Speight Jenkins
| Speight Jenkins | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 31, 1937 |
| Occupation | Opera General Director |
| Years active | 1983 - 2014 |
| Spouse(s) | Linda Sands (2 children) |
Speight Jenkins, Jr. (born January 31, 1937) was the general director of Seattle Opera until 2014.
Jenkins, a native of Dallas, Texas, is the son of Speight Jenkins, Sr. and Sara Baird Jenkins. His B.A. degree is from the University of Texas at Austin, and he graduated in 1961 from Columbia Law School. He served in the U.S. Army, and later became a music critic and journalist. He worked for seven years at Opera News as its news and reports editor, and later at the New York Post from 1973 to 1981 as music critic. He has been a host for U.S. television's Live from the Metropolitan Opera and a guest speaker on the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts.
In the early 1980s, Jenkins was a guest lecturer at Seattle Opera for the company's production of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. His knowledge impressed the Seattle Opera board of trustees, such that they offered him the post of general director of the company and he began his tenure in that post with the company in 1983. His contract was extended for another ten years, and in 2003, he signed another 10-year extension to his contract.
At Seattle Opera he has produced two complete cycles of Wagner's Ring and new productions of the other six frequently produced Wagner operas, as well as new productions of Prokofiev's War and Peace, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Dvorak's Rusalka, Bellini's Norma, Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and Iphigénie en Tauride, four Strauss operas, many by Verdi and Puccini, plus several contemporary works. In 2010 Seattle Opera gave the world premiere of Amelia, by Daron Hagen.
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