Jason Slayden's WERTHER Photos

Tomorrow night is our final performance of Werther this fall. Before we enjoy this remarkable production for the last time, here's a glance back at this fall's tour, brought to us by Young Artist--and confirmed shutterbug--Jason Slayden. You're likely to find Slayden snapping cameras both offstage and on, where he shares the challenging title role with Andrew Stenson. In this production, Werther (Slayden, above, photo by Bill Mohn) is a photographer who uses his camera to get closer to the unapproachable Charlotte.

Young Artists Sarah Larsen, Amanda Opuszynski, Jason Slayden, David Krohn, and Michael Uloth crossing the Cascades en route to Ellensburg, WA, for last week's performance at Central Washington University.

The marquee outside the Kirkland Performance Center, where the production premiered.

Stephanie Rhodes has performed Massenet's lush score at each performance this fall.

Michael Uloth, who sings the Bailiff in Werther, gets excited about the spread while on tour. Thanks, Walla Walla!

Lindsay Russell, one of our two Sophies, gets ready for the Young Artists' Walla Walla performance.

Rhodes looks at a moment in the score with Sarah Larsen, who sings Charlotte, before a Werther performance.

Following his mainstage debut as Moralès in Carmen, Joseph Lattanzi has taken on the role of Charlotte's fiancé, Albert, in Werther. Here he is in a quick music rehearsal before the Walla Walla performance.

Pianist Stephanie Rhodes passes time on the road by teaching the Young Artists the Cryllic alphabet.

Photos by Jason Slayden. To see more, visit his photoblog, iamanoperasinger! And keep an eye out for him this January, when he makes him Seattle Opera mainstage debut as Uldino in Verdi's Attila.

Young Werther and His Sorrows

Two of our Young Artists are currently taking on one of world literature’s great roles: Werther, the fictional alter-ego created early in his career by Germany’s greatest writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (and later re-imagined by French opera composer Jules Massenet). Goethe introduced the world to this fascinatingly tormented, passionate young man in 1774 in his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is structured as a series of letters Werther writes his good friend Wilhelm chronicling Werther’s obsession with Charlotte. Towards the end of Werther’s life, an editor takes over the narration and tells us how this strange young man did away with himself. The letters are so realistic many of the first readers were convinced that Werther actually existed and wrote the letters himself!

Leo Goeke as Werther in Seattle Opera's 1976 Werther (photo by Des Gates)

Goethe was almost Werther. The novel was indeed born out of the author's own personal experience. Not long after he had finished his Doctor of Law degree, Goethe moved to Wetzlar, the town mentioned in the novel, and opened a legal practice. He actually fell in love with a woman named Charlotte, who took care of her younger brothers and sisters and was engaged to be married. Just as Werther does in the novel, Goethe became a good friend of Charlotte and her husband-to-be. Unlike Werther, however, Goethe didn’t shoot himself. When things got too tense in Wetzlar, he moved back to Frankfurt, where he had grown up, and wrote his novel. Many biographers feel Goethe used the novel as a way to get all that hopeless love out of his system so he could get on with his life. By exaggerating his own amorous feelings to the point of parody, Goethe was able to distance himself, psychologically, from his own propensity toward indulging in hopeless love, a tendency which caused him no end of trouble. (Goethe finally settled down with a woman named Christiane Vulpius when he turned 39; they lived together for eighteen years and then finally got married.)

Vinson Cole as Werther in Seattle Opera's 1997 production (photo by Jeffree Luke)

To Goethe’s surprise, The Sorrows of Young Werther became a phenomenal bestseller and attracted a cult following. Translations sprang up in dozens of languages; poets all across Europe began writing Werther-inspired verses; young men around Europe started dressing up in the blue frock coat and yellow waistcoat described as Werther’s habitual costume in the novel, and young ladies bought bottles of eau de Werther perfume; figures of Werther and Charlotte appeared on dishes, jewelery, and other trinkets. One disturbed young man identified so strongly with Goethe’s impetuous hero he threatened to commit suicide the way Werther had. (The story goes that Goethe talked him out of it.) And when the corpse of a young woman who had drowned herself was fished from the river with a copy of the novel in her pocket, Goethe realized there was a problem. The young people who read his novel were not picking up on his cynical treatment of Werther: they were revelling in the way Werther indulged in the most extreme and unhealthy emotional life. When it came time to reprint the book, Goethe added a disclaimer to the beginning, a letter from the dead Werther to his readers in which Werther urges: “Be a man, and do not follow my example!”

Dale Duesing and Delores Ziegler as Werther and Charlotte in Seattle Opera's 1989 production (Photo by Ron Scherl)

Like all well-drawn fictional characters, Werther is so complicated he is impossible to pin down; people’s responses to Werther usually say much more about the people making the response than they do about Werther himself. We collected the following takes on Goethe’s troubled twenty-three year old:

Yes, hopeless SUFFERER! friendless, and forlorn—
Sweet victim of LOVE’S power, the silent tear
Shall oft at twilight’s close, and blushing morn,
Gem the pale primrose that adorns thy bier;
And as the balmy dew ascends to heaven,
Thy crime shall steal away, thy frailty be forgiven!

—from ”Elegy to the Memory of Werther” by Mrs. Mary Robinson

Poster for the first Paris performances of Massenet's opera, which premiered in Vienna in 1892; images here include Werther admiring Charlotte as big sister, in Act One, and Werther pleading with Charlotte in Act Three

Goethe makes Werther an idle dilletante, who sketches a bit, reads a bit, but is incapable of seriously concentrating on anything...[The novel] reads as...a masterly and devastating portrait of a complete egoist, a spoiled brat, incapable of love because he cares for nobody and nothing but himself and having his way at whatever cost to others... Werther, by staying on when it is clear that his presence is unwelcome, defies the company [at a party in the town to which he has moved], but his precious ego is hurt by their reactions, and he resigns his post, returns to Lotte and disaster for all, destroying himself and ruining the lives of Lotte and Albert. What a horrid little monster!

—English poet W. H. Auden

To complain of Werther’s self-pity or lack of will is like complaining of Hamlet’s procrastination. The weaknesses in Werther’s character are certainly there. They are there for a reason. They are there as an essential part of the portrait of a man ill-equipped to cope with his life. They are there as the fatal flaws in a character likeable, generous, creative, spontaneous, responsive, and full of vitality. And as such they must be accepted as the necessary premises in a persuasive tragedy, as necessary components in a consummate work of art.

—Michael Hulse, Goethe translator

Oh, how often have I cursed those foolish pages of mine which made my youthful sufferings public property! If Werther had been my brother and I had killed him, I could scarcely have been so persecuted by his avenging ghost.

—Goethe, Second Roman Elegy (first version)

Dale Duesing as Werther at Seattle Opera in 1989 (Photo by Matthew McVay)

And here, for those of you who haven’t read the novel, are a few excerpted letters chronicling Werther’s disintegration. What would you write back, if you were Wilhelm? Have you ever known any Werthers in your life? What did you do, the first time you fell head over heels in hopeless, impossible love with somebody?

July 16, 1771 [One month after Werther meets Charlotte]

Oh, how my blood rushes through my veins when my fingers unintentionally brush hers or when our feet touch under the table. I shrink back as though from fire, but a secret force drives me forward again, although everything swims before my eyes. Her innocent, candid soul does not divine how tormenting such small intimacies can be. And when, while we talk, she puts her hand on mine and, animated by what we are saying, moves closer to me, so that the heavenly breath of her mouth reaches my lips, I am close to fainting, as if struck by lightning. And, Wilhelm, if I should ever dare—this heavenly confidence—you understand! No, my heart is not so depraved! Weak! Weak enough!—And is that not depravity?

She is sacred to me. Any desire is silenced in her presence. I never know what I feel when I am with her; it is as if my soul were spinning through every nerve. She plays a melody on her clavichord with the touch of an angel, so simple, so ethereal! It is her favorite tune, and I am cured of all pain, confusion, and melancholy the moment she strikes the first note.

Not one word about the magic power of music in antiquity seems to me improbable when I am under the spell of her simple melody. And how well she knows when to play it, at the moment when I feel like blowing out my brains. The confusion and darkness of my soul are then dispersed, and I can breathe more freely again.

Erich Parce and Vinson Cole as Albert and Werther at Seattle Opera in 1997 (Photo by Gary Smith)

August 18

Must it be so that whatever makes man happy must later become the source of his misery?

That generous and warm feeling for Nature which flooded my heart with such bliss, so that I saw the world around me as a Paradise, has now become an unbearable torment, a sort of demon that persecutes me wherever I go. When I formerly looked from the rock far across the river and the fertile valleys to the distant hills, and saw everything on all sides sprout and spring forth—the mountains covered with tall, thick trees from base to summit, the valleys winding between pleasant shading woods, the gently flowing river gliding among the whispering reeds and reflecting light clouds which sailed across the sky under the mild evening breeze; when I listened to the birds that bring the forest to life, while millions of midges danced in the red rays of a setting sun whose last flare roused the buzzing beetle from the grass; and all the whirring and weaving around me drew my attention to the ground underfoot where the moss, which wrests its nourishment from my hard rock, and the broom plant, which grows on the slope of the arid sand hill, revealed to me the inner, glowing, sacred life of Nature—how fervently did I take all this into my warm heart, feeling like a god in that overflowing abundance, while the beautiful forms of the infinite universe surrounded and inspired my soul. Huge mountains surrounded me, precipices opened before me, and torrents gushed downward; the rivers streamed below, and wood and mountains sang; and I saw them at their mutual work of creation in the depths of the earth, all these unfathomable forces. And above the earth and below the sky swarms the variety of creatures, multifarious and multiform. Everything, everything populated with a thousand shapes; and mankind, huddled together in the security of its little houses, nesting throughout and dominating the wide world in its own way. Poor fool who belittles everything because you are yourself so small! From the inaccessible mountains, across the wasteland untrod by human foot, to the end of the unexplored seas breathes the spirit of the eternal Creator who rejoices in every atom of dust that divines Him and lives. —Oh, the times when I longed to fly on the crane’s wings, as it passed overhead, to the shores of the illimitable ocean, in order to drink from the foaming cup of the Infinite an elating sensation of life, and to feel, if only for a moment, in the cramped forces of my being one drop of the bliss of that Being who creates everything in and through Himself.

My friend, only the memory of these hours eases my heart. Even the effort to recall and to express again in words those inexpressible sensations lifts my soul above itself, but also intensifies the anguish of my present state.

January 8, 1772 [Unable to subdue his feelings for Charlotte, Werther has left the town where she lives and taken a job elsewhere; but he has no patience for the new people in his life and disdains them as petty snobs.]

What dreadful people these are, whose minds are completely absorbed in matters of etiquette, whose thoughts and aspirations all year long turn over the single problem of how to push oneself one chair higher at table. And it is not as though they had nothing else to do. No, on the contrary, work continues to pile up because trivial annoyances hinder the dispatch of more important matters. Last week a quarrel started during a sleighing party and the whole fun was spoiled.

The fools, who do not understand that actual rank does not matter at all and that he who occupies the top very rarely plays the chief role. How often a king is ruled by a minister; how many ministers by their secretaries! And who is then the first? I believe it is the man who knows his fellow-men at a glance and has sufficient power or shrewdness to harness their forces and passions to the execution of his plans.

Vinson Cole and Jean Rigby as Werther and Charlotte at Seattle Opera in 1997 (Photo by Gary Smith)

October 19 [Werther loses his new job and returns to the town where Charlotte lives, even though he is growing increasingly unhappy]

Oh, this void, this terrifying void I feel in my breast! I often think: if you could once, only once, press her to your heart, this void would be filled.

December 6 [One of Werther’s final letters]

How her image haunts me! Awake or asleep, she fills my entire being. Here, when I close my eyes, here, in my forehead, at the focus of my inner vision, her dark eyes remain. Here! but I cannot put it into words. When I close my eyes, they are there; like an ocean, like an abyss, they lie before me, in me, taking hold of all my thoughts.

What is man, that celebrated demigod? Does he not lack powers just where he needs them most? And when he soars with joy, or sinks into suffering, is he not in both cases held back and restored to dull, cold consciousness at the very moment when he longs to lose himself in the fullness of the Infinite?

Dale Duesing and Delores Ziegler as Werther and Charlotte in Seattle Opera's 1989 production (Photo by Matthew McVay)

Quotations taken from the Michael Hulse translation of The Sorrows of Young Werther

Andrew Stenson as Werther in Seattle Opera's current Young Artists Program production, which plays in downtown Seattle Saturday, November 19, 8 pm, at the Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall

Speight's Letter from Budapest

Speight Jenkins checked in this weekend from Budapest, where he got to hear Rossini's charming La Cenerentola at the Hungarian State Opera. (Photo of him outside the theater, paying his respects to Ferenc Liszt--who turned 200 a couple of weeks ago--with György Sibelka, photo courtesy György Sibelka.) This trip to Hungary reminded Speight, not of Attila and his Huns (they don't have anything to do with modern Hungary, although their army is scheduled to invade our stage shortly!), but of an earlier trip to Hungary:

In 1960 with a friend I traveled to Poland, the Soviet Union, and Hungary. In Budapest, at a performance of Tristan und Isolde, sung in Hungarian, we sat next to one Dr. Arthur Sibelka and his wife. They introduced themselves to us and sought to speak with us in a private place after the opera where the secret police could not hear us talking. They asked us many questions about the state of the world. He had been an official in the government in Hungary before the Communist takeover in 1947 and afterwards was made to work in the fields in Eastern Hungary. After six years of hard labor he had come back to Budapest and had several years of peace, working in a small position in the Department of Agriculture prior to supporting the ill-fated Nagy government in the eight-day revolution in 1956. He was able to go back to his position after the Soviets crushed the revolution and worked there until he retired. He passed away in 1981.

Hungarian State Opera House (Photo: Wikimedia)

A year or so ago, I mentioned my connection to Dr. Sibelka--with whom I had had no further contact--to a Hungarian friend in Seattle who has many contacts here in Hungary. Before long I received an e-mail from György Sibelka, nephew of the man I met in 1960. Today in Budapest, Mr. Sibelka met me at the train along with his two daughters, Agnes and Zsohphia. The Sibelkas took me first for photos at the opera house, then on the first underground railway created in Central Europe (1898) to a beautiful restaurant by the Danube. The water actually looked blue today as there was not a cloud in the sky. We had traditional Hungarian food: goulash soup and a huge plate of stuffed cabbage with sour cream, slices of veal and a sausage.

Considered one of Europe's most beautiful cities, Budapest arose on the Danube from two riverbank fortresses, Buda and Pest (Photo: Wallpaperstravel.com)

György regaled me with stories of his uncle and of his family in general. His grandfather had four wives, so the Dr. Sibelka I met was a half-uncle of his. The grandfather apparently was very successful and lived a very cosmopolitan and exciting life. Dr. Sibelka, on the other hand, was more intellectual and worked very hard his whole life. György told me how much the six years in Eastern Hungary, working as a laborer, had cost this man of letters, who had traveled and worked for the short-lived postwar Hungarian government in Italy and in other countries in Western Europe.

His stories neatly fit into my recollection of the conversations of a half-century ago. When Dr. Sibelka asked me, “How is Florence?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, my wife used to go to Italy often, and now we can’t. I just wondered if it is the same. Tell me how it looks.” It moved me greatly and does now. Here was this cultured European denied the right to travel because of a totalitarian government and forced to work as a field hand just because he had been a member of a democratic government.

When we finished that very large meal--I ate more today than I have in the previous two weeks in Europe--we walked about 100 yards to the Cukaraszda Confectionery, an extremely popular restaurant in Budapest that, like many places in Vienna, only serves desserts. We ate a marvelous concoction of cake soaked in rum, plus whipped cream and chocolate called Somlói galuska.

Somlói galuska (Photo: budapestcookingclass.com)

I heard more stories about their family. His eldest daughter, Agnes, spoke very good English and had worked in Canada for a business firm for which she later worked in Hungary. At the moment she is taking care of her two children, a boy and a girl, six and ten. His other daughter, Zsophia, is not married and also lives and works in Budapest. György speaks hesitant but very expressive English, and he worked at it all afternoon.

When it was over, they took me back to my hotel. It was a great experience, particularly because my wife’s mother was Hungarian, and on this day I became much closer to her background as well. Now it’s on to a very un-Hungarian opera, Rossini’s Cenerentola --we call her Cinderella, and the Hungarian name is "Hamupipőke".

Speight's Letter from Germany

We heard from Speight Jenkins today, who, following the tremendous honor shown him by the National Endowment for the Arts, headed on toward Europe, as he often does in November (in between mainstage productions), in search of great singers and operas to bring to Seattle. Photo of Speight (left), taken in Bremen near the statue of the famous Bremen Town Musicians, by Christopher Braun.

A three-week audition and performance trip to Germany would be very difficult were it not for the Eurail (railroad) Pass available to Americans. With the Eurail Pass one can change one’s schedule if necessary without any financial penalty as I did when the October snowstorm in New York delayed my arrival in Frankfurt by three hours. Due to the kindness of the Frankfurt Opera I secured a ticket to the premiere of a brilliant Siegfried on a few hours notice.

Lance Ryan as Siegfried and dancer Alan Barnes as the Forest Bird at Oper Frankfurt, Photo © Monika Rittershaus

This trip has been unusual in the number of really outstanding performance so far: a marvelous Rosenkavalier in Munich...

Publicity photo for Der Rosenkavalier at Bayerische Staatsoper

...with Martina Serafin as one of the greatest Marschallins of my life and wonderful conducting by Constantin Trinks, a German conductor not yet 30, and a fascinating, perceptive Dialogues of the Carmelites with Seattle Opera former Young Artist Maureen McKay as Blanche de la Force.

Maureen McKay as Blanche de la Force at Komische Oper Berlin; Photo by Monika Rittershaus

That performance caused me to change my mind about a very controversial, often pornographic Catalan director, Calixto Bieto. It was a revelatory conception of Poulenc’s great opera.

When I saw in the schedule that Die Meistersinger was being given in Nürnberg, I felt that I had to see it. It turned out to be a marvelous production by David Mouctar-Samorai, with a first-class Hans Sachs, Albert Pesendorfer. What made it so good was that it glorified German art in the way I think Wagner intended and managed completely to avoid any suggestion of Fascism (which often happens in this opera) or a connection to the Nazi period (frequently the case in German productions in the last twenty years). It also showed that with a lot of innovation Die Meistersinger worked marvelously in a contemporary, timeless, somewhat abstract setting.

Publicity photo for Die Meistersinger at Staatstheater Nürnberg

Just last night I attended a very strange production of Aida in Hamburg...

Publicity photo for Aida at Hamburgische Staatsoper

...made memorable by stunning conducting by Carlo Montanaro, who will lead our upcoming Attila. It was one of those rare performances when every tempo seemed thought out properly, and the playing of the orchestra captured the warmth and passion of Verdi.

Germany is beautiful in November with all the trees a rich gold. One oddity about them: I have seen no trees with red leaves such as we have in the United States. The weather for the past ten days has been breathtakingly sunny with temperatures in the high 40s and 50s, perfect for me and for traveling.

On the personal side I visited in Bremen with a former Seattle Opera intern, Christopher Braun, and had the opportunity to spend the day with him, his wife, his three-year-old son, Constantin, and two-month old baby, Curt. It was great to see Chris after a two-year period. He is the Marketing Director of the Bremen Opera, and he and his wife enjoy very much living in Bremen. It is, incidentally, the smallest principality in the Federal Republic. Bremen was always, like Hamburg, a “free” city, that is, a democratic one without a king. A city of around 550,000, it has its own Parliament with as much authority within its city limits as, say, the Parliament in Munich has for the whole state of Bavaria.

Auditions in four or five of the cities have turned up some interesting singers possible for Seattle Opera and the performances even more. I look forward to the operas over the next nine days from which I might find more candidates for Seattle Opera.

Attila: Speight's Corner

General Director Speight Jenkins waxes poetic about Attila, its beautiful music, and the stellar cast he hand-picked for this opera. Special guest Costume Designer Melanie Taylor Burgess joins Speight to discuss the new costumes being created for the production.



Learn more about Attila on the Seattle Opera Website

New Goethe Movie just in time for Seattle Opera's "Werther"

Today the new German movie Young Goethe in Love opened in New York; the New York Times has an insightful review. Seattleites got a chance to see it last May, when it played at the Seattle International Film Festival. In the tradition of Shakespeare in Love, the film is a fictionalized account of how Goethe came to write The Sorrows of Young Werther--the brief epistolary novel that launched the Romantic movement and inspired Massenet's opera, which our Young Artists will be singing at 7 pm tonight at the Kirkland Performance Center in Kirkland, WA.

Here's a trailer for the new film, which stars Alexander Fehling as Goethe, Miriam Stein as his beloved, and the great Moritz Bleibtreu as his rival:

Speight Jenkins' Acceptance Speech at the NEA Opera Honors

Last week the National Endowment for the Arts chose Speight Jenkins, General Director of Seattle Opera since 1983, as one of the recipients of the 2011 NEA Opera Honors Awards. (Left, Speight with Nina Totenburg at the Awards.) The highest national award in opera, these honors come with a $25,000 monetary award.

Speight went to Washington, D.C. last week to participate in the awards ceremony, which was webcast live and is hosted now at http://www.nea.gov/honors/opera/2011-webcast.html (and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnVYAgRYJZ4&feature=relmfu). The part of the presentation focusing on Speight begins at 1:10:50.

The presentation features a beautiful 7-minute video produced by the NEA and Opera America, which is also posted at http://www.nea.gov/honors/opera/videoBios2011.html (and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTqzPf1IiDE). King County’s own Dow Constantine eloquently speaks about what it’s like to go to the opera in Seattle at 3:35 in this video.

Seattle and Washington are fortunate to have such a nationally beloved figure leading our opera company, and Speight is extremely grateful for this honor. Here is a transcription of his extempore acceptance speech, which you can hear and see at 1:21:37 in the longer video.

“Thank you very much for that reception, and I so much appreciate all the wonderful things that were said on this video, and that Stephen [Wadsworth] said in his introduction. I feel that it’s all too much, but I’m grateful, I’m very grateful.

I want to talk first tonight about the National Endowment. The National Endowment I think is very, very important to the United States. There have been times in the past when there have been difficult moments, and we have fought for it. And we must fight again, if we have to. Because the National Endowment is the people, speaking through their government, for the arts. They’re saying something very simple: Art Matters. This is what the National Endowment stands for and it’s very, very significant.

Tonight I’m not going to go through a whole series of operas that we’ve done, because that’s been said. I do want to say that when John [Conklin] was talking about the chairs, it was in Seattle where those chairs were on the walls. I remember those chairs, and I got asked a lot about those chairs, and I just said, “They’re chairs!” [Audience laughter] “That’s what John says, they’re chairs, they’re up there!” It was a Trovatore, I remember very distinctly. But I want to talk about why I think I am here tonight and why we have had success in Seattle.

First of all, I’ve had a board that has supported me absolutely, in every way, all the way through. However controversial, whatever difficulties, whatever we’ve done, my board has always stood behind me, I’ve never had the least problem there. I also have a staff that has worked very hard, we’ve worked together to bring the greatest possible opera to Seattle, to the Northwest. And many of the people on the staff have worked with me and for Seattle for twenty years.

I think that of course with singers, conductors, directors, my job, as I see it, is to welcome singers, conductors, and directors to Seattle, and to make them understand that the opera we do there, the performances we do there, are tremendously important--that they are significant, and that they can change opera, even if we are in a small corner of the United States. It’s very important, and they must feel how important it is, what we’re doing.

Our audience is also remarkable. Seattle is the smallest metropolitan area with such a big opera company. We only have 3 ½ million people in our metropolitan area, but we have a wonderful audience, and I’m grateful to them more than I can say. Stephen mentioned we have increased our number of performances over the years: they have come and they have supported us, and I’m very grateful for all of that.

And finally, I want to say that I’m very thankful to my family, to my wife Linda, to my two children, Speight and Linle, who have put up with my absolute fascination with opera all these years. Thank you."

Photos courtesy of the NEA

WERTHER: Director's Talk

Meet the Young Artists singing the lead roles, and hear why the program is performing this "specialty" (according to Stage director Peter Kazaras) opera. Find out which role Kazaras calls "a killer" because of its difficulty, and see it all coming together in rehearsal.



Learn more about Werther on the Seattle Opera website.