Seattle Opera‘s next season brings a cavalcade of famous names, beginning with the operas themselves: audience favorites like Porgy and Bess, Carmen, and Madama Butterfly, are joined by an opera that won over Seattle 24 years ago, Orphée et Eurydice, but hasn’t been back since. Completists and anyone who cares about a united Italy will be looking forward to the Seattle Opera premiere of an opera about a Hun you may have heard of: Attila, from a young Italian upstart named Verdi.
Summertime is usually reserved for Wagner in Seattle, so this Porgy, which unites Gordon Hawkins and Lisa Daltirus in a true Seattle production (it’s toured here previously), may make the somnambulist opera subscriber blink a few times and recheck his tickets. John DeMain returns to conduct Gershwin’s chock-full-of-hits score, and Chris Alexander directs. Set and costumes are from New York Harlem Theatre. (By the way, if you ever run across a copy of Jim Cullum’s dixieland jazz version, buy it.)
In the lead in Carmen you’ll hear a newcomer, Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, with Joseph Calleja and Michael Todd Simpson as the men she leads into poor life choices. Attila brings back John Relyea, with Venezuelan soprano Ana Lucrecia Garcia as Odabella and Antonello Palombi as Foresto. For Orphée, William Burden and Davinia Rodrìguez (Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle!) are the lead couple. The season closes with Madama Butterfly, with the Met’s Patricia Racette making her Seattle Opera debut as Cio-Cio-San, and Italian tenor Stefano Secco as her second-thought-having Pinkerton.
Other names of note: Pier Giorgio Morandi makes his Seattle Opera debut conducting Carmen. Perhaps saving on airfare, Bernard Uzan directs both Carmen and Attila, back to back. Carlo Montanaro leads the orchestra for Verdi’s opera, and Charles Edwards will provide the set design. For Orphée, the very good José Maria Condemi will direct, working with choreographer Yannis Adoniou and conductor Gary Thor Wedow. Designer is the young Philip Lienau. Another Butterfly? This one features inventive director Peter Kazaras, with new-to-Seattle Julian Kovatchev waving his baton around.
The biggest names for opera cognoscenti have to be the relative rarity Orphée and the occasionally revived Attila, which finally got its own Met production last year. The New York Times review boils the plot down for you: “Attila the Hun conquers Italy; falls for the beautiful Odabella, daughter of a vanquished leader; rejects overtures from Roman general Ezio; and is killed by Odabella after marrying her.” If that sounds like an odd summary of Attila’s career, keep in mind that the subject of Italian opera is generally Italy. To tide you over, here’s one of the opera’s famous moments, which argues for an Italy free of foreign rule:
