Seattle Opera Blog

Seattle Opera offers free tickets to federal workers

2019-01-18T11:20:00.001-08:00

Jacob Lucas photo

Seattle Opera is pleased to offer tickets to furloughed federal governments workers. Workers can receive two free tickets to the company’s performances of Il trovatore at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 19 and 23, and at 2 p.m. on Jan. 20. To redeem, simply present your federal government ID at the McCaw Hall box office before the performance. The box office opens two hours prior to performances; 5:30 p.m. for evening performances and noon for the matinee.

“We at Seattle Opera are grateful for all that our federal workers do, and wish to show our solidarity and thanks by inviting them to enjoy a night of beautiful music at McCaw Hall,” said General Director Aidan Lang.

Seattle Opera’s Il trovatore runs now through Jan. 26 at McCaw Hall.

Praise for Il trovatore

2019-01-16T12:28:00.001-08:00

Philip Newton photo

"Stunning production! … So good I rushed out and bought another ticket." - Shayna T.

"Everyone go and see this! I went for my birthday today and was blown away! One of the best SO productions I've seen, and I've seen a lot of them." - Sofia W.

"I saw this show tonight and after being on the fence about this art form, I am now officially an opera fan." - Sam H.

"Awesome performance today. The audience was totally captivated by the staging and superb voices. Thank you for an unforgettable afternoon." - Ursula S.

Lester Lynch (Di Luna). Philip Newton photo

"The new production of Verdi's Il Trovatore at Seattle Opera packs such a thrilling punch that even my 80-year-old body pumped teenaged adrenalin again and again at Saturday's opening night performance." - Seattle Gay News

"This SO production had the requisite grandeur and musical talent, yet remained fresh." - Oregon Arts Watch

"On Saturday, the opening-night audience heard the resplendent soprano Leah Crocetto (last heard here in the title role of 'Aida') as Leonora, offering some thrilling high notes and a performance that combined power and easy facility. Her Manrico was Arnold Rawls, a dashing actor whose tenor took a while to warm up but rose to the challenge of 'Di quella pira' in fine style." - The Seattle Times

"I am more of a theatre person than an opera person, so when I went to the Seattle Opera on Sunday, I was not looking forward to sitting through the almost 3-hour production of Verdi’s 'Il Trovatore' on a sunny day . . . Then I was blown away! The story of 'Il Trovatore' is difficult, with events happening a generation ago and the entire first scene is one long song just telling us what happened 20 years ago. Snore, right? But no! – the direction and the singers were AMAZING, and that made all the difference. In fact, the singer playing Leonora was so amazing, I think I am now a fan of her. Her name is Angela Meade and when she started to sing, I got chills. She did something I have never heard. It’s called pianississimo, which means 'more than very soft.' She sang the highest notes in the world in the quietest voice I possible, and the effect was mesmerizing. Really. After one aria she got the longest applause with BRAVAs that I’ve ever seen. Also, she is from Centralia, WA, so singing at the Seattle Opera is coming home for her! The opera also dealt with women’s issues interestingly – there is a substantial plot line about witchcraft and burning at the stake. Go SO!" - M.J. McDermott, Q13 News

Lester Lynch (Di Luna), Leah Crocetto (Leonora), and Arnold Rawls (Manrico). Jacob Lucas photo

"Opening night’s cast featured tenor Arnold Rawls in the title troubadour role, Manrico ... Rawls was in solid form for his big moment at the end of Act 3, unleashing the stirring and prolonged high C that every Trovatore fan anticipates. Rawls played well off powerful mezzo-soprano Elena Gabouri as his mother, the vengeance-crazed Azucena; his Manrico was also a bit unhinged, clearly his mother’s son. His rival, romantically and politically, is the Count di Luna, sounding properly villainous, rough and gruff, as played by Lester Lynch." - Seattle Weekly

"Overall my first venture into McCaw Hall for a performance from the Seattle Opera was highly pleasurable. If you're going for the first time, read up on the show beforehand, allow plenty of time the day or night of the performance, and then go in to the hall with an open mind. I think you'll leave as I did - satisfied." - Eclectic Arts

Elena Gabouri (Azucena). Philip Newton photo

"As the gypsy Azucena, Elena Gabouri (last heard here as Amneris in 'Aida') was a powerful singer and actor who performed with all-out intensity. Baritone Lester Lynch, heard earlier this season as Crown in 'Porgy and Bess,' displayed a wide interpretive range as the villainous Count di Luna: commandingly evil, yet capable of warm subtlety in his aria 'Il balen.'" - The Seattle Times

"Politicians talk about values,when they only care about money. Operas have plots, but the real substance is the music. Il Trovatore inspires a bit of cognitive dissonance. The story is grotesque, but the songs are upbeat and memorable. The vocals are among the most challenging in the world, yet the melodies invite you hum. It’s easy to imagine people waving their mugs in the air as they sing the choruses from Il Trovatore together in the bar a week after seeing the opera." - Gemma Alexander

"The top performance, by a long shot, was that of soprano Angela Meade. The sheer beauty of her singing had me in tears more than once. Her tone was gorgeous from top to bottom of her considerable range. Her trill shimmered, and her soft high notes floated above the orchestra to perfection. Her acting was fine, but I would probably have enjoyed her performance just as much with my eyes closed." - Seattle Gay News

Angela Meade (Leonora). Philip Newton photo

"In Sunday’s alternate cast, the standout was the thrilling Leonora of Angela Meade, a soprano from Centralia who has won 57 competition prizes and who debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 2008. Her beautiful tone quality and her interpretive artistry were capped with an amazing crescendo on the high A-flat at the end of 'D’amor sull’ali rosee' — which met with a showstopping ovation of cheers and whistles." - The Seattle Times

"There were two stars in this show. The first was the orchestra under conductor Carlo Montanaro (I’ll get to the second one in a moment). They were magnificent. You’re not likely to hear a better performance from the pit for Il Trovatore. Montanaro and his musicians seemed to treat Verdi score as if it were a symphony. Every nuance, every subtlety of orchestration was given its due. It was like hearing the music afresh. In many performances of Verdi’s operas the orchestra takes second place to the singers, but not in this one." - Andy Nicastro

"Leah Crocetto sang Leonora, the noblewoman over whom the two clash. Her soprano is uncommonly lovely at low volume—soft and warm, she sounds like cashmere feels—but she can also uncover it to loose easy, airborne high notes. Particularly memorable was her Act 4 aria 'D’amor sull’ali rosee,' miraculously dreamy." - Seattle Weekly

Nora Sourouzian (Azucena). Jacob Lucas photo

"Nora Sourouzian’s Azucena grew steadily in strength and finesse as Sunday’s show went on, and baritone Michael Mayes made a vital, vivid di Luna. John Marzano and Nerys Jones were commendable in their supporting roles as Ruiz and Inez." - The Seattle Times

"The second star of the evening—and really the main one—was Leah Crocetto in the role of Leonora. The night belonged to her. From the moment of her entrance she dominated the show. She has a voice of unique beauty, warmth, and fullness. It easily reached the back rows (where I was sitting) and in its quieter moments it takes on a gentleness and expressiveness which one doesn’t normally get from a singer with that kind of power." - Andy Nicastro

"The always excellent Seattle Opera chorus outdid itself. Not only did it sound terrific, but the choristers threw themselves into physical performance to an extent I've rarely seen. Their challenging slow-motion and stop-action moments were dramatically powerful and showed an amazing level of physical discipline. Kudos to choreographer Kathryn Van Meter and Fight Director Geoffrey Alm for creating those arresting scenes." - Seattle Gay News

"Keeping all their interactions clear and impactful in a notoriously complex story was the laudable achievement of stage director Dan Wallace Miller and supertitle writer Jonathan Dean — though I would be curious to ask someone who doesn’t know the opera how well they grasped it all. Pretty well, I imagine." - Seattle Weekly

Arnold Rawls (Manrico) and members of Seattle Opera's Il trovatore cast. Jacob Lucas photo

"Lester Lynch also shone as the Count di Luna. The Count is a dreary fellow and hard to like, but Lynch made him human and understandable, which is a greater accomplishment than making him likeable. He also brought a sense of vulnerability to the role. At one point he softly sings Leonora’s name with such longing and tenderness it’ll break your heart." - Andy Nicastro

"Seattle stage director Dan Wallace Miller made his company mainstage debut with this production, presenting an original, effective approach to an opera that requires a great deal of dashing about — duels, battles, deaths, amorous clinches, treachery, avowals of hatred and love, and renunciations. In one key scene, he reduced a chaotic battle to a slow-motion background for the lovers’ crucial real-time interchange: chancy but effective. Miller also made vivid use of 'shadow plays,' backlighted episodes with actors dramatizing the narrative." - The Seattle Times

"Verdi’s Il trovatore has something for everyone: drama, a ridiculous plot, vengeance, battles, and hours of complex melodious music. Beloved by audiences, together they don’t always form a compelling whole. The opera can be difficult to pull off in the theater without both an eye and an ear to how everything should fit together. During its current run with Seattle Opera, an effective aesthetic — combined with an excellent quartet of singers in the main roles — helped to make the best case possible for this complex work." - Seen and Heard International

Verdi's Il trovatore plays now through Jan. 26 at McCaw Hall.

A Q&A with Il trovatore's costume designer

2019-01-12T11:41:00.003-08:00

Costume Designer Candace Frank

In high school, Il trovatore's costume designer Candace Frank learned how to sew the clothes she couldn't find on the rack. Fast forward some years, Frank has created a successful career designing costumes for theatre, opera, circus, and burlesque. Her creations utilize an advanced knowledge of fit, mixed with a flair for the theatrical. Frank previously designed at Seattle Opera for Don Giovanni (Young Artists Program), and for The Combat (chamber opera). She has previously led the costume shops at Seattle University, Intiman Theatre, and ACT Theatre. You may have also seen her work onstage with Vespertine Opera, Sound Theatre Company, and Lucia Neare's Theatrical Wonders.

What’s the time period for this opera?
There is no exact time period; it’s open to your imagination. In the costumes, we reference pre-Renaissance era, some Tudor, and different courtly silhouettes. None of the looks live 100 percent in any time period (there’s even modern camo print for some of the soldiers). Some of the chorus members have jeans on. Some wear newsboy caps. Some have old-fashioned farmer hats. For the peasant class in this opera, it’s really a 200-year span of what working-class people have worn throughout the years. Also, the soldiers wear modern camo print.

For this show, there’s both an Original Set and Costume Designer (John Conklin), and a Costume Designer (you!). Can you tell me about how the costumes came together?
Seattle Opera approached (Stage Director Dan Wallace Miller) to see if he’d direct this opera using an existing production. But Dan likes to reimagine things. He’s not a status quo director, he likes to ask hard questions underlying in the work. In this case, we’re looking at social status. Traditionally, Il trovatore has these “gypsy” characters, which, in our show are simply depicted as peasants instead of Romani people. Working with Dan, I used the existing designs to tell a story with more danger, risk, and humanity

Michael Mayes (Di Luna), Nora Sourouzian (Azucena), and members of the Seattle Opera Chorus. Philip Newton photo

For example, I made the character Di Luna more tough and dangerous-looking. It was also important to me to show the soft romance of Manrico through the costuming. Both the peasants and the soldiers were somewhat clean in this show’s original iteration, so Dan and I decided to add some realness, some distressing, dirtying, and beating to their armor and war garb. This reflects the long war in the story, which both sides lose.

Basically, the original designs provided a launching point. It’s like when someone asks you to create a painting with a specific color palette. It was a fun creative challenge.

You're not exactly a status quo costume designer either, right?
I usually do the more out-there shows. I hardly ever do the five-white-people-talking-in-a-living-room shows. I love imaginative work such as Lucia Neare's Theatrical Wonders (which has included characters like giant mice, will have giant musical numbers, and all sorts of crazy stuff). Alternatively, I also design plus-size clothing for my brand, Bawdy Love.

Photo courtesy of Lucia Neare's Theatrical Wonders.

It also sounds like you and Director Dan Wallace Miller have a fruitful creative partnership.
Absolutely. Every time I work with Dan, it’s a very collaborative process. Dan, Christopher Mumaw (Associate Set Designer), and I love taking on a show like this, and then the three of us work together to realize a world. It’s not very often you have the chance to create something like that. And it’s one thing that makes opera such an exciting art form to be a part of.

I think Leonora’s Tudor-inspired gowns are going to be crowd-pleasers. Can you talk about her different looks?
She starts off in a beautiful blue gown made of changeable silk. Changeable silk is a fabric that, when they weave it, there’s blue threads going one way, and pink threads going the other. So the color is really dimensional, and while blue, it has a pink and purple sheen to it.

Il trovatore is a story of the haves, and have-nots. And Leonora is part of the class of people that’s oppressing the peasant class. The world of the “haves” is cold, austere, metallic. And Leonora’s second dress is a reflection of that with a black and gray classic Tudor print. The cut of her two gowns are actually identical

What’s your favorite costume in the show, and why?
My favorite costume is Di Luna’s: He wears a floor-length leather cloak made out of three giant cow hides. Each hide was larger than a single work table in our costume shop. It’s got all these beautiful back-seams, and Tudor-style lines to it.

Then he’s got two big armor pauldrons over his shoulders. He’s ready for battle; always ready to kill.

You’ve talked to me about the “haves.” What were your color and texture inspirations for the “have-nots”?
The peasants wear a soft, warm, color palette. We’ve done lots of painting and distressing. The clothes need to look they are heirlooms, handed down through generations, and like the wearer needs every little piece to survive.

Il trovatore costume design by Candace Frank.

Is designing for opera different than with other art forms?
It’s grander, larger. Everything needs to be scaled up because of the theaters that the work is performed in, and also because of the grandness of the stories. In opera, there’s also much greater body diversity than in theater or dance. In opera, it all comes down to what the singers need.

You told me recently that opera is one of the most body-positive art forms. Why is body positivity crucial to costume design and fashion?
Because these stories are meant to be representative of all kinds of people, including people of all colors and sizes. Art, especially opera, represents the real world that we all come from.

Anything else?
The Seattle Opera costume shop is by far the best costume shop I’ve ever worked in. When I recently designed here for The Combat, I was amazed by how quickly after I would draw something it would be actualized in real-life with incredible care and detail. The work they do is incredible art in itself.

Seattle Opera's Il tlrovatore runs Jan. 12-26 at McCaw Hall.
Tickets & info: seattleopera.org/trovatore

Opera’s Greatest Witches

2016-09-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

Witches—be they sopranos, mezzos, contraltos, or (coming up in this fall’s Hansel & Gretel at Seattle Opera) tenors—bring intense drama and spectacular music to any number of great operas. Enjoy these memories of great witchy performances at Seattle Opera! If you’d like to listen to them all in one go, open our Witch Album over at SoundCloud and simply press play.

MACBETH: A Stage Full of Witches
Something wicked this way comes! When he set about transforming Shakespeare’s Macbeth into an Italian opera, Giuseppe Verdi multiplied Shakespeare’s three witches into a whole bevy of them, and then wrote them some spectacularly creepy music. The scene in the witches’ cavern becomes a huge production number as the witches brew their hell-broth and await the evil king. Seattle Opera’s 2006 production of Macbeth was conducted by Nicola Luisotti.

LOHENGRIN: Ortrud Invokes the Ancient Gods
In Wagner’s Lohengrin, wicked witch Ortrud transforms the young Christian prince Gottfried von Brabant into a swan with all the powers of hell. In her famous Act Two invocation she calls on the pagan gods Wodan and Freia (deities who would later appear in person in Wagner’s Das Rheingold) and implores them to bless her treachery and deceit, that she may avenge them on the Christians who turned away from the old faith. Jane Eaglen sang this thrilling music under the baton of Asher Fisch in Seattle Opera’s 2004 Lohengrin.

IL TROVATORE: Azucena’s Idée Fixe
Azucena, the demented old gypsy hag at the center of Verdi’s Il trovatore, isn’t really a witch; but her mother was burnt at the stake by people who claimed she was a witch, and ever since Azucena has been unable to get the image out of her mind...or the sinister waltz tune that was playing that night out of her head. Polish mezzo soprano Malgorzata Walewska sang this tragic character at Seattle Opera in 2010, conducted by Yves Abel.

RUSALKA: Jezibaba’s “Čury mury fuk!”
Disney’s little mermaid gave her voice to a wicked witch in exchange for a pair of legs. In Dvořák’s magnificent opera Rusalka, based on the same story, the lovely nymph follows the ill-tempered forest witch Ježibaba down into her witch’s cave, where she performs her magic (assisted, in Seattle Opera’s production, by her familiar, an owl of unusual size). “Hocus pocus,” in Czech, is pronounced “Čury mury fuk!” Bruce Ferden conducted Seattle Opera’s 1990 production of Rusalka, starring American contralto Sheila Nadler as Ježibaba.

NORMA: Worshipping the Moon Goddess
Norma, priestess of the ancient Druids, may not look much like your typical Halloween witch; but she certainly casts a spell over everyone onstage and in the audience when she sings her prayer to the chaste goddess of the moon, “Casta diva.” The one and only Jane Eaglen made her Seattle Opera debut and won her first Seattle Opera Artist of the Year Award singing this challenging music in our 1994 production of Bellini’s Norma, under the baton of Edoardo Mueller.

HANSEL & GRETEL: Witch’s Ride
Written by a young protégé of Wagner, Hansel & Gretel spoofs the latter’s famous “Ride of the Valkyries” in its lively Witch’s Ride, played by the orchestra as the title characters get lost deeper and deeper in the forest. Working out to this vigorous music, our witch surely builds up an appetite, later to be satiated by some delicious children! Sebastian Lang-Lessing conducts the orchestra of Seattle Opera in our 2016 Hansel & Gretel.

THE MAGIC FLUTE: The Queen Deceives Tamino
She may look more like Glinda the Good Witch; but the Queen of the Night is probably the nastiest female character in Mozart, with who knows what unholy powers. In her dazzling entrance aria she charms and seduces the naïve young Prince Tamino, who sets off on a quest to do her bidding and defeat her enemies. Cyndia Sieden sang the Queen of the Night at Seattle Opera in our 1999 production, conducted by Daniel Beckwith.

CARMEN Reads Death in the Cards
The gloomiest music in Bizet’s Carmen comes in the “Card Trio” in Act 3, when the title character, foretelling her future with her gypsy friends, sees inevitable death coming, first for her, then for her lover Don José. Stephanie Blythe sang Carmen at Seattle Opera in 2004, under the baton of George Manahan.

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE: Worshipping the Love Goddess
In Act Two of this amazing opera, Isolde, eagerly awaiting her lover Tristan’s nocturnal visit, explains to her attendant Brangäne that their choices no longer matter, now that Frau Minne (Lady Love) has taken control of their fates: “Don’t you recognize the hand of Lady Love, the power of her magic? She is queen of all who dare, ruler of the cosmos! Life and death are under her sway; from pleasure and pain she weaves them, turning hatred into love...however she spins it, however she ends it, whatever she has chosen for me, wherever she leads me, I am completely hers and I show her obedience!” Despite the nervous Brangäne’s objections, Isolde extinguishes the lamp warning Tristan that it’s not yet safe to approach: “Quench that light so Lady Love can shine.” Jane Eaglen sang Isolde, Michelle DeYoung sang Brangäne, and Armin Jordan conducted the orchestra of Seattle Opera in this performance from 1998.

UN BALLO IN MASCHERA: Ulrica Summons the Devil
Ulrica, the fortune-telling humbug in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, wants everyone to believe she’s a powerful witch. To that end she sings a mighty aria, “Re dell’abisso,” summoning her demon-lover and impressing her clientele with smoke and mirrors and dramatic mezzo singing. Listen for the quick interlude (beginning here at 1:41) when King Gustavus III, disguised as a fisherman, opens the door to Ulrica’s den, letting in the light of the Stockholm afternoon and irritating the spectators by breaking Ulrica’s spell. Kathryn Day sang Ulrica at Seattle Opera in 2002; Antonello Allemandi conducted Vinson Cole as Gustavo and the chorus and orchestra of Seattle Opera.

PARSIFAL: Kundry Rising
Early in Act Two of Wagner’s Parsifal, the evil sorceror Klingsor casts a spell transforming Kundry, hitherto a disagreeable, loathly, ancient servant of the Grail Knights, into a seductive young beauty. Slave to Klingsor’s magic, Kundry must tempt and ruin the young fool Parsifal. Klingsor’s words indicate that Kundry has been doing this job a long, long time: “Arise, come to me! Your master calls you, nameless one…ancient she-devil, rose of hell! You were Herodias, and what else? Gundryggia there, Kundry here. Kundry, your master calls!” In 2003 Asher Fisch conducted Richard Paul Fink as Klingsor, Linda Watson as the wailing Kundry, and the orchestra of Seattle Opera.

MEFISTOFELE: “L’altra notte”
Verdi’s brilliant young librettist Arrigo Boito composed both words and music for this wonderful opera, inspired by Goethe’s extraordinary Faust. Accused of killing both her mother and her baby by Faust, lovely young Margherita languishes in prison the night before her execution, where she sings the dramatic aria “L’altra notte”. “The air is cold, my dungeon dark, and my sorrowing soul, like a sparrow in the woods, flies, flies, flies away...have pity on me.” At the Speight Celebration at Seattle Opera in 2014, Nuccia Focile sang this aria, with the orchestra of Seattle Opera conducted by Carlo Montanaro.

ARIADNE AUF NAXOS: Bacchus Taunts Circe
A case of failed witchcraft! Before the young god Bacchus sets foot on Ariadne’s Greek island of Naxos, he’s heard offstage noisily taunting the witch goddess of the next island over, Circe, who had better luck transforming Odysseus’ men into pigs than she did working her wicked magic on Bacchus. Jeffrey Hartman sang Bacchus at Seattle Opera in 2015, under the baton of Lawrence Renes.

STEPHANIE BLYTHE as Juno
Is it witchery when the evil magic is worked by the queen of the gods? Juno, in Handel’s Semele, resorts to all kinds of skullduggery—including deceit, disguise, extortion, sex trafficking with an illusory nymph, and temptation with a narcissism-enhancing magic mirror—to defeat her rival, the lovely mortal Semele. One of our all-time favorite singers, Stephanie Blythe, gave an unforgettable performance as Juno when Seattle Opera presented Semele in 2015. Gary Thor Wedow conducted the orchestra of Seattle Opera.

Top 10 most recognizable opera pieces used in film

2016-05-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

You probably know more opera music than you think you do. If you like to watch TV or go to the movies, you’ve undoubtedly heard music from operas used in ways the original composers could never have even imagined. We’ve raided the Seattle Opera archives to put together a playlist featuring some of opera’s greatest hits—tunes you may already know because you’ve heard them in the cinema.

#1: From Apocalypse Now: Ride of the Valkyries (Die Walküre)

Francis Ford Coppola used the “Ride of the Valkyries,” famous music from the second opera of the Ring cycle, not for Wagner’s Norse goddesses of death but for American helicopters dealing out death from above in Vietnam in Apocalypse Now. It made for a brilliant, chilling moment—opera music used not just for emotional effect but as part of a film’s story.

Sung by Wendy Bryn Harmer, Jessica Klein, Suzanne Hendrix, Luretta Bybee, Tamara Mancini, Sarah Heltzel, Renée Tatum, and Cecelia Hall, with the Seattle Opera Orchestra conducted by Asher Fisch.

#2: From Sex and the City: Flower Duet (Lakmé)

The Lakmé Flower Duet has been used in Sex in the City, Laura Croft Tomb Raider, even the Quentin Tarantino film True Romance. Its sensual blending of female voices powerfully underscored a sexual tryst between two lady vampires, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon, in the horror movie The Hunger.

Sung by Joan Sutherland and Huguette Tourangeau, with the Seattle Opera Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonynge.

#3: From The King’s Speech: Overture to The Marriage of Figaro

Mozart’s whirligig overture to the beloved grandaddy of all opera comedies has been used by everybody from Schwarzenegger to Seinfeld to Mad Men. In the Colin Firth film The King’s Speech, speech pathologist Geoffrey Rush played this music to distract his patient, King George VI of England, from the ghastly sound of his own voice.

Played by the Seattle Opera Orchestra conducted by Dean Williamson.

#4: From A Night at the Opera: Anvil Chorus (Il trovatore)

One of the Marx Brothers’ greatest comedies used the pretensions of opera-goers—and the complications of one of opera’s most Romantic plots, Il trovatore—to hilarious effect. The noisy effect of the anvil-banging just makes this familiar music that much sillier.

Performed by the Seattle Opera Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Yves Abel.

#5: From A Room with a View: “O mio babbino caro” (Gianni Schicchi)

Movies love that big, lush sound of Romantic Italian opera music. Who could forget the spellbinding beauty of the aria “O mio babbino caro,” from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, as heard when a repressed girl from Edwardian England learns about passion while on holiday in Tuscany in the beloved Merchant-Ivory romantic comedy A Room with a View?

Sung by Cynthia Haymon, with the Seattle Opera Orchestra conducted by Cal Stewart Kellog.

#6: From The Fifth Element: Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor

Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about action movies and sci-fi. Fans of the Bruce Willis film The Fifth Element may remember the alien Plavalaguna, who is hiding the Fifth Element—and who performs her own riff on the famous mad scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.

Sung by Aleksandra Kurzak, with the Seattle Opera Orchestra conducted by Bruno Cinquegrani.

#7: From The Witches of Eastwick: “Nessun dorma” (Turandot)

Jack Nicholson, as the devil Daryl van Horne, creeped us out in The Witches of Eastwick to the sound of an unforgettable Puccini melody: “Nessun dorma” from Turandot, which became one of the most famous arias in all of opera when Luciano Pavarotti made it his theme song. Start at :50 for the most recognizable part of this piece.

Sung by Antonello Palombi, with the Seattle Opera Orchestra conducted by Asher Fisch.

#8: From Driving Miss Daisy: Song to the Moon (Rusalka)

Just as Pavarotti became associated with “Nessun dorma,” Renee Fleming has been a champion of the beautiful Song to the Moon from Dvorak’s Rusalka. Not many people in America knew how gorgeous that opera is until Ms. Fleming started singing it—beginning with her Seattle debut in 1990. This wistfully beautiful aria featured in the popular movie Driving Miss Daisy.

Sung by Renee Fleming, with the Seattle Opera Orchestra conducted by Bruce Ferden.

#9: From The Shawshank Redemption: Letter Duet (The Marriage of Figaro)

In the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption, convict Tim Robbins seizes control of his prison’s PA system and plays this wonderful music by Mozart for all his fellow prisoners, including Morgan Freeman, who has this to say about it: “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. ... I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words. ... those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. ... For the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

Sung by Bernarda Bobro and Nuccia Focile, with the Seattle Opera Orchestra conducted by Gary Thor Wedow.

#10: From Pretty Woman: “Sempre libera” (La traviata)

To conclude our celebration of opera music in the movies, here’s one that gets at the heart of the glamor and passion that opera represents: Pretty Woman, starring Julia Roberts. This movie is a Cinderella-story, about a downtrodden gal who gets one shot at attending the prince’s ball—in this case, Richard Gere hires her to be his date for an opera. Of course he takes her to La traviata, the ultimate opera about a woman who gets paid to entertain men. And what she hears there changes her world.

Sung by Dana Pundt, with the orchestra of the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program conducted by Brian Garman.

Ready to experience live opera for yourself? Explore our 2016/17 season to choose from over-the-top comedy, passion-fueled tragedy, colorful fantasy, and more.

Verdi’s Career: A Musical Tour

2015-08-07T11:56:00.000-07:00

Giuseppe Verdi is to opera what Shakespeare is to drama. It’s hard to imagine the art form of opera without the work of this fantastic composer. In this playlist, we’ll give you a quick overview of Verdi’s career, which began in 1842 when he took Italy by storm with Nabucco, and concluded, fifty years later, with his phenomenal Falstaff. During those years, Verdi was the undisputed king of Italian opera, and it was his relentless theatrical genius which transformed the genre from the singer-focused bel canto shows of the early nineteenth century into the almost cinematic kind of opera popular at the turn of the century.

NABUCCO

Shortly after horrendous personal tragedy first struck the young Verdi, when he was about 27, he wrote his first definitive opera, Nabucco. A new voice had arrived. The best-known music in Nabucco has become an unofficial Italian national anthem and one of opera’s greatest hits: the lamentation of the enslaved Israelites by the waters of Babylon. Verdi gave this displaced people a tune suitable for their nostalgic mood, and the melody is so simple, singable, and catchy it immediately became the theme song of the political movement for Italian unification. The audience understood these slaves yearning for their homeland as a metaphor for the Italian people, longing to be free of foreign domination (by the Austrian Hapsburgs, the French, the Spanish, even the Papacy). In the subsequent wars of Italian unification, Verdi’s name became a political slogan: “Viva Verdi!” was an acronym standing meaning “Long Live Vittorio Emanuel, King/Re of/d’ Italia!” Verdi himself was the son of a humble country innkeeper—his name, Giuseppe Verdi, is Italian for “Joe Green”—who became a popular hero, then later a senator in the first Italian parliament, and is still considered one of the founding fathers of the nation.

MACBETH

Following the success of Nabucco, Verdi became a very busy man. During his ‘years in the galleys,’ as he later called them, he churned out more than a dozen operas following the strict, standardized forms of bel canto opera. There’s lots of wonderful music in these early operas, but they aren’t as familiar or popular as the works he wrote later on, after he slowed down and started to take much more care with each work. (The only one of Verdi’s early operas we’ve presented at Seattle Opera is Attila.) With his tenth opera, Macbeth, Verdi turned a corner.

Verdi was a lifelong devotee of Shakespeare, and one of the things he so admired about the English playwright was his ability to give each of his dramatic works its own unique feel or color (“tinta” in Italian). The world of Hamlet, for instance, is a very different place than the world of King Lear. Inspired by Shakespeare, Verdi started doing the same thing in his operas. In 1847 he wrote his first opera based directly on Shakespeare: Macbeth. Although some of this work is a straightforward Italian bel canto opera, Shakespeare’s blood-soaked drama about a vicious tyrant and his psychopathic wife pushed Verdi beyond what was normal and acceptable for music in those days. In particular, Verdi, who loved putting witches onstage, wanted to capture the frighteningly grotesque character of Lady Macbeth and her grisly fate. For her mad scene—the famous ‘Sleepwalking Scene,’ in which Lady Macbeth is desperately trying to wash imaginary bloodstains off her hands—Verdi wrote music that makes your skin crawl.

RIGOLETTO

Ten lonely years after the destruction of his first family, Verdi got hit hard once again by family tragedy. He had fallen in love with Giuseppina Strepponi, a retired soprano, who was considered a ‘fallen woman’ by the residents of the small town where Verdi grew up—including the composer’s parents. Verdi, now a wealthy and successful man, threw his parents out of his house and disinherited them; and at the same time, evidence implies, he and Strepponi left an illegitimate child outside an orphanage. As this was happening, Verdi wrote three operas that radically transformed opera, three horrifying tragedies concerning parents and children, eerie parallels for what was going on in Verdi’s life.

Rigoletto, widely considered a ‘perfect’ opera (with not a note or word out of place) concerns another fascinatingly twisted, grotesque character: a hunchbacked court jester who’s as evil and nasty in public as he is tender and overprotective at home; his innocent, sheltered daughter; the handsome rogue who seduces her and breaks her heart; and a whore with a heart of gold. Their voices come together in the famous Rigoletto quartet, a miracle of ensemble writing which musically describes four very different characters. The tenor (the Duke of Mantua, the handsome rogue), comes on to the whore with a seductive, beautiful, charming melody. She (the mezzo, Maddalena, the whore) giggles at him musically. The soprano (Gilda, the innocent girl he seduced and abandoned, who still loves him) wails musically; and the bartione (Rigoletto, her father) grumbles about avenging his daughter’s lost honor. His attempted revenge will of course backfire and destroy his daughter instead.

IL TROVATORE

Like many Romantic artists, Verdi loved grotesque characters and situations. Following Rigoletto Verdi took the grotesque one step further with Il trovatore, the last bel canto opera, the tragedy of Azucena, a demented old gypsy hag full of this creepy smother/love for her son who turns out not to be her son. Verdi found a way to express this character’s post-traumatic stress syndrome musically: the music that played when her own mother was burned at the stake keeps haunting her, each time she has a flashback. In her harrowing monologue, “Condotta ell’era in ceppi,” she describes how her mother was killed, and how her efforts to be avenged led her to burn her own child alive.

Il trovatore has come in for more than its fair share of ridicule over the years. Given that it’s about a very disturbing subject, many people find it easier to make fun of this work than to take it seriously. But a great performance of this masterpiece is both thrillingly beautiful and dark.

LA TRAVIATA
The third opera Verdi wrote that year, La traviata, has become one of his most popular. The grotesque character here is Violetta, an alluring ‘fallen woman,’ who is dying of tuberculosis—nineteenth century Europe’s answer to AIDS—and thus coughing up blood while singing beautifully. With La traviata, the era of old-fashioned bel canto melodrama gave way to a new world of realistic musical drama, with immediately recognizable characters, plausible psychology, contemporary social issues, and music that responds line by line to the text instead of following conventional musical forms. And the opera’s text outlines a morally ambiguous dilemma worthy of Greek tragedy—one all too familiar to Verdi.

The fashionable ‘kept woman’ Violetta finds what seems to be true love with a country lad. But Papa Germont, her boyfriend’s father, demands that Violetta leave his son, since her status as “fallen woman” is bringing shame on the family and destroying Alfredo’s sister’s chance at an advantageous marriage. Violetta believes him when he says his son is likely to grow tired of Violetta and abandon her anyway. In their famous duet at the heart of this opera, baritone and soprano come together in respect and compassion as Violetta agrees to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of Germont’s family.

UN BALLO IN MASCHERA
Verdi slowed down after writing those three operas, and most of his remaining operas are incredible masterpieces. Un ballo in maschera, which premiered in 1859 (the year he finally married Strepponi) is almost Mozartean in its glittering blend of comedy and tragedy. It concerns the assassination of the historical king Gustavus III of Sweden, characterized as a fun-loving young playboy in the opera. The opera’s first scene concludes with king telling everyone in his court, “Let’s all put on disguises and go get our fortunes told by the wise old gypsy woman down at the docks!” Verdi provides music so light and frothy it could have come from an operetta.

LA FORZA DEL DESTINO
As Europe’s leading opera composer in the second half of the century, Verdi wrote several operas for foreign theaters, including La forza del destino for St. Petersburg. It’s sort of the opera version of an old-fashioned sprawling TV mini-series, with a plot spanning decades, involving dozens of colorful characters and scenic locations, loads of improbable coincidences, and an unhappy ending so bleak even the Russians asked Verdi to lighten it up a bit. Russian opera was just getting going at the time, and this work became a model for their great composers. In the aria “Pace, pace, mio Dio” the heroine Leonora, about to join a convent, implores God for forgiveness. She’s a spinto soprano, a voice type developed by Giuseppe Verdi, demanding great beauty and power, but also finesse; a Verdi soprano is always required to project her pianissmi (very soft singing) all the way to the back of a 4000-seat theater, to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

DON CARLOS

Don Carlos is Verdi’s Hamlet. Originally written for Paris, to a French libretto, it’s very French in grandeur, spectacle, dazzling orchestral color, and whiny hero but still Verdian in its politics, emotional profundity, rhythmic drive, and vocal challenge. Verdi’s most ambitious and expensive opera, Don Carlos is sometimes given in a shorter version in Italian.

The protagonists are the tenor and baritone, a pair of idealistic young men committed to progressive causes. Don Carlos (the tenor) is the prince of Spain; Rodrigue, Marquis of Posa (the baritone) is his childhood friend. Early on in the opera Rodrigue learns that Carlos is heartbroken because his beloved fiancée Elisabeth ended up marrying his father instead of him, for political reasons. Rodrigue begs Carlos to come with him to bring peace to the war-ravaged Netherlands, where the people are trying to break free from Spanish domination. Together the two young men sing a magnificent duet of love and brotherhood, pledging to be true to one another until death.

The antagonist of Don Carlos appears to be King Philip II of Spain, Carlos’s father, who snatches the girl away from his lovesick son and oppresses the Dutch freedom fighters. But Verdi gives us a wonderfully complex portrait of this historical figure, who turns out (in the opera) to be much more sympathetic than we originally thought. The really nasty character is the Grand Inquisitor, another Verdi grotesque, a withered old priest who uses religion to control and terrorize all Europe. For Philip and the Grand Inquisitor, Verdi wrote a phenomenally chilling duet for two basses. Typical of their dialogue:

KING: If I send my son to his death, will you absolve me?

PRIEST: Peace in the empire is worth a rebel’s life.

KING: But can a Christian king destroy his son for his kingdom’s sake?

PRIEST: To redeem us, God sacrificed his.

KING: But how can you impose so cruel a law?
PRIEST: That is the law imposed by our faith.

KING: Will I be able to silence the cry of nature in me?
PRIEST: Everything falls silent when faith speaks.

AIDA

Bring on the camels and the elephants! There’s lots of great vocal music in Aida, the opera about ancient Egypt which Verdi wrote for Cairo to celebrate the opening of a new opera house. But even more familiar is the great orchestral music of the Triumphal Scene. Two choirs of trumpets on either side of the stage play this famous melody, in B flat and E flat—the very keys of the valveless trumpets found by archeologists, several years later, in King Tut’s tomb. Following the Triumphal March you’ll hear some lively ballet music. Grand operas always feature ballet, and Aida has some spectacular dance music.

Aida is one of the world’s most beloved operas, both for its fantastic music and the pomp and pageantry that make a production of it such an occasion. Its plot, a Romeo and Juliet-esque tale of star-crossed lovers, is also very satisfying. One of Verdi’s greatest characters is Amneris, the Egyptian princess whose heart is broken when the handsome warrior she loves runs off with her Ethiopian slave girl. In revenge, she betrays him to the priests who rule Egypt, then regrets it when it is decided that he will be buried alive. She pronounces a terrible curse on the priests, and in the intensity of this music you can hear Giuseppe Verdi cursing the conservative religious forces which, he felt, had all his life been obstructing the growth of peace and freedom in Italy.

OTELLO

By the end of his life Verdi was transforming Italian opera yet again; his last two operas, both based on Shakespeare, sum up everything possible in the art form and unveil new horizons to be explored by future composers. Otello is perhaps an easy Shakespeare play to turn into an opera, since it’s all passion, madness, revenge, and excess—but that said, it’s still tough to make an opera as good as Shakespeare’s original play, which Verdi did.

The story is about the struggle between good and evil and the nature of faith. Otello, a black army general, believes the lies of his henchman Iago, who claims that Otello’s beautiful young white wife is cheating on him. What, you ask, causes Iago’s evil? Verdi’s answer is that Iago has his own sort of diabolic anti-faith; he gives Iago a chilling aria, not based on Shakespeare, in which he asserts very strongly his belief in ultimate evil.

Later in the opera Otello hits his wife Desdemona in full view of everyone in the show, knocking her to the ground. Everyone is shocked, and Desdemona, on her knees, begins singing the huge ensemble known as a concertante. Verdi loved these pieces, with a beautiful soprano voice soaring above lots of hubbub. You can hear the shocked chorus; various characters feeling bad for Desdemona; Iago, plotting more villainy with his stooge Rodrigo; and Desdemona’s purity floating above it all. In the end, Otello screams at everybody to get out, curses Desdemona, and has an epileptic fit.

FALSTAFF

Rather than end his career with the nasty tragedy of faith destroyed in Otello, or the nihilistic devastation of King Lear (a lifelong obsession), Verdi made his final opera out of one of Shakespeare’s greatest comic characters, Falstaff. Verdi, who had a pretty bleak outlook on life, wrote lots of great tragedies. But he managed to write an incredibly funny opera comedy at age 80, one packed to bursting with brilliant, hilarious, beautiful moments. Listen, for instance, to Falstaff’s strutting ‘happy dance.’ Mistress Quickly has just invited the fat old rogue to an assignation with Alice Ford, one of the wealthy Merry Wives of Windsor. Falstaff courteously escorts Quickly to the door, then cries “Alice è mia!” (Alice is mine), and in the music that follows you can hear his vast belly chortling with delight.

To conclude our tour of Verdi’s career, here’s the conclusion of Falstaff: an enormous fugue for the full cast of 10 soloists and a big chorus on the words “All the world’s a joke, man’s a born jester, and he who laughs last, laughs best. Joe Green certainly did.

You can listen to the music on this playlist at the KING FM Seattle Opera Channel.

The Audience Has Spoken!

2010-07-06T10:29:00.001-07:00

Last week, we posted a poll here on the blog that asked for everyone to vote for their favorite production of last season. As always, opera fans proved to have plenty of opinions and were not afraid to share them - and in turn, we LOVED hearing what everyone had to say!

The comments here and on Facebook revealed that most of you put a lot of thought into how you cast your vote. At first, the world premiere of Amelia took off, giving the tried-and-true Verdi classics fierce competition. But over the course of the week, all the Ringheads cast their votes and stole the show, claiming 33% of all the votes cast and winning the poll. Second place went to La Traviata with 23% of the vote, and the comedy Falstaff (15%) barely edged out the Amelia commission (14%) and the remaining Verdi opera, Il Trovatore (12%). To our delight, we also saw a few write-in votes for the Young Artists Program spring production of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos!

Thank you to all who voted. Here's to another great season at Seattle Opera!

Vote for Your Favorite Opera of 2009/10

2010-06-28T15:28:00.000-07:00

This past season brought you a trio of Verdi classics sandwiched between our signature production and a world premiere -- it's been quite a year for us here at Seattle Opera! Before we move on to the 2010/11 season, we want to take a moment to look back at our soaring 2009/10 season. This week, we're conducting a poll to find out audiences' favorite production of the past season. Are you a Ringhead or did you prefer the elegance of La Traviata? Did Peter Kazaras's innovative Falstaff tickle your funny bone or did you prefer the flames of Il Trovatore? Or perhaps the excitement of Amelia, a brand-new opera, was your perfect cap to a fabulous season. We want to hear from YOU -- so cast your vote (the poll is on the right side of your screen) and, if you want, share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

Ring photo © Chris Bennion. All other photos © Rozarii Lynch.

Wagner vs. Verdi: Nationalism vs. Globalism

2010-02-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

Tonight's adult education event at Seattle University, second in our series of broad Verdi vs. Wagner topics, will look at politics in the operas and lives of these two great composers; more specifically we'll investigate how both of them rode the great nineteenth-century wave of nation-building which created Italy and Germany, as modern political entities, and how both saw glimmers of a different kind of political structure down the road, the first inklings of a truly global culture.

Verdi wrote the theme music for Italian unification; his name even became a political slogan, so that those who shouted "Viva Verdi!" in mid-nineteenth century Italy were waving flags supporting the movement that eventually crowned Vittorio Emmanuele II as king of the united Italy. And Wagner's connection to German nationalism is well-known, its ramifications still debated. Tonight we'll look at moments from Verdi and Wagner operas promoting national identity, German and Italian, as well as the xenophobia which tends to accompany such statements of unity. Then, we'll glance through a handful of their operas, comparing and contrasting how they present political issues such as fascism, capitalism, socialism, communism, colonies and empire, slavery, prejudice, displaced populations, and the industrial revolution and the environmental movement. And we'll end by looking at the lives both lived outside their native lands: as exiles, dissidents, outcasts, travellers, and (eventually) lionized celebrities. (We'll even hear some of the music they wrote in celebration of other political groups, Verdi's "Hymn of the Nations" and Wagner's "American Centennial March".)

Come to Seattle University's Wyckoff Auditorium at 7 pm tonight, and join us for this interesting discussion!

Text and Music in IL TROVATORE'S wild finale

2010-01-28T09:03:00.000-08:00

Hi, I’m Jonathan Dean, author of the supertitles at Seattle Opera’s Il trovatore, and I wanted to answer on this blog a question asked at our post-show Q&A the other night: why is there no title for Di Luna’s final line, “E vivo ancor!” The fact is, I’ve left out, or translated very loosely, much of what is actually, all things considered, a very fine libretto by Salvatore Cammarano for what I consider one of the greatest of all operas. Those last 45 seconds of Il trovatore in particular, from Leonora’s death to the end, are as chillingly powerful as any 45 seconds of theater that I know. Here’s the music, plus the titles I put up above the stage in our prodution:

DI LUNA: Kill him!
MANRICO: Mother, mother, farewell!
AZUCENA: Manrico! Where is my son?
DI LUNA: About to die.
AZUCENA: Stop! Hear me...
(The soldiers kill Manrico; Di Luna and Azucena each make expostulations. Then, drumroll, and:)
AZUCENA: He was your brother.
(Di Luna expostulates and looks horror-struck.)
AZUCENA: You are avenged, mother.

Now, here’s the actual words they’re singing in Italian, with a more literal translation:
DI LUNA: Sia tratto al ceppo! (Let him be dragged to the chopping-block!)
MANRICO: Madre, ah, madre, addio! (Mother, ah, mother, farewell!)
AZUCENA: Manrico! Ov’è mio figlio? (Manrico! Whither is my son...?)
DI LUNA: A morte corre. (To death he runs.)
AZUCENA: Ah, ferma!... M’odi... (Ah, stop! Hear me...)
DI LUNA: Vedi? (Do you see?)
AZUCENA: Cielo! (Heavens!)
DI LUNA: È spento! (He is spent!)
AZUCENA: Egli era tuo fratello! (He was your brother!)
DI LUNA: Ei!...quale orror!... (He! How much horror!)
AZUCENA: Sei vendicata, o madre! (You are avenged, o mother!)
DI LUNA: E vivo ancor! (And I live still!)

The distractingly old-fashioned language of many operas’ libretti never makes it up onto the titles screen without very good reason. I don’t feel justified ripping your eyes off the stage to confirm your suspicion that yes, Di Luna just told Azucena that Manrico was dead, or that her little cry of “Cielo!” means “Heaven!” (If you’re relying on my titles, you have no idea how many times in Il trovatore Leonora threatens to faint.)

But to answer the question posed at the Q&A, the real reason to omit Di Luna’s final line, here, is that the only real reason for that utterance is poetic form: he’s rounding out the rhyming couplet, as mandated by the rules of Italian verse. The last two lines of the poem are split, Azucena/Di Luna, Azucena/Di Luna; and he rhymes “orror” with “ancor”, ending the opera with a reference to the same rhyme that concluded Azucena’s great narrative in Act Two Scene One, “Condotta ell’era,” which ended with Manrico’s cry of “Qual’orror...” (How horrible) followed by Azucena’s tormented “Sul capo mio le chiome sento drizzarsi ancor” (‘I feel the hairs on my head standing up again,’ or, in my very loosely translated title, ‘The agony begins in me again’). Musically the rhyme, and the way the baritone and the mezzo both cadence onto the same downbeat, he rising up on “ancor” and she falling down on “madre”, is part of the extraordinary power of the passage. But the sense of his utterance, which is all I can really give you on the titles screen, doesn’t really contribute any new information you need to know: so he doesn’t get a title there.

By the way, if the final scene seems stilted in the Italian text of the libretto, it’s still a vast improvement on the ending of Gutierrez’s original play, written in verse in Spanish:

NUÑO (DI LUNA):
Ven, mujer infernal...goza en tu triunfo.
(Come, woman of hell...rejoice in your triumph.)
Mira el verdugo, y en su mano el hacha
(Look at the executioner, he has in his hand the axe)
Que va pronto á caer...
(Which is about to fall...)

AZUCENA: ¡Ay! ¡Esa sangre!
(Ah! That blood!)

NUÑO: Alumbrad á la víctima, alumbradla.
(Shine lights on the victim, illuminate him!)

AZUCENA: ¡Sí, sí...luces...él es...tu hermano, imbécil!
(Yes, yes, light...it is he...your brother, stupid!)

NUÑO: ¡Mi hermano, maldición!...
(My brother, curses!)

AZUCENA: ¡Ya estás vengada!
(You [feminine] are avenged!)

Director José María Condemi Talks Trovatore

2010-01-27T17:00:00.000-08:00

An interview with Il Trovatore stage director José María Condemi is featured in William Burnett's "Rising Stars" series on Opera Warhorses today. He spoke with Burnett about the Seattle production -- why he's fascinated by the opera and its characters, how he handles a plot that many find to be convoluted, and the parallels he sees in today's world.

A Chat with Malgorzata Walewska

2010-01-27T15:06:00.000-08:00

Malgorzata Walewska once received a piece of performing advice from a Finnish stage director that still sticks with her: “Don’t play, just be.” She admits that this concept of imagining herself in her characters’ situations is a bit difficult when playing Azucena—the gypsy woman in Il Trovatore—but it is no less important.

“It is hard to imagine witnessing your mother being burnt at the stake or throwing your own child into the fire,” she said of the gypsy’s backstory. “That is why it is also clear to me that after such experiences as these, you go crazy.”

With director José María Condemi and conductor Yves Abel, Walewska analyzed her character’s lyrics, her motivations, and her interactions with the other characters to create a believable Azucena. “You have to be a credible actor,” she said. “Of course, my Azucena is still in development—I am not as experienced in this role as I am with Amneris or Carmen. In each performance I discover something new, something I can do better.”

The singing, of course, is important too, and one of the reasons she loves Azucena. “To sing this role is a big challenge,” she said. “This is not the kind of singing where you can cover imperfections with a personal charm.”

It’s been a busy year for the Polish mezzo-soprano. “I was visiting my house only as a guest,” Walewska joked. “I was there only to change suitcases.” She’s looking forward to having some downtime this year and even taking a vacation to Egypt with her family, where she “will be doing absolutely nothing and I will enjoy it very much.” She has several upcoming concerts, a Carmen in Krakow, and a new CD called Farny to promote before returning to McCaw Hall next February as Dulcinea in Don Quixote, where she’ll be reunited with her Bluebeard’s Castle co-star John Relyea. “Bluebeard’s Castle was a magical performance,” Walewska said of her Seattle Opera debut last February. “John Relyea was a great partner—wonderful singing and he never stepped on my 7 foot-long train!”

She loves Seattle audiences and is eager to return for Don Quixote. “I feel great in Seattle…and I come back with a great joy” she said. “Birds migrate south to warm countries in the wintertime, but I migrate to the rainy Northwest.”

Photos © Rozarii Lynch.

A Chat with Antonello Palombi

2010-01-26T11:30:00.000-08:00

For tenor Antonello Palombi, returning to Seattle Opera always feels like a homecoming of sorts. And this trip is particularly special because it marks his role debut as Verdi’s heroic troubadour Manrico.

“I thought: ‘this is a role that has to be in my repertoire’…and where else could I do this if not in Seattle? A city I love a lot, a city that gave me my birth in the U.S., in a way,” he said, referring to his 2004 U.S. debut as Dick Johnson in Puccini’s Fanciulla del West at Seattle Opera.

Although this is his first Manrico (two previous engagements to sing Il Trovatore were canceled for various reasons), he has been working on the role for awhile—and that work doesn’t stop after opening night.

“For me, rehearsals are not finished after dress rehearsal,” he said. “I’m always researching, finding a way to do it better. Manrico’s not yet fully in Antonello because this is my first time performing it.”

Not only he is happy to finally be performing Manrico, but he’s enjoying the company as well. He’s reuniting with his Aida co-star Lisa Daltirus, and also Mary Elizabeth Williams, who he met earlier this season during Tosca at New Orleans Opera. “She’s a new friend to me,” he said of Williams. “She’s a great artist, being so young with such a great voice…and we have established a good relationship.” That rapport will surely be helpful when the pair heads to Atlanta for Aida after Trovatore closes.

Palombi loves his job, but one of the definite downsides is the constant absence from his family back in Italy. He’s grateful, however, that he can keep in touch with his wife and two daughters, ages 6 and 12, via the internet. “I can help my older daughter with her homework, I can see my family every day, and they don’t miss out on my presence,” he said.

Because the separation is difficult, Palombi appreciates the familiarity of Seattle.

A few days ago, he said he came out of McMenamin’s restaurant with his wife, Gabriella, and stopped to take in the scene. Seeing the Space Needle high above McCaw Hall, Palombi turned to Gabriella and said: “’You know, it’s strange, this city is always the same as when I go home,’” he recalled. “Seattle has a special place inside of me. Whenever I know that I have to go to Seattle, I say: ‘I’m going home’.”

Photos © Rozarii Lynch

Trailer for Adult Education Event

2010-01-25T14:30:00.000-08:00

Join us 7 pm, Tuesday February 2, to discuss political issues including nationalism and globalism in the operas of Verdi and Wagner. Hosted at Seattle University's Wyckoff Auditorium. For a full list of programming in this free series, click here.

If you can name all the locations in our lavishly-produced video trailer here, you get in free! (As does everybody else...)

A Chat with Mary Elizabeth Williams

2010-01-22T16:18:00.000-08:00

Meet Mary Elizabeth Williams. The young singer is currently making her Seattle Opera debut as Leonora in Il Trovatore (Sundays/Fridays), though you may also remember her from the 2000/01 Young Artists Program. Here she tells us a bit about why she loves singing Leonora, how she prepares for a performance, and how she's been spending her free time in Seattle.

You were a Young Artist here, but this is your mainstage debut at Seattle Opera. How did it feel to take the stage at McCaw Hall?
It has been fabulous so far! I'm looking forward to the next two performances of the silver cast Trovatore at McCaw. The acoustics are very fun to sing in, and I love the expansive feeling of the hall. It's a huge honor for me to have been asked to perform in a principal role at Seattle Opera, and I am enjoying every minute of the process.

How did the Young Artists Program benefit you as an artist?
The Seattle Opera YAP was the first young artist program I was chosen for, and it helped me begin my journey as a student artist. The years immediately following school are so important, especially for larger, slower-to-mature voices like mine. I needed a place to learn and grow with positive guidance and opportunities to hone my stagecraft—all while keeping in mind that I was only 23 and had a great deal of growing up to do, musically, artistically, and vocally—and that's exactly what I got from Seattle Opera.

How many times have you sung Leonora?
This is my third time singing the role, and my fourth time being involved in a production. My first experience with Il Trovatore was covering Sondra Radvanovsky as Leonora when I was a young artist at the Opéra National de Paris. Every time I am involved in the production of this opera, I marvel at the beauty and the power of this music. Verdi has given us something new to discover every time we open the score.

Why is Leonora a role you enjoy?
Well, I think the primary reason I enjoy singing Leonora has to be the aforementioned genius of the composer. I just love this music, and I feel transported to a different realm when I sing it. I also enjoy the difficulty level of this opera—it's just difficult enough to sing that it keeps me on my toes all the time, but it's not impossible! It's like taking a hard test on a subject that you have loved studying.

How do you make it your own?
Over the six years that I have been studying and performing this role on and off, I have enjoyed learning the intricacies of the score—the dialogue (even in the scenes that I'm not in!), the colors of the orchestra, the dynamic markings...the list is endless. The more I know it and sing it, the more I absorb it organically. It's that organic understanding that allows me, finally, to put aside all that I have studied and trust myself, in the moment, to react to the other characters and musicians around me. That, I think, is when it really gets fun—both for me and for the audience.

How have performances gone so far?
I can't complain! Luckily, I am not a perfectionist. My goal, each night, is to give the best performance I can that day. So far, I think I've done that. I, of course, find things I'd like to do differently, and that's why I'm so grateful that singing Leonora will be a career-long adventure. I have time to experiment.

Do you have any opening night or pre-performance rituals?
Well, I try not to have any hard and fast rules because I've found that when I do, the cosmos invariably breaks my rules for me! In general, I like to have a good, centering work-out, which wakes up my body. I like to eat food that will give me lots of energy, like protein and salad. I drink lots of fluids. I warm up my voice slowly and generously. Right before I go onstage, I think about my Daddy, who passed in 2001 and never really got to see me perform at this level. I like to think that he is in the hall with me, listening and smiling.

What do you like to do in Seattle when you’re not performing?
When I'm working away from home, I have a tendency to go to many movies because it makes me happy to sit in the dark with popcorn and get lost in a story. I have done a little sightseeing here in Seattle; my mother came for Christmas, and we went up in the Space Needle. She's coming back for the last show and I'm planning a ferry ride for us. I have also done a little dating, believe it or not!

What’s coming up next for you?
I am heading to Atlanta right after this production ends to do my first Aida with the Atlanta Opera. To be honest, I'm a little nervous—but it's comforting to know that Antonello Palombi [currently performing as Manrico in Trovatore] is my Radames. Besides the fact that I admire enormously his talent onstage, we are good friends offstage, too! I know we'll have great fun.

Photos © Rozarii Lynch

Il Trovatore Reviews

2010-01-21T12:54:00.000-08:00

Have you seen Il Trovatore yet?

Here’s what some members of the press have to say...

About the music:
“The music is a stunning collection of gorgeous tunes, like the Anvil Chorus, recognizable even by most opera rookies.” —Maggie Larrick, Queen Anne News
“Yves Abel is an excellent conductor. He conducted with panache, sympathy and even fire when called upon to do so.” —R.M. Campbell, The Gathering Note

About Lisa Daltirus (Leonora on Saturdays and Wednesdays):
“Her lovely, well-controlled high notes become in her hands, or throat, versatile tools—she can float them ethereally or set them ablaze.” –Gavin Borchert, Seattle Weekly

About Mary Elizabeth Williams (Leonora on Sundays/Fridays):
“Her voice has weight but is intensely lyrical. It is also warm and rounded. She has a beautiful line, finesse and an arsenal of colors which she uses with great discretion.” —R.M. Campbell, The Gathering Note

About Antonello Palombi (Manrico on Saturdays and Wednesdays):
“The way Palombi sang Manrico’s two most tender love songs…expressed to perfection just how much this thoughtful troubadour was torn between romantic passion and filial duty.” —Sumi Hahn, The Seattle Times

About Gordon Hawkins (Count di Luna on Saturdays and Wednesdays):
“Baritone Gordon Hawkins just gets better and better. His tortured Count di Luna…is no clichéd villain.” —Maggie Larrick, Queen Anne News

About Malgorzata Walewska (Azucena on Saturdays/Wednesdays):
“Mezzo-soprano Malgorazta Walewska embraced the wickedly complex character of the gypsy Azucena with gusto…[she] scaled the wild vocal demands, and swept the audience into the gypsy’s dark mindset.” —James Bash, Northwest Reverb

We’d love to hear your thoughts, as well!

Photo © Rozarii Lynch

Il Trovatore Post Show Q&A with Speight Jenkins

2010-01-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

Listen to this live recording of Il Trovatore's opening night post-show Q&A session with Seattle Opera General Director Speight Jenkins. Speight hosts a free Q&A session shortly after each and every opera performance inside the Nesholm Family Lecture Hall.

Il Trovatore - Preview Video

2010-01-15T09:46:00.000-08:00

See highlights from Verdi's hot-blooded melodrama Il Trovatore, including the famous "Anvil Chorus" and Antonello Palombi singing "Di quella pira." The video preview also features Lisa Daltirus, Gordon Hawkins, and Malgorzata Walewska.

To watch more videos or learn more about Seattle Opera's production of Il Trovatore, visit the Seattle Opera website.

Italian for the Opera: IL TROVATORE

2010-01-07T09:43:00.001-08:00

At Tuesday night's Seattle Opera Adult Education event, hosted at Seattle University, the fantastic Ruth Richert of the Washington Academy of Languages taught attendees enough basics of Italian pronunciation, grammar, and the relevant vocabulary to enable them to detach from the supertitles at upcoming performances of Il trovatore and understand key words and phrases in the libretto as the singers sing it. We learned how to pronounce all the words and sing along to some of Il trovatore's greatest tunes, including the Anvil Chorus, the Troubadour song "Deserto sulla terra", and of course "Di quella pira". Click here for the language lesson cheat sheet to Il trovatore.

Washington Academy of Languages and Seattle Opera have been partners for several years now; in addition to events like this one, faculty from WAL have taught classes in French, German, and Italian to the singers of the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program, and of course many in the Seattle Opera audience have studied foreign languages at WAL, which is located on the south shore of the Lake Washington Ship Canal near Seattle Pacific University. If you're looking to study a foreign language (ANY foreign language, not just those sung on the opera stage), or to brush up your skills in a language you once studied, or join in a conversational class at any level, check out what WAL has to offer at www.wal.org.

Il Trovatore Director's Talk

2009-12-30T09:52:00.000-08:00

Watch this exclusive Behind-the-Scenes video featuring Il Trovatore Stage Director José María Condemi as he discusses the amazing cast and passionate story of Seattle Opera's upcoming Verdi production.

To watch more videos or learn more about Seattle Opera's upcoming production of Il Trovatore, visit the Seattle Opera website.

Behind-The-Scenes: Seattle Opera Chorus

2009-12-21T11:31:00.000-08:00

In this new and exciting behind-the-scenes video, meet some of the choristers who will bring the rousing choruses of Verdi’s Trovatore to life. Take a peek into a chorus rehearsal, learn about the singers’ experience with Seattle Opera, and hear why Chorusmaster Beth Kirchoff loves working on Il Trovatore.

To watch more videos or learn more about Seattle Opera's upcoming production of Il Trovatore, visit the Seattle Opera website.

Gordon Hawkins and Lisa Daltirus on Il Trovatore

2009-12-15T10:30:00.000-08:00

To get you in the Trovatore mindset, listen to Gordon Hawkins talk about the "high-octane" role of Count di Luna and Lisa Daltirus speak about why she loves Verdi heroines like Leonora.

Photo © Michal Daniel photo

The First Day of Rehearsal - One of the Busiest Days of the Year

2009-12-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of rehearsal for our next production to take the stage, Verdi's Il Trovatore. On the blog to tell us about the hustle-bustle that ensues is Assistant Stage Manager Ginger Castleberry.

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One of the busiest days for the Seattle Opera Stage Managers is the first day of rehearsal. The cast of Trovatore includes a lot of familiar faces but also a few singers we haven’t met. The Artist Aide buffet, a casual event hosted by our volunteer drivers, provides an opportunity for informal introductions over lunch before we begin the official rehearsal day.

Before the singers arrive, we attend Prop and Costume Viewings with the director and the production staff who walk through each detail of the show. This session gives the director a chance to ask questions or share ideas. On Trovatore I’m the Assistant Stage Manager in charge of costumes. Every veil, hanky and piece of jewelry is tracked through the opera, so we make sure to keep it all straight. I’m also looking to find out how things work – Can a performer take his jacket off, or is it built to stay on? Is that veil attached to the wig? Can she kneel in that skirt? We also keep track of how long each singer is offstage to change costumes – if they need to make a costume change in two minutes instead of twenty, the costume shop can rig all sorts of tricks to make getting in and out of the costume faster. In Trovatore, the Men’s Chorus alone changes costumes four times!

Some of the ladies in Trovatore wear costumes that include long veils. I try to think about the costumes from each artist's perspective – what would it feel like to wear that? What could go wrong that we can help avoid? Not only is it easy to trip on a long veil, but we don’t want to find out that the fabric is too thick and they can’t see Maestro conducting!

After the Artist Aide Buffet and the Costume Viewing, we attend the Prop Viewing. There are many different weapons in Trovatore, and I’ll let the costume department know if the singers need somewhere in their costume to stash their weapons. We also keep track of any wearable props, like rings, or any props that need to fit inside a pocket.

And all that’s just the morning – after lunch we shuffle singers out to costume and wig fittings and start staging rehearsals for Act One. Looking at the schedule it’s a long first day, but we’re very excited to hit the ground running on Trovatore!

Il Trovatore Pre-Performance Preview

2009-12-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

This 6-minute pre-performance preview lecture gives you a quick overview of Il Trovatore. This exciting audio podcast includes musical examples and commentary by Education staff members Jonathan Dean and Seneca Garber.

A "Knight" to Remember

2009-12-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

Il Trovatore conductor Yves Abel was recently named a chevalier of the Orde des Arts et des Lettres. The honor is given out twice a year by the French government to those who contribute greatly to French culture throughout the world.

Abel, a Toronto native, is the co-founder, music director, and conductor of Opéra Français de New York, the only opera company in the U.S. devoted solely to French operas—from French Baroque works to contemporary pieces—with a bent toward rediscovering neglected works. (Stephen Wadsworth, who will direct Amelia in May, is also a chevalier. He was given the honor for his work on the plays of Molière and Marivaux.) Congratulations, Maestro!