Seattle Opera Podcast

Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces the mezzo and contralto voices. With their rich, creamy, dark sounds these lower-voiced ladies play opera's most luscious babes, as well as boys, old women, jealous wives, vengeful goddesses, and loving mothers. Featuring musical examples including Seattle Opera favorites Michelle DeYoung, Helene Schneidermann, Sarah Mattox, Rosemary Alvino, Daniela...

Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean leads a tour through the land of soprano, from dazzling coloratura acrobats to fearsome goddesses whose roar sets the opera house aflame. Includes musical examples featuring many favorite Seattle Opera sopranos: Cyndia Sieden, Joan Sutherland, Sarah Coburn, Sally Wolf, Dana Pundt, Jennifer Zetlan, Nuccia Focile, Angel Blue, Alexandra Deshorties, Renee Fleming,...

Learn more about this fresh, fascinating, and wholly operatic new work, which will play on www.king.org on Saturday June 13 at 10 am PST. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, the opera with music by Mason Bates and libretto by Mark Campbell. Musical examples from the new recording of the opera made at Santa Fe Opera, summer 2017, and available from Penta...

Seattle Opera Mornings on KING FM: coming up June 6, The Marriage of Figaro, performed January 2016. Aidan Lang, then General Director of Seattle Opera, brought his own New Zealand Opera production of one of his favorite works to Seattle. (Lang worked as a freelance stage director for many years before becoming an administrator.) In this podcast (transcribed at www.seattleoperablog.com/2015/12/aid...

Tosca,  featured on "Seattle Opera Mornings on KING FM" on May 30,  is both a great opera for newbies to the art form and a rewarding piece to hear multiple times; it's accessible—a 'thriller' as cinematic as any Hollywood classic—and also stacked with layers of sumptuous artistry to savor. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces Tosca, with musical examples from Seattle Opera archival re...

Are you ready for this weekend (May 23)'s KING FM rebroadcast, the wildest opera by the person many consider opera's greatest composer? Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces Il trovatore, with musical examples from Seattle Opera's archival recordings of Il trovatore: from 1997, with Carol Vaness (Leonora) and Gegam Grigorian (Manrico), and Gordon Hawkins (Count Di Luna), conducted by An...

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Operetta is a delightful kind of entertainment resembling opera, but different; whereas in opera the music tells the story, in operetta the music decorates a story which is usually little more than a joke—a story that nobody could possibly take seriously. Operetta...

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Singspiel (that's German for SongPlay) mixes songs, dialogues, choruses, and marvelous orchestral writing with fun and fantasy for a lowbrow, family friendly art form—the ancestor of today's Star Wars movies. Mozart's ever-popular Magic Flute is the perfect introd...

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Opéra comique , a native French form of lower-brow musical theater, features spoken dialogue, catchy tunes with easy-to-sing refrains, and middle-class values. Many of the opéra-comiques still performed today (including Carmen , The Daughter of the Regiment , and...

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Opera buffa , the beloved old Italian tradition of opera comedy, is what you get by adding music to the even older Italian tradition of improvised (artisanal) comedy, commedia dell'arte . The fools and buffoons of commedia— the sassy wenches, befuddled old profess...

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Verismo was a late nineteenth-century reaction against the excesses of the great tradition. The aim was immediate, powerful, realistic opera, with post-Wagnerian music of titanic passion setting stories about simple, everyday, relatable characters. The vogue for v...

Dacia Clay, KING FM Creative Director and host of the Classical Classroom Podcast, chats with Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean about Pushkin, the great Russian poet, novelist, and playwright. Pushkin's brilliant works have almost all been transformed into operas, composed by generations of Russian composers. In Part One, Clay and Dean give an overview of Pushkin's brief and colorful life. In...

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Music Drama was the personal solution to the problems of presenting opera in nineteenth-century Europe developed by composer/librettist Richard Wagner, opera's ultimate mad genius. These long, loud, big works challenge artists, audiences, and the art form itself....

Dacia Clay, KING FM Creative Director and host of the Classical Classroom Podcast, chats with Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean about Pushkin, the great Russian poet, novelist, and playwright. Pushkin's brilliant works have almost all been transformed into operas, composed by generations of Russian composers. In Part One, Clay and Dean give an overview of Pushkin's brief and colorful life. In...

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Bel Canto Melodrama refers to for serious Italian opera from the first part of the nineteenth century—when opera singing was about dazzling trapeze acts, and opera plots tended toward the wild, far-fetched, and grotesque. Inspired by their newfound obsession with...

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Grand opera developed in the mid-19th century and centered on performances at the Opéra in Paris. The roots of the genre stretch back to the opulent court of France's Sun King, Louis XIV, and continue to influence how opera is presented to this day. Verdi's Aida (...

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Opera seria , traditional Italian serious opera, developed in the mid-1600s and lasted into the early 1800s. Handel's Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) , an opera from 1724, is a great masterpiece and an examplar of the genre; another is Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (aka...

"Men die and governments change, but the songs of La bohème will live forever," wrote Thomas Alva Edison to Giacomo Puccini. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces La bohème, with musical examples from Seattle Opera's archival recordings of La bohème : from 2007, with Rosario La Spina (Rodolfo) and Nuccia Focile (Mimì), conducted by Vjekoslav Sutej; and from 2013, with Andrew Garland (Sc...

Seattle's jazz community is getting excited about Charlie Parker's Yardbird . Tenor Joshua Stewart, who makes his Seattle Opera debut as Charlie Parker (a role he has now sung in many other cities), visited radio station KNKX, 88.5 FM, Seattle's connection to Jazz, Blues, and NPR. He brought with him David McDade, Seattle Opera's Head of Coach-Accompanists, and sang some of the arias he sings in t...

Daniel Schnyder and Bridgette Wimberly, composer and librettist of CHARLIE PARKER'S YARDBIRD, talked about this exciting new opera the other night with Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean and Abe Beeson of radio station KNKX, Seattle's connection to jazz and blues. An edited version of that interview, this podcast offers windows into how Wimberly found the story of several women who loved a musi...

After our performances of Eugene Onegin in January 2020 audiences stayed to discuss the show with cast, crew, and staff. Hear highlights from those post-show Q&As. In addition to audience members, voices include those of Tomer Zvulun (Original Production Director), Stephanie Havey (Associate Director), Aleksandar Marković (Conductor), Michael Adams (Onegin), Marina Costa-Jackson (Tatyana—bonus pin...

A new opera that combines jazz and classical? Charlie Parker's Yardbird is about music, creativity, communication, race and racism, drugs and addiction, and life and death and freedom. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces this new opera with music by Daniel Schnyder and a libretto by Bridgette A. Wimberly. Musical examples from an Opera Philadelphia performance, starring Lawrence Brown...

Tosca is both a great opera for newbies to the art form and a rewarding piece to hear multiple times; it's accessible—a 'thriller' as cinematic as any Hollywood classic—and also stacked with layers of sumptuous artistry to savor. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces Tosca, with musical examples from Seattle Opera archival recordings of Tosca made in 2001, 2007, and 2015 and featuring S...

One of late twentieth-century opera's great successes, Flight , with music by Jonathan Dove to a libretto by April DeAngelis, makes a long-awaited Seattle premiere in 2021. This " Marriage of Figaro for the 1990s" is a bold and beautiful opera, with a message more pertinent than ever. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces Flight, with musical examples from the commercially available rec...

A new production of Mozart's classic promises a fresh look at the legendary seducer and how he is punished. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces the music and characters of Don Giovanni, with musical examples from Seattle Opera archival recordings of Don Giovanni from 1991, conducted by Gerard Schwarz; 1999, conducted by Klaus Donath, 2007, conducted by Andreas Mitisek; and 2014, condu...