(Photo by Philip Newton)ĭespite a relatively short tenure with Seattle Opera, outgoing general director Aidan Lang has made quite a mark on the company in his five years in the Northwest. But in an artform so notoriously luxuriant-opera’s inherent grandeur and formality the tallest and palest of ivory towers-some literal, street-level transparency could go a long way.Seattle Opera General Director Aidan Lang. The building’s street-facing façade includes a large, glass-walled community and education space. The new headquarters will also place the company’s attempts to educate a generation of future season ticket holders-it’s done extensive work with Title I schools for the past seven years-at the forefront. We just make it, in a way, more universal.” This June O+E recast Christoph Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice as a tale of a woman holding hallucinatory vigil at her dying wife’s bedside. In 2016 As One explored a transgender protagonist’s life via two voices, a baritone and a mezzo-soprano, and the audience could stay after and discuss issues the work raised. After one called “Cultured Conversations: Black Inclusion at the Opera”-which dug into black representation in Aida, a production that featured a largely white cast even though the title character is an Ethiopian princess and the piece is set in Egypt-the opera nixed the word inclusion, since it positions white people as a power that “includes” black people.Īside from lower rent costs, the new building should also mean more chamber operas-smaller productions that frequently permit more progressive material choices. Sometimes that feedback means altering forum titles themselves.

What drives people in this city is a sense of social conscience.

The program pointed out inaccuracies (a 15-year-old girl does not just up and become a geisha), and the company hosted forums with Asian Americans, discussing cultural appropriation in the opera. Instead of avoiding the ignorant source material-Puccini’s understanding of Japanese culture was woefully lacking-productions of which frequently put performers in yellowface, Seattle Opera chose to highlight its problems, and then talk about them. Last season premiered with Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.

Seattle opera 2018