Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Sing a “Dolce Vita” Don Pasquale

• Performances of Seattle Opera Young Artists Don Pasquale are 7.30 p.m. on March 31 and April 6 and 7, matinée April 1 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $55 adults, $20 students.

“Anglo-Saxon fairy tales end with marriage and living happily ever after. Italian comedy begins there, and the woman outfoxes the man every step of the way.” So says Peter Kazaras, stage director for Seattle Opera Young Artists Program (YAP) production of Donizetti’s comedy Don Pasquale, which opens Saturday for two weekends at the University of Washington’s Meany Theater.

It’s the tale of an old man who plans to take a young wife, in order to teach his nephew and heir Ernesto a lesson. Ernesto is refusing to marry the girl of Don Pasquale’s choice. But Don P’s friend, Dr. Malatesta, foresees much trouble ahead, and organizes a fake marriage with Norina, the girl Ernesto wants to marry. Norina is meek until the fake ceremony is over and then proceeds to lead the old man a wild dance, making his life a misery with a sequence of—to us—extremely funny episodes, until finally everything is put right, the old man is relieved to be rid of his unruly bride and the young lovers are together.

Kazaras has set it in Fellini’s Rome of La Dolce Vita, the 1950s to ’60s, where fashion, and Norina, are forging ahead with post-war abandon, but Don P is stuck somewhere in pre-war style.

Every year the Young Artists Program brings in nine or ten promising young singers on the threshold of operatic careers. The 21-week program gives them coaching in all aspects of being an opera singer, from physical well-being to acting to the business side of things as well as lots of performing. The fall offering travels with minimal sets and costumes all around the state, and unitl now, the spring opera has been fully staged at the Theater at Meydenbauer in Bellevue. This year, with Don Pasquale, it has moved to Meany Theater.

“Meany has wonderful acoustics, but it’s frankly a challenge going into a space three times the size of the previous space,” says Kazaras.

The YAP budget has become more and more limited, and Kazaras and his design team have had to use their formidable imaginations to overcome this. Set designer Donald Eastman’s unerrring eye, Deborah Trout’s costumes, and Chris Reay’s lighting are combining to present something fresh and fun.

Just using projections is not the answer, as they often involve triple the rehearsal time, but they are one of many design choices which can be used to enhance the whole, as they are here. (Think: Norina’s redecorating scheme.)

How to choose the right opera for the young participants is a puzzle Kazaras cannot begin to put together until he knows who those singers will be and what their voices are like. It isn’t just a choice of soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone, as one may have a Mozart or Handel voice, another clearly heading to Puccini or even Wagner eventually, and Kazaras must find an opera which will give the singers experience, suit their voices, and also nurture what are still young instruments, easily damaged by overloading.

Established artists have sung roles many times and know what they need to do to perform consistently throughout an opera. Young artists, says Kazaras, “don’t know yet what they can’t do. They are more willing to try anything. No one says ‘I don’t do this or I can’t do that.’ It’s at this point they find things they thought they couldn’t do and that they can do. It’s my job to make that process more manageable as they go forward.”

Since the inception of the program, the young artists have also found themselves cast in mainstage productions of Seattle Opera, though only in recent years have they been included while they are still in the program. This has made choosing them trickier, as Kazaras, with YAP director Aren Der Hacopian and music director Brian Garman must also think of the mainstage productions coming up where some of those voices will be needed. Young artists often return here for a second year, and it’s those, whose voices and capacities are better known, who are most often picked for the main stage.

“It’s one of the challenges of working with them,” says Kazaras.

Five of this year’s crop sang solo roles in the mainstage production of Carmen. “It didn’t sound like established artists up here and young artists struggling at the bottom” says Kazaras with satisfaction. Tenor Andrew Stenson, in his second year with the program, was the cover for Orpheus in the recent main stage production of Orphée et Eurydice. It so happened that he had to take over the role on March 4 for William Burden and did it well.

Four young artists appear in the upcoming production of Madama Butterfly, which Kazaras is also directing, including Sarah Larsen as Suzuki. Seattle Opera takes on a new venture with Butterfly. Opening night will be simulcast at Key Arena, free to the 8,000 people the arena will hold. Experienced video-director Frank Zamacona will be directing the multi-camera shoot, as he has done before for San Francisco Opera.

Kazaras then will have a short break before coming back for the summer opera, Puccini’s Turandot, when he is returning to his first career, as tenor. While nowadays he spends much more time directing and working with young artists—he is Director of Opera UCLA, and a professor there—he has sung on opera stages worldwide, and for Turandot he will take on the small role of the Emperor Altoum.

“When else am I going to be able to say I’m singing the same role with Seattle Opera as Giovanni Martinelli did in 1967?”

Fist, though comes Don Pasquale, which opens Saturday night. “This isn’t a show,” says Kazaras, “about people coming to see something opulent and old fashioned. This is sleek, witty, and very beautiful.”