Seattle Opera
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| Formation | 1963 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Glynn Ross |
| Type | Opera company |
| Headquarters | 1020 John Street |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 47°37′12″N 122°20′13″W / 47.620017°N 122.336811°WCoordinates: 47°37′12″N 122°20′13″W / 47.620017°N 122.336811°W |
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General Director
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Aidan Lang |
| Website | seattleopera |
Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often with double casts in major roles to allow for successive evening presentations.
The second general director of Seattle Opera was Speight Jenkins, who retired in 2014. He was replaced by Aidan Lang.
Since August 2003, the company has presented operas in the Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, built on the site of the old Seattle Opera House at Seattle Center. The company does not have a full-time music director. In October 2007, Seattle Opera announced the appointment of Asher Fisch as the company's principal guest conductor.
From the outset, Ross saw opera as something that had to be sold using similar techniques to those used to sell popular entertainment. "To sell opera…you have to get their attention with a little razzle-dazzle. You've got to be simpatico. You have to be able to communicate, and you have to deliver your message with the best possible product you can manage." In 1970, H. C. Schonberg of the New York Times contrasted Seattle Opera's approach to marketing to the then still staid marketing of New York's Metropolitan Opera: "Out there, you see campaign buttons with the legend Opera Lives. It is in Seattle where you can look at the sky and find an airplane skywriting the virtues of Seattle Opera. There are even auto bumper stickers about opera." Further, Schonberg remarked favorably on the "air of freshness and experimentation that contrasts vividly with the dull, tried and true, tired professionalism in other opera houses one could mention."
The company is noted for its performances of the works of Richard Wagner, including the Ring cycle. In 1975, it was the first American company to perform the cycle in its entirety over the space of a week since the Metropolitan Opera did it in 1939.
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