Seattle Opera Re-opens - The American Bayreuth?

“Seattle is a city that is given to earth tones,” says Speight Jenkins, general director of the Seattle Opera. “I’ve never liked that. So when we were remodelling the opera house,I told them that I didn’t want an earth tone in the house.”

Seattle Opera’s general director Speight Jenkins is a man of immense passion and enthusiasm and one of his greatest passions is for the work of Richard Wagner. So when his newly renovated opera house re-opened on August 2 with a performance of Parsifal,it came as no surprise to see a Rheingold rainbow in the form of a light show playing on the metal arches and scrims that project from the façade.

As for the interior decor, Speight Jenkins got his wish – he usually does; there are no earth tones to be seen in the building that has emerged from the shell of the old theatre. Instead the curving glass façade, the silvery grey of the foyer and the teal green seats in the auditorium itself all reflect the colours and moods of the surrounding Pacific Northwest with its rains and ocean and forest. That same natural setting contributed to the first Seattle Ring back in the seventies when company founder, Glynn Ross, another passionate Wagnerian, realized that the region’s mountains, lakes and forests were reminiscent of the Alpine landscapes that inspired Wagner.

When he also realized that, apart from New York’s Metropolitan Opera,no other North American house was mounting a full Ring Cycle, he took a very courageous leap and, to the astonishment of the opera establishment, launched the complete Ring of the Nibelungen in his small, geographically remote company. The tradition grew with the arrival of Speight Jenkins and went on to encompass other Wagner operas. Today, with the exception of Bayreuth itself, Seattle Opera has become the opera house most enamoured of Wagner’s work. After the 2001 Ring Cycle, the Times Literary Supplement said that “Jenkins’ version of the great Nibelungen Cycle reaffirms his company’s stature as North America’s pre-eminent Wagner house.”

In the land of Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks and Grunge rock, the locals have caught Speight Jenkins’ enthusiasm and flock to performances of the difficult German genius’s music. And Jenkins does not patronise his public. Productions are sometimes traditional, more often modern and, in the case of the current Parsifal, more than a little ambiguous in their interpretation of Parsifal’s meaning. Jenkins and his company do, however, provide a variety of lectures, symposia, free CDs etc to prepare the public for what they will see. And, if they still have any remaining questions after the five hour performance, Speight Jenkins himself hosts a question and answer session. In the old theatre that was held over a cup of coffee in the foyer. Now there is a lecture hall specially set aside for the purpose.

Microsoft has sponsored the new season. Wagner, who in his lifetime, struggled endlessly to obtain the patronage of the rich and successful of his world, would be amused but probably not surprised to see that the most contemporary citizens of one of our most modern cities have taken it upon themselves in the 21st century to support him.