Letter from Beijing

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Dean Speaks About Wagner in Beijing

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

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

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

The Challenges and Rewards of Presenting the Ring
By Jonathan Dean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONNIE YUN Explores New Lighting Technologies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sing Along with Seattle Opera on May 22!

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

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

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

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

Beth Kirchhoff leads a backstage chorus (Rozarii Lynch photo)

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

Birthday cake generously donated by New Renaissance Cakes.

Audience Voices: An Interview with Sister Kathleen Ross

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

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

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

Turandot, Seattle Opera, 2012 (Elise Bakketun photo)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Earth, 2013 (Alan Alabastro photo)

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

Merridawn Duckler Interviews Bernard Uzan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 15, 2013: GiveBIG to Seattle Opera!

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

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

How does GiveBIG work?

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

What can my gift do for Seattle Opera?

• $50 (doubled by the challenge grant to $100) covers one music and story time program for early learners at a local library branch
• $175 (doubled to $350) underwrites the cost of one KING-FM Saturday night opera broadcast which provides opera to thousands of listeners for free
• $300 (doubled to $600) provides 75 students the opportunity to see a working rehearsal or a final dress rehearsal through our Experience Opera program

What will I receive for my gift to Seattle Opera?

• Satisfaction that you helped Seattle Opera share timeless musical stories through mainstage productions and educational programming with more than 800,000 people a year.
• Knowledge that you helped secure the future of a world class opera company. We need your help raising $2.7 million before our fiscal year ends on June 30.
• Giving Benefits that bring you closer to your opera company.

Play your part in Seattle’s biggest day of philanthropy. GiveBIG on May 15!

Photo © Chris Bennion 2009