Seattle Opera's New Education Projects: Our Earth and Belonging(s)

Seattle Opera's Education and Community Engagement programs offer great opportunities for the public to engage more deeply with our company and this wonderful art form of opera. You can browse through the our entire Education and Community Engagement calendar--including previews of mainstage productions, open houses, programs for children and schools, and much more--in our most recent press release, as well as on our website’s calendar. We’re particularly thrilled this season about our newly commissioned opera projects, Our Earth and Belonging(s), which are both inspired by our region and its people.

Opera Goes To School, Seattle Opera’s decade-old flagship education program, will bring together music and drama with science and nature in Our Earth, a cycle of three short new operas (average length 40 minutes each) for young people, with music by Eric Banks and libretti by Irene Keliher. Thanks to new partnerships with organizations such as the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras, The Nature Conservancy, and Seattle Aquarium, even more people will have the opportunity to experience this trilogy and explore its themes. These new operas tell stories of people and animals in Pacific Northwest environments: when the salmon fail to return in the spring, figures such as Orca, Heron, Raven, Raccoon, and Salmon, along with human characters, embark on a quest in search of them. Written for a cast of four adult singers, plus optional children’s chorus representing the waves, the river, and baby salmon, the Our Earth operas can be performed either with orchestra or with piano accompaniment, and as a linked cycle or as separate, individual operas. This flexibility allows the Our Earth operas both to serve as exciting centerpieces at celebratory community events and to function as school-based programs.

Getting ready to sing her aria!

The general public will be able to experience the premiere of the first Our Earth opera, Heron and the Salmon Girl, on February 10, 2013, at Town Hall, where it’ll be performed by Seattle Opera’s professional adult singers, children’s chorus, and the Seattle Youth Symphony. The second opera will premiere in April 20, 2013, as part of the Earth Day celebrations at Seattle Center, and the third premiere will happen at McCaw Hall on August 3, 2013, as part of an all-day open house celebrating Seattle Opera’s 2013 Ring Cycle, which begins the next day. Keep your eyes on this blog for more information!

Visit our Belonging(s) Digital Quilt to hear stories of area residents' most precious possessions.

Our other commission, Belonging(s), is a full-length opera with music by Jack Perla and a libretto by Jessica Murphy Moo. It’s part of a multi-year community engagement project that creates music and drama from the real-life stories of Puget Sound area residents, and the Belonging(s) creative team has chosen a handful of stories to serve as the spine of their new opera, which is currently in development. For more on this project, and to hear some of our community’s stories, visit http://www.seattleopera.org/belongings.

Young Artists King for a Day Comes to Seattle

Seattle Opera’s terrific Young Artists have been dashing back and forth across the state these last few weeks performing Giuseppe Verdi’s little-known comedy, King for a Day, in Walla Walla, Tri-Cities, Moses Lake, Ellensburg, and Bellingham. They’re coming to Seattle for one night only, this Saturday, November 17, at Benaroya’s Nordstrom Recital Hall,to give the Verdi fans of Seattle a chance to hear this fascinating early work.

Verdi, who turns 200 years old next year, is beloved of opera audiences the world over for his devastating tragedies. We love to weep for Violetta, to perish along with the asphyxiating Aida and Radames, and to watch in fascination as characters such as Rigoletto, Azucena, Amneris, and Otello kill the one they love. But Verdi also had a sense of humor, and, early on in his career, wrote at least one opera (besides his swansong, Falstaff, last performed here in 2010) that is a straightforward romantic comedy.

King for a Day (Italian title: Un giorno di regno) tells the story of Cavaliere Belfiore, a wily rogue who has been roped into impersonating the King of Poland. In his role as the false king, Belfiore finds himself the guest of honor at a double wedding at the home of Barone Kelbar. He adopts the role of matchmaker in order to confound arranged marriages and assist in the triumph of true love, including his own. In the end, Belfiore resumes his true identity, all is forgiven, and young love triumphs over greed and pomposity. King for a Day is a delightful bel canto comedy in the tradition of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Rossini’s La Cenerentola, full of heart-warming cavatinas, funny patter ensembles, and beautiful vocalizing.

As part of its yearlong celebration of Verdi’s bicentennial, the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program is presenting a chamber version of this opera, with piano accompaniment, beautiful period costumes, and full staging. The opera is sung in Italian, with titles in English. Peter Kazaras, Artistic Director of the program, directed the show, with musical preparation overseen by Music Director Brian Garman, and Keith Chambers at the piano. Design Coordination is by Victor Steeb. We’ll be introducing our terrific Young Artists this week on our Facebook page; to hear their wonderful voices, click through the clips below, or go directly our SoundCloud account.

If you’re up for the full mini-opera festival at Nordstrom Recital Hall this weekend, you should also come down Friday or Sunday to hear Viktor Ullmann’s opera The Emperor of Atlantis, produced by Music of Remembrance. Composed in the Terezín concentration camp in 1943, this opera about an overworked angel of death is both a political satire and a parable of hope. MOR’s bold new production stars former Seattle Opera Young Artist Marcus Shelton and YAP Guest Artist Jonathan Silvia, is conducted by the Seattle Symphony’s Ludovic Morlot and directed by Erich Parce, and features a terrific local cast and a chamber ensemble of Seattle Symphony players.

RING Tickets On Sale November 12

Wagner’s four-opera epic Der Ring des Nibelungen returns to Seattle Opera for three cycles in August 2013, and online ticket sales to the general public will begin on Monday, November 12, at 9 a.m. Phone and in-person sales will begin on Thursday, November 15. Fans of Seattle Opera on Facebook may secure tickets early, beginning November 8. The 2001, 2005, and 2009 mountings of this Ring production boasted sold-out performances and audiences from 50 states and 33 countries; so far, people from 49 states and 13 countries are coming for the 2013 Ring.

This will be the fourth time Seattle Opera presents this award-winning production of the Ring, inspired by the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. The design team of director Stephen Wadsworth, set designer Thomas Lynch, costume designer Martin Pakledinaz, and lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski won a 2001 EDDY Award for the production. Principal Guest Conductor Asher Fisch, named “among the finest Ring conductors of our time” by Opus Magazine, will conduct next summer's performances.

General Director Speight Jenkins, who concludes his thirty years at the helm of Seattle Opera in 2014, casts his final Ring with this production. Making their Seattle Opera debuts in this production are Alwyn Mellor as Brünnhilde and Stefan Vinke as Siegfried. Mellor had critics reaching for superlatives when she sang Isolde at England’s Grange Park Opera in 2011. Vinke has sung Siegfried in London, Cologne, Leipzig, Berlin, Salzburg, Venice, and Lisbon. Greer Grimsley, most recently heard as Don Pizarro in last month’s production of Fidelio, returns to Seattle Opera for the third time as Wotan, a role for which he won Seattle Opera’s 2005 Artist of the Year award. Other returning artists include Stephanie Blythe as Fricka, Margaret Jane Wray as Sieglinde, Stuart Skelton as Siegmund, Dennis Petersen as Mime, Richard Paul Fink as Alberich, Daniel Sumegi as Fafner and Hagen, Andrea Silvestrelli as Fasolt and Hunding, and Luretta Bybee as Schwertleite and the First Norn. Making their debuts in this production are Markus Brück as Donner and Gunther, Wendy Bryn Harmer as Freia, Gerhilde, and Gutrune, Mark Schowalter as Loge, and Lucille Beer as Erda. The Rhine Daughters and other roles will be sung by Jennifer Zetlan, Cecelia Hall (debut), and Renee Tatum (debut).

Performances of the Ring are scheduled as follows: Cycle #1, August 4, 5, 7, & 9; Cycle #2, August 12, 13, 15, & 17; and Cycle #3, August 20, 21, 23, and 25, 2013.

There's a vast Nibelung-hoard of information about this beloved production online. We invite you to learn more by exploring:

• Photos from Seattle Opera's "Green" Ring production 
• Video trailers of Seattle Opera's 2009 Ring  
• Hear the voices of our principal singers on SoundCloud 
• Follow a synopsis of the Ring with Arthur Rackham's famous illustrations 
• Read about Seattle Opera's Artistic Leadership Team, our "Green" Ring Production, and the Wagner Tradition at Seattle Opera in our online press kits  
• Ring-related content on Seattle Opera's Blog includes articles, interviews with artists, interpretations from audience members, photos, fun, and the 2009 series "Confessions of a First-Time Opera-Goer."