza del destino. The role of Maddalena in Act III of Rigoletto also works for a younger and more lyrical voice.

In Dana Pundt, we have a soprano whose voice has point and agility—she was a perfect choice for Violetta in Act I of La traviata, and also for Gilda in Act III of Rigoletto. Our tenor, Theo Lebow, is an elegant and beautiful fit for the roles of Alfredo and the Duke. Hunter Enoch will sing the excerpts from the role of Rigoletto and also Rodrigo from Don Carlo. Our bass Matthew Scollin will be a sinister and elegantly sung Sparafucile in Rigoletto.

Don Carlos at Seattle Opera, 1993
(Gary Smith photo)

Don Carlo is a beautiful and unforgettable work, and the Garden Scene in Act III is one of the more lyrical sections of the piece. So we have programmed that to give our audience a taste of this great piece. Also, because we have the wonderful Seattle Opera chorus at our disposal, we have programmed pieces such as the famous "Va, pensiero" (The chorus of Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco. This beautiful and moving chorus has long served as a sort of unofficial Italian national anthem. Once you hear it, it’s easy to understand why.

What do the Young Artists stand to learn from spending a year with Verdi’s music?
Garman: It’s great for the Young Artists to be able to perform this music. There’s so much that can be learned from Verdi about language, phrasing, musicality, theatricality, and of course, singing. There are places in the music of many other composers where you can “hide.” But you can never hide in Verdi: you always have to really sing.

Kazaras: By working on Verdi for an entire year, our singers continue to learn how to shape a line, how to sing with a beautiful legato, how to use the Italian language to convey emotion, how to make their techniques responsive to the wonderful and inspiring challenges posed by Verdi. There’s no one like him for that! And remember that one of our Young Artists is Christopher Lade, a pianist and conductor-in-the-making. I am sure Christopher would tell you that a year of working on Verdi is like balm not only for your musical soul but also for your musical skills.

Can you say a little bit about the participation of the Seattle Opera chorus?
Garman: It’s very exciting that the Seattle Opera Chorus will be joining us for this concert. I conducted them in McCaw in La traviata back in 2009, and I’m delighted to work with them again. I’m also excited about our continued work with the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program Orchestra. To my knowledge, we are the only Young Artists Program that has a professional orchestra that plays specifically for us and bears our name. So collaborating with these two excellent ensembles will be a wonderful way to end our season.

Seattle Opera Chorus in Act 1 of La traviata, 2009
(photo by Rozarii Lynch)

Kazaras: The excerpts from La traviata and Rigoletto would not be the same without the chorus—how fantastic to be able to hear the male chorus perform that incredible “storm effect” in Rigoletto! We would never be able to consider such pieces unless we had a top-notch chorus on hand, so this gives us a rare chance to showcase the great Seattle Opera chorus as well as our Young Artists.

Viva Verdi graffiti

What’s behind the title “Viva Verdi”?
Kazaras: “Viva Verdi!” is a rallying cry both in music and in politics. As 1861 approached, the date of Italian Unification under King Victor Emmanuel, legend has it that audience members began to cry, “Viva Verdi” at performances of Verdi operas, but their acclaim contained a coded message. They were not just applauding Italy’s greatest composer, but were also crying, “Viva Vittorio Emmanuele, Re d’Italia!” or “Long live Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy!” The abbreviation of this was, of course “Viva V.E.R.D.I.”!

Test Your VerdI-Q!

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 22:56:00 +0000

Upcoming Opera Camps for 2-5 Graders!

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Dean) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:22:00 +0000

Spring break is coming up, and Seattle Opera's Education Department is once again offering Opera Camps for budding performers. An extended version of our popular in-school program, participants in our Opera Camps work with our talented Teaching Artists to create an original mini-opera, with singing, arts & crafts, acting, and dancing. After a week of creative fun, the program culminates Friday, at noon, with a performance of the new creation. These camps, which cost $150 per student, are the perfect introduction to opera and just the place for any aspiring young artist in your family. No experience necessary; singing, stage movement, and theatrical fun guaranteed.

CLICK HERE to download the registration form, for either the April 8-12 or the April 15-19 session. Questions? Contact Barbara Lynne Jamison, Seattle Opera's Youth Programs Manager, at 206-676-5564 or Barbara.Jamison@SeattleOpera.org for more information or to be notified of other camp opportunities.

Photo of opera camp by Bill Mohn.

La Voix Humaine - One Woman's Voice

noreply@blogger.com (Seattle Opera) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:23:00 +0000

Returning favorite Nuccia Focile discusses the distinctiveness of Poulenc's heavenly music; how "the human voice" must carefully convey the monodrama's many emotions; and the importance of connecting with a sympathetic conductor in order to successfully navigate the musical and psychological tour-de-force. Includes clips of Ms. Focile's previous Seattle Opera appearances.

Learn more about La Voix Humaine on the Seattle Opera Website