10/11 Spotlight Guides Now Online

All five of our 2010/11 season Spotlight Guides--sometimes referred to as Seattle Opera's "Cliff's Notes" on each opera--are now available online. These online Spotlight Guides enhance the printed guides which get mailed with subscription tickets by adding lots of musical illustrations. They're the perfect crash course if you're going to an opera that's new to you, or a helpful reminder of an opera you've heard before. Access them by CLICKING HERE.

Lucia di Lammermoor: Speight's Corner Uncut

When we filmed our recent Speight's Corner video, General Director Speight Jenkins gave us more fascinating information on
Lucia di Lammermoor than we could fit into our video. Listen to the full, uncut audio of Speight and hear him give the scoop on when he first heard each of our Lucias, how he knew Tomer Zvulun was ready to take the leap from Assistant Director during the Ring to Stage Director for Lucia, and many more anecdotes that only a General Director would know!

Lucia di Lammermoor: Speight's Corner

What exactly is “bel canto” opera? Why is the Lucia sextet important? And why are opera mad scenes always performed on staircases?! General Director Speight Jenkins answers these questions and more in the new Speight’s Corner video.

To learn more about Seattle Opera's production of Lucia di Lammermoor, visit the Seattle Opera website.

Looking Back on Tristan

Now that Tristan and Isolde have united in death on Seattle Opera’s stage for the seventh and final time, we wanted to look back at the provocative diversity of reactions to the production that we’ve enjoyed reading in traditional media reviews, in the blogosphere, and on Facebook. Asher Fisch’s conducting and the strength of the cast were universally praised, but other elements of the production invited—and received—a wider variety of responses.

No, Annalena Persson (Isolde) and Clifton Forbis (Tristan) didn’t touch one another until that final moment, a directorial choice inspired by the unresolved tension in the music, the palpable frustration at the heart of this opera. Some were expecting more obvious carnal passion to accompany Tristan and Isolde’s journey toward death; but Linda Stein, who chimed in on our Facebook page, wrote: “How two people could sing up a sexual froth that built for four hours without ever touching each other was magic to behold. Transcendently gorgeous and hot.”

Stage Director Peter Kazaras at a Tristan rehearsal.

And, of course, with a non-representational set, the field of interpretation is limitless. Take for instance, the wide range of theories on the wrapped set pieces at stage left. James Bash of the Oregon Music News pegged them as “representations of pent-up sexual desire.” Irene M. Piekarski offered that they might be “sails, walls, a marriage bed, or a torture rack.” “My guess,” wrote Robert P. Commanday of the San Francisco Classical Voice, “was paintings in storage or awaiting shipment.” Michael van Baker of sunbreak.com wrote that the pieces suggested “both the belongings Isolde sails with and the sheeted furniture in a house where someone has died.”

If we were to ask Robert Israel, he would likely say “all of the above.”

If art is supposed to provoke the audience and inspire a myriad of reactions, Seattle Opera has done its job with this Tristan und Isolde. Even one of the self-admitted “booers” on opening night (the only performance to provoke this particular response!) wrote in to Oregon Music News to say he wanted to encourage people to buy tickets—and that he was hoping to return on closing night.

















Conductor Asher Fisch, General Director Speight Jenkins, and Stage Director Peter Kazaras at a Tristan rehearsal.

A CHAT WITH ANNALENA PERSSON

Before our final two performances, I wanted to check in with our Isolde, Swedish soprano Annalena Persson, who is making her US opera debut with these seven performances of one opera’s most challenging roles.

First, Annalena, for those of us who aren’t great with Swedish, what’s the correct pronunciation of your name?
an-ah-LAY-nah PEAR-shawn. Like the fruit.

How many times have you sung Isolde now?
Oh, I’ll have done around 40 performances, when the Seattle production closes.

You’ve also sung Senta and Sieglinde and a couple of Strauss roles. Do you sing Italian music, too?
I’m just about to sing my first Verdi role, Elisabetta in Don Carlo, back home [in Göteborg/Gothenburg, Sweden]. And I certainly hope it isn’t my last! I’d love to sing Lady Macbeth, or Amelia in Un ballo in maschera. I did in fact sing Turandot, which I liked very much, it was fun, but I didn’t make a big deal of it because if you’re young and you sing Isolde and Turandot, they just keep asking you sing bigger, heavier stuff, you know, Brünnhilde and so on. If you sing Turandot they won’t ask you for Tosca, which I’d very much like to sing. Also Minnie, in La fanciulla del West.

What about modern music? Do you sing in English? Or Swedish?
I haven’t sung in English. We did a Swedish opera recently, I think it was composed in the 1990s, about Queen Christina of Sweden. It was two acts; in the first act she was a child, it was about how she was treated, and then I played her in the second act, when she was older, and I got to play a mad scene. That was great, to sing in Swedish when it was the original language. You know, I’m not a friend of singing Marriage of Figaro in Swedish.

Persson in Act One

Getting back to Isolde, how do you pace yourself, when you have to sing one of the most challenging and exhausting roles ever written?
I don’t have any crazy rituals that I have to do. I usually take a long walk in the morning, eat my breakfast, maybe go to the grocery store, just try and relax. I start to stretch my body a little about three hours before the performance, as you would when you’re going for a really long run. That’s when you begin feeling what’s going on with the body, what kind of evening it will be. At the theater, I tend to talk to people backstage, share funny stories, you know—in my mind I’m already in the performance. Talking to people is a way of not getting nervous, part of my concentration, actually.

For Isolde, the opening scene is the real warmup. It’s a crazy beginning, she uses the whole vocal register in her first couple of pages. That’s also the moment when you understand how you’ll have to treat your voice tonight. And it just builds from there. All Isoldes say the same thing: you can’t really warm up. If you want to sing the opening perfectly [her tremendous curse on the ship] you’d have to warm up for thirty minutes. But it’s the whole evening that counts, and you’ll need all that voice later on. The nice thing about such a long part is that if you aren’t perfect in the opening, you can make up for it later. I think the beginning of Isolde is the hardest opening in all of opera. Brünnhilde makes a well-known entrance in Act Two of Die Walküre [the “Hojotoho”], but it’s also the only thing that everybody’s expecting from that singer. With Isolde, the thing that people know is the end, the “Liebestod,” so that’s what you have to build to.

Persson in Act Two

How does Isolde change over the course of the opera?
She goes through a whole life in one evening. I see Isolde at the beginning as a young, angry girl. She has to grow so much, go so far with herself, that in the end there’s no problem for her to die for love. When the “Liebestod” comes, it’s not a hard thing for Isolde to go into Tristan’s world, in fact it’s the most normal thing for her to do. I think she’s really very very happy in the end, the first time she’s calm and totally relaxed about everything: finally we’re here. It’s not in life, it’s in death, but the love is bigger, so it doesn’t matter where they are.

Persson in Act Three

How’s this production been different for you from others you’ve done?
The biggest difference is how the potion works, that they drink the death-potion in Act One. I’ve been thinking a great deal about it, and in a funny way it’s helped me understand what we were doing in other productions. I didn’t understand at the time, but that’s a little bit how we were playing it.

I’ve had good luck in doing productions that are true to the words. If a production is true to the story, I must say, that’s when the opera becomes beautiful for me. The opera was meant to be beautiful.

What’s been your favorite Seattle adventure so far?
When I’m not at work I’ve spent a lot of time at Greenlake. I like to run, and I love going there. My daughter has been here with me, and Woodland Park Zoo—she wanted to go to the zoo again and again. And the Children’s Museum, what a wonderful place. And how she enjoyed the Duck Tour! She just loved it, screaming and dancing along! Seattle is a wonderful place for parents and children. I would like to be a mom here.

Photos by Rozarii Lynch

Tristan’s Symbols: DAY

One of the things that makes Tristan und Isolde an unusually complicated opera to light is how Wagner uses "Day" and "Night" as symbols. These normal astronomical concepts take on enormous additional significance; in this opera Night and Day are dualistic worlds tugging at the souls of the lovers in an endless, cosmic, Manichean struggle; the music is a mandala representation of the balance of Night and Day. They represent life and death (Day is life, Night is death), and much more; Day is conscious, Night unconscious; Day is male/king/warrior, Night is female/queen/love-goddess, Day is unpleasant/undesirable, Night is pleasant/desirable, etc. The typically nineteenth-century black-and-white binary opposition between these two forces makes a strong jumping-off point for a discussion of what Tristan und Isolde is really all about.

It’s obviously a love story; and, as for Night and Day, perhaps most importantly Day is an obstacle to love. As such, Wagner gives it a flexible little four-note motif, often called the “Day” motif:


…which we hear a thousand times over the course of the opera. These four notes open Act Two, played prominently by the full orchesta:

Curiously, Wagner used this musical figure over and over again, throughout his career, whenever there’s an obstacle to true love. In Lohengrin, these four notes are the core of the “Forbidden Question” motif, the bizarre demand Lohengrin makes of Elsa which dooms their relationship even before it begins. In Die Walküre, Fricka uses this motif, furiously, as she objects to the love between Siegmund and Sieglinde (and between Wotan and any number of his sexual partners). In Götterdämmerung, this motif characterizes the pretty Gutrune--who becomes an obstacle between those destined true lovers Siegfried and Brünnhilde. The motif is so simple--really, more of a musical tic than a legitimate motif--that Wagner can use it for all these different characters in all these different operas and make it sound appropriate in each case.

The afterglow of Brangäne singing her Watch-Song pursues Clifton Forbis as Tristan and Annalena Persson as Isolde in their Liebesnacht (Rozarii Lynch, photo)

In Tristan, this motif is given the job of waving the proud flag of glorious Day. Night may be preferable to Day, for Tristan and Isolde, but Day has to have some kind of appeal. In Acts One and Two of Tristan, Day’s appeal is that of glory, honor, nobility, being a straightforward good guy, a knight in shining armor. You hear the Day motif, in this mode, turn into something more sinister as Wagner sequences it down and down and down, in a wonderful expository passage (unfortunately often cut, as it is in Seattle Opera’s current production, because of the inhuman demands it makes of the performers) known as the “Day and Night” discussion. Here Tristan explains how Day forced him to return to Ireland to win Isolde for Marke:

Was mir so rühmlich schien und hehr,
das rühmt' ich hell vor allem Heer;
vor allem Volke pries ich laut
der Erde schönste Königsbraut.
Dem Neid, den mir der Tag erweckt';
dem Eifer, den mein Glücke schreckt';
der Mißgunst, die mir Ehren
und Ruhm begann zu schweren:
denen bot ich Trotz,
und treu beschloß,
um Ehr' und Ruhm zu wahren,
nach Irland ich zu fahren.

You seemed to me so noble,
so worthy of fame,
I praised you loudly before all Cornwall.
I sang the praises of the earth’s
fairest bride before all Marke’s people.
Day aroused envy of me;
my good fortune frightened people into jealousy.
Ill-will began to burden my own honor.
In order to defy it and protect honor and fame,
I promised to go to Ireland
and win you for Marke.

Annalena Persson as Isolde tries to summon Tristan out of stone in Act Two (Rozarii Lynch, photo)

The excited violins and cheering trumpets of that passage are even more intense, a musical portrait of a wild crowd cheering a celebrity, when Isolde uses the Day motif to describe the same episode of the story, in her Act One narrative:

In Act Three, however, Day’s hateful, burning, scorching glare becomes a deadly all-seeing eye which Tristan must escape, fleeing to a world where there is no light, no sight, only sound: “Do I hear the light?”

A CHAT WITH CLIFTON FORBIS

I got a chance to check in with our extraordinary Tristan, Clifton Forbis, whose made his Seattle Opera debut as Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca in 2001. Left, Forbis's memorable entrance in Act II of Tristan, with Annalena Persson as Isolde.

Clifton, your performance the other day was out of this world. I thought, at one point in Act Three, you were about to blast a hole in the roof of the theater with your voice. How do you pace yourself so that you can give it so much voice and energy, that late at night?
I don’t really believe in pacing. On a Tristan performance day, I wake up when I wake up, I eat whatever I want. If you go around treating yourself as fragile, you’ll become fragile. You can’t be afraid of doing this, you have to look forward to it; you want to sing it. That’s the key to Tristan: don’t try to pace yourself, if you pace yourself, you know, hold back here so you can give more there, you’re not in the music. If you’re not in the music, you’re not doing it. The idea is, you’ve already worked out the technical aspect of what you’re singing, back in the practice room, with your teacher, so when you’re onstage you don’t think about all that stuff. All you think about is Tristan, his experience, his emotions. You can’t be worried, or hesitant, you just have to be there. The Germans have a great word for it: dasein, to be there.


The one thing I’ll say, though, is, you do need the recovery time. If I sing Tristan, I’m pretty tired the next day. Three days is ideal.

You’ve done this role a lot. Does it get easier?
Yes, I’ve sung it over 70 times. But no, it doesn’t get any easier. I guess you do get a little more self-confident…the first time out, maybe there’s a little trepidation, but if you can just get your mind out of the way, your body will know what to do. It’s like if you’re pitching a ball game: you can psyche yourself out by overthinking. Don’t think, just throw. You don’t think, “What if he hits it?”, you just think of the ball going in the catcher’s mitt.



You’ve sung Tristan, Siegmund and Parsifal, but not Tannhäuser or Siegfried. Are some Wagner tenor parts better-suited to your voice than others? Or does it have more to do with the characters?
It’s a combination of both. There’s a fach system in Wagner, just like there is in Italian rep. Some of the Wagner tenor parts are higher, some are lower, some are for heavier voices, like mine. My three parts are written differently than Walther, in Meistersinger, or Siegfried. And, truth to tell, some of those characters don’t interest me as much. I like singing Tristan because there’s so much insecurity; he’s so much at sea. If you’re gonna spend five and a half or six hours singing a role, you’d better be interested in the character. Honestly. It would be a disservice to the audience for me to do a role like that, because I wouldn’t be into it one hundred percent. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Tristan inspires a lot of devotion from the important people in his life. What interests you the most about his relationships?
Tristan’s relationship with Marke, with all its complexities...it’s like the center of the wheel, and the spokes are all radiating outwards from there. The paternal aspect of that relationship is so important. That’s why Tristan fights so hard on behalf of Marke...every son wants their father to be proud. Not having had a father, Tristan makes Marke play that role. And he betrays this man, who is his uncle-father-king-friend, not because he wants to, the betrayal is involuntary, he can’t control it, can’t even explain it. When Marke asks him, it’s beyond comprehension, there’s no way for Tristan to articulate what has occurred. The only way Marke could ever understand would be for him to experience it himself.

Clifton Forbis in rehearsal with Stephen Milling as Marke

But I think, up to the point where the opera begins, the one thing Tristan knows is honor, nobility, fulfillment of duty; he’s an extremely upright person, and the others are drawn to him because of it. That’s how he gets along in this world. After Marke, Kurwenal is the most important person in his life: he’s probably been Tristan’s weapons trainer, his tutor, his coach, his teacher, they’ve fought side by side. And I think Kurwenal’s affection for Tristan is fatherly, it’s not so much the teacher/mentor and more "the son I never had". Whereas Tristan’s affection for Kurwenal is more out of duty, honor, respect, and trust.

Like many Wagner characters, Tristan suffers a great deal and tells us about his suffering in some detail. How do you prevent him from coming across as a self-pitying whiner?
I think the important part is heroism. You play the character as moving his life onward, in spite of all his pain and agony, his sehnen [unfullfilled, unfulfillable desire] and suffering and all that. If you don’t play the self-pity, he’ll be truly heroic. That’s the Viking way!

Clifton Forbis and Annalena Persson at the end of Act One

What’s it like working with a stage director (Peter Kazaras) who has sung tenor roles in Wagner operas before?
I haven’t worked with Peter before this summer, but it’s been great. He knows, he’s been there. He knows what not to ask for!

Photos by Rozarii Lynch

My Tryst with TRISTAN UND ISOLDE

Today's post is from Tony Kay. Although Tony has been Seattle Opera's Ticket Office Supervisor since 2004, he's been working with and attending Seattle Opera since Ben Heppner starred as Lohengrin in 1994.

"There's really no way to mince words: The love duet in the second act of Tristan und Isolde makes me swoon. This coming from a guy who embraces punk rock and Puccini with equal fervor.

I first drank of Wagner's greatness with a viewing of Seattle Opera's wonderfully outside-the-box Rochaix/Israel production of the Ring in 1995. Incredible as the Ring was, though, it was this company’s production of Tristan und Isolde in 1998 that really opened my eyes--and passions--to the composer's genius.

There's no arguing the virtuosity of Wagner's score throughout Tristan--as conductor Asher Fisch eloquently states in his video posted HERE, every classical composer who followed Wagner drew from his well of influence--but amidst all of the analysis Wagner's music receives, one key element garners somewhat less attention: the immensely heated romanticism of it. With all due respect to the Italian greats, for me Wagner's second-act duet is the purest sustained representation of mounting seduction and shared attraction that you'll ever hear, and I was blessed to hear two truly great Wagnerian singers--Ben Heppner and Jane Eaglen as Tristan and Isolde, respectively--bringing those nuances to life.

The end of Act One of Seattle Opera's 1998 Tristan und Isolde

Wagner's score during the duet ebbs, flows, retreats, and builds; and the singers’ voices match those sonic caresses and syncopations like lovers’ attentions. It’s so boldly romantic--erotic, even--that it could make you blush if you think about it too hard. Part of the allure lies in context: the forbidden thrill of this secret love being acknowledged. But beyond that, there’s the sheer sensory experience provided by the marriage of instrumentation, voice, and visuals: That second act marks the first intense and open expression of desire between these characters, as they articulate an ardor whose gravitational pull can’t be denied. What living, breathing human can’t relate to this feeling at some point in their lives?

From Act Two of Seattle Opera's 1998 Tristan und Isolde

The ’98 Tristan aroused some controversy with its unusual blend of stark post-modernism and semi-period dress, but I can’t comprehend anyone faulting the visual presentation of the lovers’ duet that evening. It took place on a nearly bare stage, with Heppner and Eaglen singing beneath a lit arch and Mimi Jordan Sherin’s brilliant lighting subtly cueing daylight’s gradual slide into twilight, then into deep night, then back to the dawn. Both singers barely moved; director Francesca Zambello’s decision to have them nearly stationary much of the time allowed the audience to connect directly, emotionally, with the music and lighting in a way that would’ve been inhibited by a busier staging.

From Act Three of Seattle Opera's 1998 Tristan und Isolde

I’ve seen a lot of opera in the last twelve years. But between the subliminal use of the lighting and the multiple dovetails, detours, and flashes of magic conveyed by the music and singing, the 1998 Tristan und Isolde second-act duet still marks the headiest time I’d ever had at an opera--truly, magnificently hypnotic in its impact."

The Liebesnacht from Seattle Opera's 1998 Tristan und Isolde

Tony Kay
Ticket Office Supervisor

Photos of Seattle Opera's 1998 Tristan und Isolde by Gary Smith

A CHAT WITH JUSTIN EMERICH

Wagner calls for a wooden trumpet in Act Three of Tristan und Isolde, the holztrompete. Trumpeter Justin Emerich plays this instrument, which was loaned to Seattle Opera by the Joe and Joella Utley Brass Instrument Collection at the National Music Museum, The University of South Dakota, Vermillion SD. Justin stopped for a photo (and a brief chat) on his way to the pit the other day.

You can hear a brief clip of Justin playing the wooden trumpet here:

Have you ever played a wooden trumpet before? What instruments do you play other than trumpet?
No, this is my first time with the wooden trumpet. I play lots of different kinds of trumpet: piccolo trumpet, flugelhorn, cornet, bugle; and I did once play French horn in a performance, where we all switched instruments. French horn and trumpet aren’t so different you can’t figure it out. The wooden trumpet reminds me of playing the natural trumpet or Baroque trumpet, this instrument with holes instead of valves.

What’s the trickiest part about your solo in Tristan und Isolde?
One of the things that’s interesting is that, since I’m offstage, where I’m supposed to be this Shepherd playing on a pipe, I have to aim the pitch a little high—things tend to go flat over the extra distance, it’s a sort of Doppler effect. With symphonies we do the same thing when we play offstage in Mahler 3 or The Pines of Rome. And, obviously, you have to play much louder when you’re backstage…I’m trying to play as loud as I can, pointing the bell out through some curtains.

Have you played Wagner before?At Seattle Opera I’ve played the Ring in ’05 and ’09, plus Flying Dutchman in ’07. Plus the two International Wagner Competitions [in ’06 and ’08], doesn’t that count? I played with the Metropolitan Opera when I lived in New York, but no Wagner…although we did play Richard Strauss, Die Frau ohne Schatten. That was crazy! It was my first time in the pit with that great orchestra, I was so jazzed up.

The Seattle Opera orchestra pit at a Tristan rehearsal. Justin, wearing a white shirt, sits in front of the double basses.

Speaking of jazz, you’ve played classical and jazz, you’ve played with the Canadian Brass…what’s your favorite kind of music to play? I used to play a lot more jazz than I do now. But I do know how to improv, I did quite a lot of it. Coming out of high school I wanted to be a jazz musician. But my teacher convinced me to keep studying: “You’re going to be a classical musician!” Eventually I fell in love with the repertoire, and put jazz on the back burner. Currently I play in a group called Burning River Brass, out of Cleveland, 11 players, we’re more of a standard concert group. Sometimes I try to talk them into doing one jazz chart as an encore, so I can play some high notes!

Burning River Brass, Justin Emerich second in the front row.

You’ve lived in Florida, Michigan, Seattle…who is more itinerant, a singer or an instrumentalist? I’m not a full-time member of the Seattle Symphony, and I’m lucky to have the freedom to can travel a lot. Just this year so far I’ve played in San Francisco and as guest principal with orchestras in Seoul, South Korea, as well as Jacksonville, Florida…not to mention touring with my brass groups, Proteus and Burning River. Although as I get older, I may need to scale that back a bit.

Where would you like to settle down? I love Seattle, love being here on the west coast. But I grew up in California, my family is still there, and my dream orchestra since I was a kid is San Francisco. It’s a great orchestra, it’s a wonderful hall…I guess that’s always been at the back of my mind.

Photos by Rozarii Lynch and Burning River Brass

Battle Ready

At Seattle Opera's Annual Meeting on August 3, 2010, Executive Director Kelly Tweeddale addressed the state of one of Seattle's leading cultural organizations in the wake of an economic crisis that has put many non-profit organizations out of business and seriously threatens many more. But economics isn't the only enemy. We share excerpts from Kelly's speech here in honor of all the people who dedicate their lives to mission-driven organizations and continue to envision a future that is as bright as the fight we lend to the cause.

"For those of you that have attended one of Seattle Opera’s annual meetings before, this is the point when I give you an insider look of what it’s like to manage an almost $30 million company; an enterprise that any MBA graduate or for-profit executive will tell you is structured to fail. They don’t teach how to run a company whose commodity is passion. And whose currency is belief. Those are usually not the top two elements that financial analysts look for in a successful business plan.

This past year my insider look has none of the romance, wistfulness or wit that I may have brought to you in the past. At Seattle Opera we have been at battle. We have been at war with multiple enemies. There have been very real casualties. And it isn’t over. This past season, ranks have closed to protect the art of this company, to protect the artistic vision that General Director Speight Jenkins has dedicated a good portion of his life to. There are now many enemies, some such as mediocrity, predictability, and indifference, which we will never allow to penetrate our front lines. But there are three enemies that are gaining ground, and they threaten who we are and what we do:

Enemy number one: a precarious economy. Opera is a perilous economic art form regardless, but today we are constantly reminded that doubt supersedes conviction; that change is constant and even though we were all taught how to count at the tender age of three, we now shouldn’t count on anything. Great opera requires commitments and decisions three to five years in advance. Schlock opera is what you throw together at the last minute when you finally decide the sky isn’t falling. The best defense against that type of opera is careful planning and earning the commitment and conviction of our audience and donors. For opera to survive, we, you, and the community need to believe that opera is a necessity, not a frill. We need to know we are in this for the long term, not just surviving the short-term skirmishes.

Enemy number two: obsolescence. A year ago Seattle had two major newspapers, now we barely have one. There now exists generations of music lovers that may never discover us, because our business is geared to producing live performances. For many, live experiences are now an integrated trajectory of musical exploration that is taking place not only on the stage, but in the digital space. The space we call the internet, the mobile phone networks and devices such as the iPad and Kindle, are transforming how people are discovering their world and defining their interests. Seattle Opera has huge obstacles standing in the way of participating in these spaces and relating to the next generation of audiences; obstacles such as collective bargaining agreements that prevent the digital release of no more than 3 minutes of content, the inability to use performance content as a teaching tool in the classroom, outdated rules that make DVDs, CDs, or downloadable product extraordinarily expensive to produce. For example, if we were to produce a DVD of our current Ring Cycle it would have to retail at over $2000 a piece and sell at the top of the classical Billboard charts to have even a remote chance of breaking even. That assumes that the many participants (orchestra, singers, creative team) in the production would give permission to move ahead in such an endeavor. At this time the ability to decide on Seattle Opera’s digital destiny is not in its hands. Compare that with the entertainment industry that is flooding the market with both free and paid experiences that not only enhance the live experience, but is capturing the hearts and minds of our future audience. I know, I’m a mother of a teenager who has been inundated with live opera performances since the age of 4, but we don’t exist in her iPod, on her computer, or what she shares with her friends. On her digital odometer, we are a zero.

Enemy number three: the emergence of a risk-averse approach to creativity. Art, especially opera, is only created by taking risks. And because opera is a collaborative art form, it has to be a collective risk. Art is at its best when it is provocative, inquiry-centered, and dares one to explore his or her world and be exposed to alternative perspectives. In an effort to safeguard against the unknown, i.e. the economy, we also risk putting forth the biggest casualty of this battle: Creativity. Once creativity succumbs to convention, we have lost the war.

Whether we are the Grail knights of Parsifal, protecting the Holy Grail we call opera, or a staff of starry-eyed performing arts devotees, what I can say is this year has been fought by an amazing army of sure-footed and fierce warriors. So here's to the staff dedicated to the mission of education that allow us to transform young people’s lives; the marketing personnel that continue to attract audiences despite pundits that predict slippage in double-digit percentages; the communication crusaders that explore new outreach methods and technologies; finance staff and CFOs that keep the bills paid, cash in the bank and expertly manage to secure lines of credit even in these times when banks are not lending; and production and technical teams that continue to pull off their magic on the stage and in our case, not sacrificing ambition even while coming in under budget and continuing to exceed expectations. Our development staff and trustees made sure that Seattle Opera was at the forefront of our supporters’ minds, even during these difficult times; and let us not forget the human resource directors who keep us in good humor, help us embrace change and remind us what it takes to create a great place to work, battle or no battle. And of course, Seattle Opera only flourishes thanks to the talented musicians, singers, craftspeople and crews that make sure what we do soars above mediocrity.

So, for Seattle Opera we survived this year intact. How did we do it? An old proverb says: “He who is well prepared has half won the battle.” We are fortunate that our relationships with our many unions helped us to make quick adjustments, our staff sacrificed earning potential and took on more work. And we were prepared with no accumulated deficit, and a plan. We cut expenses, protected the art, and believed that we would succeed. Creativity will not be a casualty of this war.

No battle is won without battle scars. We said goodbye to colleagues as we trimmed our operations. We postponed projects that this aspiring, dedicated company has every right to achieve. And we tuned out the many voices that predicted failure at every turn. Resourcefulness is a great balm for uncertainty. But we also have the future. As we begin this new season, I can’t help but think of the quote by Winston Churchill, as he neared the end of World War II, “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.” All I can say is that if this past season is any bellwether for Seattle Opera, opportunities abound."

-Kelly Tweeddale
Executive Director, Seattle Opera
August 3, 2010
Photo by Rozarii Lynch

McCaw Hall Announces Backstage Tours

McCaw Hall just announced the launch of a new program: free tours, to provide the public an opportunity to explore one of the most outstanding performance venues in the nation. The tours are offered the third Tuesday of each month beginning on Aug. 17 and continuing on Sept. 21, Oct. 19, Nov. 16, and into the new year (no Dec. tour), noon to 1 p.m.

Tours will bring visitors through the auditoriums, lobbies and amenity spaces that contribute to the ambiance and grandeur of the facility and give them a glimpse of the backstage - and the state-of-the-art production technology of the Hall. The tours will highlight the extensive art collection housed in the building, review the dynamic history of the Hall and point out the many environmentally sustainable design features of this world-class venue.

Completed in 2003, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall is the third reincarnation of a performance hall on the site whose life began in 1928 as Seattle"s first civic auditorium. The building was fully renovated for the 1962 Seattle World"s Fair. McCaw Hall is home to the Pacific Northwest Ballet and Seattle Opera, who perform in the 2,900-seat Susan Brotman Auditorium. Seattle International Film Festival makes use of the smaller Nesholm Family Hall for its year-round film series. Seattle Center operates and maintains the building.

McCaw Hall administrative staff lead the monthly tours, They require advanced sign-up, and are subject to change based on event schedules. The sign-up deadline is at noon on the previous Friday. The tour size is limited to 25 people on a first come-first served basis. To register, call the McCaw Hall administrative office at 206 733-9725. To learn more about other free public offerings at Seattle Center, visit
www.seattlecenter.com.

Photo by Rozarii Lynch

Act Two Costumes: the Magic of Ombré

Many commenters on our Tristan und Isolde production have noticed how, in his costume design, Robert Israel has leeched away the color from Isolde's vibrant red dress in Act One, over the course of the opera, so that she and Tristan are both in white by the end of the opera, when they enter the world of night.

In Act One, Isolde wears red.

In Act Two, she is fading to white.

And in Act Three, there's only a little bit of red left.

Lia Nouwen (above), Crafts Supervisor at Seattle Opera's Costume Shop, explains how she used an effect called "ombré" for the subtle gradient that distinguishes Tristan's and Isolde's Act Two Costumes. "In ombré, the dying is graded so that it’s very, very dark in this example at the bottom of the dress and then slowly and gradually fades away into white. It's a very challenging process, not necessarily to do it, but to do it cleanly and smoothly and well. In this instance it’s a bright red dye and a screaming red dye and if you get one spot in the wrong place, if you splash even a little bit, it’ll ruin the effect. So that’s pretty stressful."

All photos by Rozarii Lynch.

CLIFTON FORBIS Indisposed; ADAM KLEIN To Sing Tonight's Performance; KING FM Broadcast Rescheduled

8/7/2010

Clifton Forbis is indisposed and will not be singing the role of Tristan in tonight's performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

We are pleased to announce that tenor Adam Klein, left, will be making his Seattle Opera debut tonight instead.

Mr. Klein has sung several roles with the Metropolitan Opera, including the Witch in Hänsel und Gretel, Števa in Jenůfa, Chekalinsky in Pique Dame, Chevalier in Dialogues des Carmélites, and Elemer in Arabella. His repertoire includes Don José in Carmen, Quint in The Turn of the Screw, Sam in Susannah, the title role in Gounod's Faust, Roméo in Roméo et Juliette, Canio in Pagliacci, the title role in Werther, Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, the title role in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Des Grieux in Manon Lescaut, Rodolfo in La bohème, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Luigi in Il tabarro, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos, Narraboth and Herod in Salome, Polo in Tan Dun's Marco Polo, the title role in Don Carlo, the title role in Otello, Duca in Rigoletto, Erik in Der Fliegende Holländer, and Judge Danforth in Robert Ward's Crucible. He recently performed Sly in Pascal Dusapin’s opera, Faustus, The Last Night, at the Spoleto Festival USA. More information about Mr. Klein is available at his website.

The scheduled broadcast of the opera, on Classic KING FM 98.1 and www.king.org, will be delayed two weeks. The performance of August 21, beginning at 6:30 pm PST, will be broadcast on KING. Clifton Forbis is scheduled to sing that performance.

Tristan's Symbols: DEATH

Ordinarily, in real life on planet earth--and in the world of drama (even tragedy)--death is to be avoided. One of the things that was (and still is, really) controversial about Tristan und Isolde is that this most basic of rules gets reversed: in Tristan death is a comfort, a friend, the goal of the journey, and it’s life that’s the problem. Acts One and Two of this opera conclude with suicide attempts, and Act Three ends when Tristan and Isolde both finally do die.

We don’t hear the “Death” motif very often in Tristan und Isolde, but it makes a big impression when we do hear it. It’s basically two strongly articulated, surprisingly distant chords, with a jagged, octave-leaping melody outlining the words “Todgeweihtes Haupt, Todgeweihtes Herz” (Head consecrated to death, heart consecrated to death):

The impressive finality of that motif returns when Isolde takes out the “Death” potion from the kit full of medical supplies her mother packed for her:

Für Weh und Wunden gab sie Balsam,
für böse Gifte Gegengift.
Für tiefstes Weh, für höchstes Leid
gab sie den Todestrank.
Der Tod nun sag ihr Dank!

For woe and wounds, she gave me balm,
for deadly poison, antidotes.
For the deepest woe, for the greatest suffering
she gave me the Death Potion.
Let death now be her thanks!

Annalena Persson as Isolde and Margaret Jane Wray as Brangäne

And, of course, the full orchestra blares out the death motif when Tristan expires in Isolde’s arms toward the end of Act Three. His final line is the craziest, and most interesting, thing he sings in his entire mad scene, and then the death motif silences him:

Wie, hör' ich das Licht?
Die Leuchte, ha!
Die Leuchte verlischt!
Zu ihr, zu ihr!

How’s that, do I hear the light?
The glow, ah!
The gleam quenched!
To her, to her!

Clifton Forbis as Tristan in Act Three

But as Isolde dies, a few minutes later, we hear the much gentler, sexually irresistible music of the "Liebestod." Perhaps, unlike Tristan, she wasn’t consecrated to death head and heart--but rather chose death, to be with him. Some have called her Liebestod a perverse riff on the old deus ex machina ending, in which God interferes to give a story a happy ending. Is Isolde’s love-death a happy ending for a world without God?

The final image in the current production.

Top image by David Kreitzer for Seattle Opera's 1981 production of Tristan und Isolde. All photos by Rozarii Lynch.

Down Memory Lane with TRISTAN UND ISOLDE

Today's post is by ERNESTO ALORDA, Seattle Opera's Community and Artist Relations Manager. A beloved face around Seattle Opera, Ernesto has been involved with the company in one capacity or another for over thirty years.

"My first experience with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was in January of 1961 at the old Met. In the cast were Nilsson, Dalis, Vinay, Cassel and Hines. Karl Böhm, who was scheduled to conduct the production, had cancelled a few days before rehearsals began due to an eye operation. Joseph Rosenstock conducted all the performances that season. The 1961 cast was almost identical to the 1959 cast, when Birgit Nilsson made her historic debut at the Met. The only cast changes in the 1961 production were the role of Tristan taken this time by the Chilean tenor Ramón Vinay instead of Karl Liebl, and Rosenstock for the missing Böhm."

"Two years later, in February of 1963, the Met brought back the same cast--this time with Solti in the pit. In those days I was able to attend as many performances as I possibly could because of my “special status” as a regular standee, so I managed to see it several times. In 1966, I spent two weeks at the Bayreuth Festival and finally I was able to experience Böhm (left, Ernesto Alorda photo) conduct Tristan. The cast this time was Nilsson, Ludwig, Windgassen, Wächter and Talvela, a performance that is still very fresh in my mind."


Birgit Nilsson at Bayreuth (Ernesto Alorda photo)

"Over the last 40 years of seeing Tristan productions from Berlin and Dresden to San Francisco and New York, the two productions that linger in my mind are the incredibly beautiful Schneider-Siemssen production in 1971 at the new Met with Nilsson, Dalis, Thomas, Dooley and Tozzi with Leinsdorf conducting. It was total magic! As was the Seattle Opera 1998 production, conducted by the late Armin Jordan, the most sensual and transparent reading of the opera I have heard."

Ernesto Alorda
Community and Artists Relations Manager

A Chat With JASON COLLINS

Today we get to chat with Tristan und Isolde's villain, Melot (boo! hiss!), sung by tenor Jason Collins. Jason first sang on our stage as a contestant in our first International Wagner Competition, in 2006, and has returned for the Steersman in Flying Dutchman (2007), the second IWC (2008), and Froh in the Ring (2009).

Welcome back to Seattle! You’ve been here now five summers in a row. It must be getting to feel a bit like home...or at least summer camp.
It is more like my "Opera Home". I try and stay in the same area each time and just love Seattle summers and Seattle Opera. My favorite place to work is right here! I am never disappointed. Not to mention, I usually get to work with a lot of the same friends. As the Wagner world is quite small.

Jason Collins as the Steersman in Seattle Opera's 2007 Flying Dutchman.

You play the bad guy in Tristan und Isolde, Melot. But nothing is black-and-white in Wagner, and maybe Melot has a valid point of view. Does he cause the tragedy of this opera?
Certainly nothing is black and white in this production. I like very much what Peter has done. For this particular production, I think Melot is offering Tristan a solution. When he encounters him, he's certainly under a spell he can not escape from. Clifton, Peter and I have had a few nice conversations about this "angle". I think its much more interesting than just "Bad Guy".

Jason Collins as Melot looks in horror at the sword upon which Tristan (lying on table) has impaled himself, while Stephen Milling as King Marke tries to comprehend the tragedy that ends Act Two.

You have a very brief role in Tristan, but when you’re onstage it must be enormously intense. How do you pace yourself, and/or focus, to play this part?
In a way, I find it more difficult. There is no time to warm up to the character on stage. So it all has to be done in the dressing room. With only a few lines it takes a great deal of focus and being part of the action that is going on around you. Other wise, you just become "that guy".

What’s it like working with a stage director, Peter Kazaras, who has also been a Wagner tenor?
I have known Peter for years and it is MOST REWARDING to collaborate with him. Simply put, he gets it. He knows what it is like to get this kind of project on its feet from ALL angles. He is a BLESSING!
In last summer's Ring, Jason Collins sang Froh, with Gordon Hawkins as his brother Donner.

Where are you these days when you aren’t in Seattle? And what are you singing when you aren’t singing Wagner?
This past year has been wonderful, as will the next. I have been singing a lot of Mozart (Idomeneo) in Bologna and the regions around that. Kat'a Kabanova with Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Messiah at the Kennedy Center. Next season is full of a lot of new work including my first Parsifal and Medea. But it is WONDERFUL to be back home here in Seattle.

All photos by Rozarii Lynch.

Tristan's Symbols: THE WOUND

Another potent symbol in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is the wound, die Wunde. Wounds are always big deals in Arthurian legends; Wagner returned to the image of the wounded, languishing hero who magically can neither recover his health nor die for his final opera, Parsifal, where Amfortas (Wagner once said) “experiences the agony of Tristan inconceivably intensified.” For Wagner himself, who suffered from serious health disorders his entire life, a character languishing in ill health was both a real-life experience he knew all too well and a metaphor for the human condition in our alienated modern age.


In Seattle Opera's 2003 Parsifal, also designed by Robert Israel, Chris Ventris as Parsifal heals Greer Grimsley as Amfortas's wound by touching it with the spear that caused the wound originally.

In the oldest versions of the Grail legend, the Fisher King, who is sick and dying, rules over the Waste Land, a dying kingdom in desperate need of rejuvenation. T. S. Eliot knew this when he quoted Tristan’s shepherd in his great poem about modern alienation, “The Waste Land”: Öd und leer das Meer, “Void and vast, the sea.” This powerful line is how the Shepherd answers his own question (when Kurwenal refuses to answer), “What’s wrong with Tristan?”

If you study the plot of Tristan carefully, you’ll find that Tristan gets wounded twice: first by Morold, then by Melot. Morold, aka Mr. Not-Appearing-In-This-Opera, was (in the backstory) an Irish giant and Isolde’s fiancé. (Below, Graham Mullins as Morold comes on to Sophia Myles as Isolde in the 2006 film based on the old legend.) Morold used to come to Cornwall to push King Marke around, and when Tristan was finally old enough to stand up to him he fought Morold, chopped off his head, and sent it back to Ireland, with a piece of his own sword that had chipped off still lodged in it.

But Tristan was wounded in his fight with Morold (right, from the same 2006 film, Sophia Myles as Isolde tends James Franco as Tristan). In Wagner's version, since Isolde was famed as a healer, Tristan disguised himself (taking the name “Tantris”) and got her to heal his wound--and she only figured out who he really was when she took the sword fragment out of Morold’s head and noticed how perfectly it fit in the notch in her patient Tantris’s sword.

Wagner uses a melody that droops downwards, chromatically (a traditional signifier, in Western music, for death) in Act One whenever they’re talking about this “Morold” wound.

Here it is, for instance, when she tells this story to Brangäne, beginning her famous first act narrative:

Or, later in Act One, when she’s reminding Tristan of what he did to her, and she to him:

But Tristan gets wounded again, at the end of Act Two, when he suicidally throws himself on Melot’s sword. Melot (like Morold, an important character in the backstory but less so onstage) was Tristan’s closest friend; at this point he has betrayed the adulterous lovers to King Marke. Tristan challenges him, gets himself wounded a second time, and then spends the final act of the opera in agony because of the “Melot” wound, raving in delirium. He still uses the drooping chromatic motif from Act One to refer to the Morold wound:

Greer Grimsley as Kurwenal cares for the wounded, delirious Clifton Forbis as Tristan in Seattle Opera's current production (Rozarii Lynch photo).

The text Tristan sings here at this point is as confused and confusing as any mad scene in opera:

Sterbend lag ich stumm im Kahn,
der Wunde Gift dem Herzen nah:
Sehnsucht klagend klang die Weise;
den Segel blähte der Wind
hin zu Irlands Kind.
Die Wunde, die sie heilend schloß,
riß mit dem Schwert sie wieder los.
das Schwert dann aber ließ sie sinken;
den Gifttrank gab sie mir zu trinken:
wie ich da hoffte ganz zu genesen,
da ward der sehrendste Zauber erlesen:
daß nie ich sollte sterben,
mich ew'ger Qual vererben!

When I lay dying in the skiff,
the wound’s poison near my heart,
the [English horn] melody sounded its yearning lament.
Wind filled the sail
and pushed me toward Ireland’s maid.
With my sword she opened
the wound she had healed.
But the sword—she let it fall.
She gave me the death potion to drink.
I hoped to be healed forever, but then
the most excruciating magic was chosen:
that I should never die,
that eternal torment should be mine!

He gets crazier and crazier as the scene continues, until at the end, when Isolde crosses the sea to be with him, the music goes into the (for 1858!) lunatic time signature of 5/4, and Tristan rips the bandage off his “Melot” wound so he can bleed to death as he sings:

Mit blutender Wunde
bekämpft' ich einst Morolden,
mit blutender Wunde
erjag' ich mir heut Isolden!
Heia, mein Blut! Lustig nun fließe!
Die mir die Wunde auf ewig schließe
sie naht wie ein Held,
sie naht mir zum Heil!
Vergeh' die Welt
meiner jauchzenden Eil'!

Bloody with wounds
once I battled Morold;
bloody with wounds
today I capture Isolde!
Hey, my blood! Flow now, be free!
She closes my wounds forever--
She comes as the hero,
she comes to heal me!
Let the world dissolve
as I rush toward her!

Clifton Forbis as Tristan rips off his bandage (Rozarii Lynch photo).

When it’s her turn, a few minutes later, Isolde will die a very different death.