This old coat

Mimi languishes with Rodolfo at her bedside; Musetta waltzes; Colline bids his coat goodbye. Photos: Elise Bakketun

The music and plot of Puccini's La Bohème are so familiar that it's a little like going to Disneyland with your friends from summer camp. You practically want to hum "It's a Sad World After All."

So the challenge, in Seattle Opera's production, is to offset the on-stage misery; the young artists (writers, painters, singers) may be starving and freezing, but they're determined to get through yet another discontented winter. Spoiler alert: the sweet-natured seamstress Mimi--sung by soprano Elizabeth Caballero--doesn't make it to April, despite her friends' frantic, last-minute efforts. The stalwart Arthur Woodley even sells his beloved overcoat to buy medicine, to no avail.

The story of these passionate scamps isn't all about heartbreak, though. Paris in the 1890s was plenty raucous, full of bright colors and brazen sexuality, captured in director Tomer Zvulun's fresh staging (the sets came from St. Louis, the costumes were dusted off from Seattle Opera's 2006 Bohème). The courtesan Musetta, especially--soprano Norah Amselem--revels in being surrounded by a "scent of desire" in her delightful aria, "Quando m'en vo" (which also provided the tune for Della Reese's biggest hit, "Don't You Know," in 1959).

A good thing that the audience knows what's coming. This Bohème doesn't slow down to showcase the opera's big numbers; instead, it showers the audience with musical exclamation points and dramatic sparkles from beginning to end, posting Instagram pix of the Bohemians on the curtain and tweeting hashtag #allaboutmimi. 

Seattle Opera's General Director, Speight Jenkins, is retiring after three decades at the helm of an organization that has seen both lean and happy years. With a surefire winner like La Bohème, a full slate of ten performances performed by two casts, happy times. Especially with a $15 family matinee on March 10th.

This summer, a new Ring cycle will bring Wagner fans from around the world to Seattle. By then, the trustees will have selected Jenkins's successor, but there's not enough money left for his going-away party. Plans for a new production of Meistersinger have been scrapped, and upcoming seasons will be cut back from five to four productions.

One could ask whether there's a future for regional opera companies at all, given that New York's Metropolitan Opera now broadcasts every one of its operas, live-in-HD, into movie theaters around the country. But that really would be a sad, sad world.

A street photographer captures the Bohemian friends at a Paris café on Christmas Eve

Seattle Opera presents Puccini's La Bohème, through March 10th at McCaw Hall. Tickets online (at www.seattleopera.org) and at the box office, 321 Mercer St., 206-389-7676. 

Seattle's Cinderella season lives on

You won't see this Cinderella story at the Clink (you wouldn't have, even if the Hawks had made it past the Falcons), but Seattle Opera is staging La Cenerentola, Gioacchino Rossinni's delightful retelling of the Cinderella story, this month at McCaw, complete with wacky costumes, wicked stepsisters and half a dozen supportive rats.

The bright and lively production is a travelling road show, originally built for Houston but "owned" by no fewer than four opera international companies. It's almost like watching a fill-in-the-singers cartoon, with a cast of relatively inexpensive rising stars plugged into the principal roles. As a result, the production values often outshine the voices.

Most fun are the six "rats" with shiny noses and long, languid tails. performed by a nest of locally recruited dancers under the direction of a Spanish actor and choreographer, Xevi Dorca.

A young Italian maestro, Giacomo Sagripanti, was responsible for the music's sprightly pace, which I wish had been even sprightlier, especially in the languid first act. That said, Sunday's Karin Mushegain as Cinderella embodied an appropriately modest and reticent "Venus of the Ashes" right up to her triumphant declaration, "Non più mesta," ("No more housework!") she proclaims, only to be undone by the production's twist: it was all in her head.

If the melody of Non più mesta sounds familiar, it well should: it's a transposition for soprano of "Cessa di più resistere" from Barber of Seville (performed here quite stunningly two seasons ago by Lawrence Brownlee). What a scamp, that Rossini, stealing his own music! What a thieving magpie!

Seattle Opera presents La Cenerentola, through January 26th at McCaw Hall. Tickets online (at www.seattleopera.org) and at the box office, 321 Mercer St., 206-389-7676.

Seattle Opera photo by Elise Bakketun

Free the prisoners!

Seattle Opera photo by Elise Bakketun

Beethoven's lone opera, Fidelio, returns to the Seattle Opera stage just in time for election season.

The contemporary staging emphasizes the modern-day relevance of this two-century-old story. After all, what could be more touching than the heroic story of a political prisoner and the loyal wife who comes to his rescue?

"I didn't plan it to happen in the election season," general director Speight Jenkins told a radio audience on KING FM, "but it's certainly not inappropriate to produce an opera about freedom from oppression during the political season."

The values behind Beethoven's rousing music--personal freedom, individual initiative, --resound with half the political spectrum. But then there's that chorus of prisoners, the 47 percent, opposed to the tyranny of the rich, who haven't lost faith that justice will be done, and whose liberation in the final scene is the purest expression of hope and joy in opera.

There's a tired, long-suffering bureaucrat, the jail-keeper Rocco; an ambitious, morally reprehensible jailer, Don Pizarro; an innocent prisoner, Floristan; and his spunky savior, Leonora, who disguises herself as a man (Fidelio) so she can gain access to the prison.

It was guest conductor who made the call to begin with the so-called Leonora III overture, which emphasizes the haunting, haunted melodies of a prisoner, rather than the one Beethoven himself decided on (the Leonora IV, or actual Fidelio overture). Dragged on forever in melancholy, it seemed, followed eventually by Beethoven's trademark resoluteness.

 Christine Libor, a radiant German soprano, portrays Leonore. So convincing is her disguise that the jailor's daughter falls in love with her assumed persona. Rescue Floristan she does, of course, and justice triumphs. The prisoners are freed, the bad guy is led away, and the chorus (under guest chorusmaster John Keene) chants righteously that love conquers all.

Beethoven is the master of the uplifting chorale, the closing chorus of the Ninth Symphony, set to Schiller's lyric "Ode to Joy" being unequalled, but the prisoners' joyful "Heil sei dem Tag" (Praised be this day) in the second act of Fidelio sure comes close.

"It's like going to church," bass Greer Grimsley told an interviewer. You don't know whether to stand and applaud or kneel and pray.


Seattle Opera presents Fidelio, through October 27th at McCaw Hall. Tickets $25 to $225, online at www.seattleopera.org or by phone at 206.389.7676 or 800.426.1619.

Ludwig, Barack & Willard walk into an opera house

Seattle Opera rolls out Beethoven's lone opera, Fidelio, once every decade or so, most often in a contemporary staging that emphasizes the modern-day relevance of this two-century-old story. After all, what could be more touching than the heroic story of a political prisoner and the loyal wife who comes to his rescue?

"I didn't plan it to happen in the election season," general director Speight Jenkins told a radio audience on KING FM this weekend, "but it's certainly not inappropriate to produce an opera about freedom from oppression during the political season."

The values behind Beethoven's rousing music--personal freedom, individual initiative, --resound with half the political spectrum. But then there's that chorus of prisoners, the 47 percent, opposed to the tyranny of the rich, who haven't lost faith that justice will be done, and whose liberation in the final scene is the purest expression of hope and joy in opera.

There's a neutral, long-suffering bureaucrat, the jail-keeper Rocco; an ambitious, morally reprehensible jailer, Don Pizarro; an untarnished nobleman, Don Fernando; an innocent prisoner, Floristan; and his spunky savior, Leonora, who disguises herself as a man (Fidelio) so she can gain access to the prison.

The challenge faced by Seattle Opera is to take a story in what's become an elitist art form (but which, in its day, was even more populist and culturally relevant than rock concerts) and reconnect it with the local audience. Hence this project, last month, for a commnity sing-along of the Prisoners Chorus.

Seattle Opera presents Fidelio, October 13-27 at McCaw Hall. Tickets $25 to $225, online at www.seattleopera.org or by phone at 206.389.7676 or 800.426.1619.

Butterfly's tragic tale of trust & betrayal

Seattle Opera photo by Elise Bakketun

The story is straightforward, as grand opera plots go: a naval officer deceives a poor young girl and pretend-marries her, gets her pregnant and leaves town. When she learns, three years later, that he has for-real married someone else, she turns the child over to his new wife and kills herself.

In Madama Butterfly, currently playing at Seattle Opera, this age-old tale of wayward love, of trust and betrayal, is set in Japan (a new and exotic land to early 20th century Europeans), but Puccini's music and the Giacosa-Illica libretto were written for Italian ears: over two hours of nonstop, romantic arias, duets and interludes swirling inexorably toward the Butterfly's inevitable, tragic ending.

The term "cad" may be old-fashioned, but Butterfly's lover, Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, is nothing less. Though he woos her well, in a magnificent love duet that ends Act One, he never considers her more than a plaything. Much is made of his "America Forever" sense of entitlement to "pluck the flowers on every shore" he visits. The US Consul, Sharpless, warns him about not to break Butterfly's "trusting heart," but Pinkerton has convinced himself that in Japan, "everything is flexible," even a marriage contract.

Poor Butterfly. When she enters with her bridal party, luminous beneath a golden parasol, she is "the happiest girl in Japan." She gives herself completely to Pinkerton, even though she's promptly renounced by her family. At the beginning of Act Two, abandoned for three years, she still waits for Pinkerton's ship to return. And here, at Madama Butterfly's midpoint, comes "Un Bel Di," the opera's most famous aria, the heroine's gut-wrenching resolve to tough it out, come what may. Alas, as we know all to well, It's all downhill from there.

When Pinkerton does return, he can't even face Butterfly. Too late, he realizes what a shit he's been. Too late, Butterfly acknowledges she's been deceived. "I knew it would end like this," clucks the Consul. (Last year, an American professor wrote a book, "Butterfly's Child"--renamed Benji-- that imagines the youngster growing up \on a farm in the Midwest after Pinkerton retires.) Stefano Secco, the tenor from Milan who sings Pinkerton in this production, says he knows he's done a good job when he gets booed at the curtain call.

But in the end, it's all about the soprano who sings Butterfly. Patricia Racette owns the role, taking us from a giddy teenager thrilled to be marrying an American in a Navy uniform to the sadder but wiser single mom who chooses suicide over dishonor. Racette has lived in Japan and knows firsthand the gestures and movements of a geisha; she has sung Butterfly almost 100 times, most recently at the Met in New York. Vocally, the part demands everything, while physically the Japanese geisha gestures must be precise. If there's an emotion to be manipulated, Racette knows how to wring the heartstrings.

The story, in fact, was originally adapted for the Broadway stage by the American playwright David Belasco; Puccini saw a production in London in 1900 and--though he understood not one word of English--was moved to tears. And, sure, there's a certain irony that in Seattle the American naval officer is sung by an Italian, the American consul by a Canadian, the two Japanese women by Americans, all led by a Bulgarian conductor. If you stood around until the world produced a perfect Japanese Butterfly, you'd still be waiting for the downbeat.

On the HD simulcast at Key Arena on opening night, it was a bit of a surprise to see beer vendors in the aisles before the music started, although there was no intrusive "Getcher programs, getcher peanuts, getcher sooshee!" thank goodness.Instead, the jaw-dropping immediacy of the performace itself. I found that the closeups of the singers made the story seem even more tragic, but my own sense of awe and terror wasn't readily shared. (That essay is here.) Onstage at McCaw, there seemed to be much greater warmth in the audience toward the performers, a greater connection with the artists, and a growing sense of excitement and foreboding that exploded in well-deserved applause at the final curtain.

Seattle Opera presents Madama Butterfly, at McCaw Hall. Performances May 11, 12, 16 & 19 at 7:30 PM; May 13 & 20 at 2 PM. Tickets from ($25 to $244) online at www.SeattleOpera.org, or by calling the box office (206-389-7676) during business hours.

Above: Patricia Racette as Butterfly, Sefano Secco as Pinkerton.

Opera in HD: Ready for her closeup

Patricia Racette as Cio-Cio-San on the HD screen at Key Arena

 It's not the fervid excitement that used to precede a Sonics game at Key Arena, with vendors in the aisles: "Getcher programs, getcher co' beer, getcher sooshee!" (Not really, but you get the idea). Instead, there's a tranquil anticipation leading up to the first-ever simulcast of a local opera production.

No matter that it's actually happening, live, at McCaw Hall, barely 300 yards away, the premiere of Seattle Opera's Madama Butterfly. The HD screen at one end of the Key is enormous, 50 by 80 feet, dwarfing the evening's live presenters. Previews play: interviews with designers and directors. And, just like the movies, there's a cartoon, the iconic "What's Opera, Doc?" parody of classical Wagner stagings. Then Speight Jenkins steps to the microphone at McCaw and onto the screen, ten times larger than life, to say a few words of welcome.

"Lights!!" someone shouts from the balcony, where spotlights are still glaring. As conductor Julian Kovatchev mounts the podium (in a view from the orchestra pit that non-musicians will never see), the shouting becomes a chant, "Turn down the lights! Turn down the lights!" Just in time, the house lights dim, and the maestro gives the downbeat.

Movie directors have known for decades that closeups do wonders for drawing people into a story. ("We didn't need dialogue; we had faces.") and Madama Butterfly's Patricia Racette spends the next three hours reconfirming her status as the queen of opera in HD opera: She doesn't need to say it: she is big. It's the pictures that got small.

With remarkably few glitches (a split-screen effect in Act III that failed due to a wayward camera), the simulcast was better than the best seat I've ever had at McCaw. No opera glasses needed.

Frank Zamora at the HD console

Video director Frank Zamcona (known for the San Francisco Opera's successful "Opera at the Ballpark" series) uses his seven HD cameras to propel the story in ways that you can't see no matter where you sit, where you view the full stage no matter what. In Act I, for example, the camera catches Suzuki overhearing Pinkerton tell Sharpless that he's looking forward to the day he'll marry a "real American wife." No way that a Japanese servant girl like Suzuki could actually understand a word of English, but the cutaway (and Suzuki's arched eyebrow) tells the audience that she's already wary of Pinkerton.

The music continues without interruption. There are no recitatives, no spoken dialogue; everything is sung with dramatic immediacy. We see every twitch in Butterfly's composure. Patricia Racette isn't playing a part or singing a role, she's inhabiting her character with such conviction that we forget we're watching a performance. Even though the story is familiar, the outcome known to every opera-goer, we live Butterfly's anguish, and at the climax, when Butterfly surrenders her child and kills herself, thousands of sports fan gasped in horror.

At McCaw, as Racette took her bows, the audience was on its feet (you could hear them cheering wildly), yet the Key was muted, the crowd strangely silent. Applause, yes, but polite. Almost no one standing. Not because they weren't thrilled, in my view, but because they were numb. It's thrilling to see and hear opera live, and we've been conditioned to respond with applause and calls of bravo at live performances. The hybrid HD experience overwhelms our senses and seems to call for a new set of responses. When we were kids at the matinee, we'd cheer for the cavalry. HD is a different sort of adventure but we should allow ourselves to become kids again and cheer like crazy.

Frank Zamora photo by Jonathan Dean, Seattle Opera

(UPDATE of sorts: this isn't just a Seattle issue; according to the NY Times, it's an HD problem.

Attila invades Seattle Opera

 

Giuseppe Verdi was only 33 when Attila had its premiere (in Venice, in 1846), and he had already written the wildly popular Nabucco, an opera whose "Va, Pensiero" (the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) would become the anthem for a united Italy in 1861. He would write another 19 operas after Attila, almost all of them grander and more mature works, most with similar themes; Verdi's particular gift was music that intertwined the power of politics and the drama of human emotions.

Opera in the 19th century was accessible to virtually everyone serving as an influential means of civic communications, not unlike rock concerts today, and Attila (pronounced, in the Italian idiom, AH-till-uh) celebrates nationalistic resolve against a foreign invader.

In the title role, John Relyea struts around the stage in camouflage fatigues and a fur-lined Mongolian greatcoat, his menacing bass notes booming like cannon fire. Fresh from La Scala, baritone Marco Vratogna reprises the part of Ezio, the Roman ambassador who tries to appease the bloodthirsty Huns. Barrel-chested Antonello Palombi has the full-throttled tenor role of Foresto, leader of the rebels, and it is the Venezuelan soprano Ana Lucrecia Garcia who outshines them all, vocally and dramatically, as the daughter of a slain rebel who avenges her father at the final curtain.

Budget cuts may mean there's no longer a complete "second cast," and only one Sunday matinee of Attila, yet, even if the production looks a bit drab, Seattle Opera hasn't skimped on singers or music. The remarkable chorus, directed by the admirable Beth Kirchhoff, is divided here into Huns, slave women and refugees, and Verdi gives them several rousing ensembles. Carlo Montanaro, who conducted Don Quixote in Seattle last season, returns to lead the orchestra with impressive respect for Verdi's score.


Alas, the French stage director, Bernard Uzan, can do no more than shuffle the singers around the imported set, enhanced for the occasion with digital rearscreen projections that successfully disguise urban rubble as a forest glen, but are otherwise irrelevant (a map of Italy, a stencilled eagle, a symbolic A for Attila). Melanie Taylor Burgess's costumes are the most puzzling aspect of this production: the Huns wear standard-issue guerilla denim, but refugees wear what look like royal blue silks and satins, Foresto gets an elegant, full-length leather coat; the Roman ambassador wears a silly, gold-braided, bright-red soldier-suit; a priest (the Pope?) wears dazzling white vestments. Ms. Garcia suffers the indignity of a costume that's a cross between Mao suit and a stewardess uniform.

Ezio's first-act offer to Attila, "Avrai tu l'universo, resti l'Italia a me!" ("You can have the universe, but leave Italy to me!") may sound like treasonous Realpolitik today but resonated as patriotism to Italian audiences of the day. By removing all traces of historical context and dressing Attila in a rag-tag mash-up of contemporary freedom-fighters, Seattle Opera has done itself no artistic favors. In the end, however, it is the magnificent singing that raises this Attlia above the level of guerilla theater.

Seattle Opera presents Attila by Giuseppe Verdi, at McCaw Hall through January 28th. Tickets $25 to $213 online or by calling 800-426-1619

Seattle Opera photos of John Relyea in the title role, top, and Ana Lucrecia Garcia with Antonello Palombi, above © Elise Bakketun