SEATTLE — A few days before the opening of Seattle Opera’s production of The Magic Flute in February, the company’s new general and artistic director, James Robinson, revealed that when he took over from Christina Scheppelmann in September 2024, he inherited a schedule with only one opera, Carmen, in place for the 2025-26 season. Everything else was selected or finalized after his arrival.
In addition to Carmen, Robinson’s first full season includes The Pirates of Penzance, Seattle’s first Gilbert & Sullivan; Richard Strauss’ Daphne in Concert; an LGBTQ+ History project opera, Fellow Travelers; Patricia Racette doing an Edith Piaf evening; and a holiday Gay Apparel performance with tenor John Marzano hosting in his drag persona, Anita Spritzer. It’s quite the novel season. Programmed well before Donald Trump came back into power, it almost reads like the antidote to his anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.
“I think we’re in the business of telling stories,” said Robinson, former head of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. “We’re a very community-facing opera company, and a good story is a good story. Even though Seattle has the fifth largest gay population and the largest gay Chamber of Commerce in the country if not the world, I was surprised to learn that Seattle Opera had never mounted a main stage performance focused on the LGBTQ+ community. I thought that was weird.
“During the 16 years I was in St. Louis, we did a number of projects that had a real strong theme. So, when Kevin Newbury, who was actually my assistant for a number of years, told me that he’d like to put together a consortium of companies to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Fellow Travelers, I said that I’d love to be able to launch it in Seattle. It’s a really good piece.”
Sticking with his community focus, Robinson cited a future season’s world premiere by Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo. “This will be the first main stage opera by an Asian composer in Seattle, which is kind of remarkable given the city’s large Asian population,” he said. “It’s based on Ang Lee’s movie The Wedding Banquet, a new version of which just premiered at Sundance. The screenwriter for both movie versions, James Schamus, has written the libretto.”
Asked about Seattle’s relative paucity of “star” singers who draw audiences to some of the world’s major houses, Robinson replied, “The opera world has changed so much over the years. There are not what I would call stars like there used to be. Some people get more attention and seem to be on people’s radar screens, but it’s not like we have all of these singers who exist like they did back in the day where you would have Tebaldi and Scotto and more rotating on the stages of major opera houses. That’s not to say that there isn’t talent out there, because there is. But it’s not the way it was.
“Sometimes, each opera company creates its own stars. It’s more common these days to cultivate an audience for a certain singer, based on what’s going on at that opera company. I wouldn’t say that we don’t have the funding to bring good singers to Seattle. Our fee structure is actually pretty darn good. It’s all really a question of taste. I’m more interested in singers who are just getting there as opposed to those who are really well established. Not that we don’t want established singers, but I like to give people big opportunities to try something out for the first time. For example, Sasha Cooke, who’s a fantastic mezzo-soprano, has never performed the role of Carmen. So, she’s doing Carmen for us next season.”
Robinson also addressed the thorny issue of visual discontinuity between how a singer looks and the character they play. “The very first — the only — show I ever directed in Seattle was 20 years ago, and it starred Stephanie Blythe as Carmen. Speight [Jenkins] is probably still getting hate mail for that one. But I thought Stephanie was an incredibly compelling Carmen. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it sung as well.
“So, I definitely fall on the side of having great voices. You can always adjust everything else. But the singers I know these days are extremely aware of the fact that they’ve got to be really good on stage. They’ve got to be convincing in their characterizations. Opera is not reality. We’re not making movies here. So, I would rather take somebody who has a really fantastic voice over somebody who ‘looks the part,’ because this is still, first and foremost, a musical art form.”
Ever the one for voices, I mentioned some of the singers I admire whom I’ve either seen in San Francisco or will soon hear in Munich. These included Pene Pati, Michael Fabiano, Jonathan Tetelman, Konstantin Krimmel, and Sandrine Piau. Would I ever hear any of these singers in Seattle?
“You know, people get very, very busy, and we’re a little late planning,” Robinson replied. “When I first came on board, I had to assemble the four shows for next session. But now we’re planning three years in advance. We’ve got some people lined up who are going to be really remarkable, including some of the names you’ve mentioned. And there are others, including David Butt Philip, who is extraordinary and really making a name for himself. Mané Galoyan and Emily Pogorelc are others.
“The other thing about the directing work I’ve done at Santa Fe, Houston, and the Met is that I like going to singers and asking if there’s another role they want to do. It’s very exciting for me to give people a chance to do something on their wish list. I’m working the phones with a lot of my singer friends throughout the world, trying to see if they’d like to make a debut here or take on something that they haven’t done before.”
Robinson assured me that, as much as the company is moving forward and embracing new works, it also has some Wagner projects in store. “Everybody is very excited about Wagner in this town,” he said. “One of the most frequently asked questions I get is when are we doing the Ring Cycle again? I often say, ‘Well, he did write some other operas.’ We have those in the pipeline.”
