Pacific Operaworks: A new chamber company debuts in Seattle

It takes a brave group of musicians to launch a new opera company in times like these. Braver still is the choice to launch it with an undisputed but obscure masterpiece: Monteverdi's 1640 opera "The Return of Ulysses" ("Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria"), in which the updated Greek drama is portrayed by five master puppeteers.

Pacific Operaworks founder and artistic director Stephen Stubbs, a Seattle native and three-time Grammy Award nominee, smiles when you ask him about the tricky timing for the launch of the inaugural production, which opens Wednesday at the Moore Theatre.

"If you wait for the perfect time, it never happens," explains Stubbs, who adds that he's "tremendously excited" about the staging as well as the music of the Monteverdi classic. Designed and directed by the noted South African artist William Kentridge, the new show is planned as a unique blend of the old and the new: music on period instruments, presented with life-size modern puppets (made and operated by the Handspring Puppet Company), backed by video and graphic-art images.

"Kentridge speaks about being aware of three different times at once: Homeric time, Monteverdi's time and our own," Stubbs explains. Some of the puppets have design elements from Ancient Greece, others from 1640s Venice, and still other images (such as X-rays) are specifically modern. The sum total, Stubbs says, has "an effect of the timelessness of the mythic content."

This production (with different casts) has been performed several times in Europe and South Africa, and was called "magical" by The New York Times. The musical side of Seattle's "Ulysses" is all new; Stubbs and his harpist wife Maxine Eilander have even created a new edition of the score. The cast includes such highly regarded singers as Cyndia Sieden, Ross Hauck, Laura Pudwell, Sarah Mattox, Jason Stoots, Douglas Williams, Zachary Wilder and James Brown.

It's a big advantage, when starting a new company in times like these, to have a lot of established partners. Rather than trying to do everything himself, Stubbs is working together with a board representing such widespread interests as Seattle Opera (Perry Lorenzo), St. James Cathedral (James Savage) and the Greg Kucera Gallery (Greg Kucera). Further, he's partnering with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, a group with a respected history and a loyal following.

The result, Stubbs feels, will be a melding of common interests.

"We want to be an integral part of the community, not just a new group with no links to the existing ones," Stubbs says. His new company will collaborate with the Henry Art Gallery (currently showing an exhibition of Kentridge's visual works), the University of Washington (where Kentridge will present a lecture) and Seattle Opera (where Stubbs has presented master classes), as well as the Seattle Baroque Orchestra — whose members will play in the "Ulysses" production, and whose administration is working with the new company in reciprocal marketing efforts.

Community offers support

Stubbs has been looking for just such a mix of partners and opportunities ever since his return to Seattle in 2006, following a highly successful 25-year career in Europe as a lutenist and conductor of baroque opera. During that time, he founded two ensembles, Tragicomedia and Teatro Lirico; taught lute and performance practice at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen (north Germany); launched a career as a baroque opera conductor; and recorded more than 100 CDs, three of which have been nominated for Grammys.

In 2006, Seattle beckoned Stubbs back, partly because the early music community here has grown and matured impressively over the past decades. The Early Music Guild, which Stubbs helped to found in the early 1970s, had spawned several thriving ensembles, and was presenting concerts of local as well as international talent. There were great opportunities for Stubbs and Eilander.

"Even before we actually moved back to Seattle in July of 2006," Stubbs says, "we already made the experiment of transplanting my summer workshop in baroque opera called the 'Accademia d'Amore' (which I had conducted in Bremen for seven seasons) to Seattle. The transplant was a great success. That was mainly because I found that we could get almost all the necessary faculty (voice specialist Nancy Zylstra, early dance expert Anna Mansbridge, early-music authority Margriet Tindemans), as well as Maxine and myself, from Seattle."

Because of rising demand, the summer course expanded at the invitation of St. James Cathedral to become an "institute in residence" there, with a series of weekend courses there during the year, managed by Eilander. The summer and weekend courses now are called "Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera," or SABO, which operates under the Pacific Operaworks umbrella as the company's educational branch.

Building relationships

Is the new company in competition with Seattle Opera? Certainly not, Stubbs explains. For one thing, Pacific Operaworks isn't going to be staging "Aida" or "The Ring" anytime soon. And after presenting a baroque workshop for Seattle Opera's Young Artists program, and playing in the orchestra pit during the company's production of "Giulio Cesare," Stubbs has already worked alongside Seattle Opera, whose general director Speight Jenkins has been "very gracious" to the fledgling company.

"Speight understands perfectly how a high-level chamber opera company can complement a grand opera company like Seattle Opera in the context of the metropolis Seattle has become," Stubbs observed. "We will undoubtedly be a future hirer of the best talents which come through the Young Artists program. For baroque music (and, for that matter, for new music) it is often of extremely high value to have young singers who are flexible and open. In this way and all others we hope to be a little sister organization to Seattle Opera."

Pacific Operaworks has big plans for the future. In March of 2010, they'll bring the composer Heiner Goebbels to Seattle to oversee a production of his piece "Songs of Wars I Have Seen," originally composed for the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In Seattle, Stubbs will partner with Seattle Baroque Orchestra and Seattle Chamber Players for performances at another partner, On the Boards. The "Songs of Wars" will be a double bill with a short Monteverdi opera, "Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda." And more Monteverdi is to come.

"In April of 2010, I will conduct performances of Monteverdi's '1610 Vespers' at St. James Cathedral," Stubbs explains. "For the occasion we will bring the magnificent cornet and sackbut ensemble Concerto Palatino from Europe to partner with members of Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the Tudor Choir and nine vocal soloists. This production, co-presented here by the Early Music Guild, will then go on tour around the US, particularly to other cathedrals."

But meanwhile, Stubbs has a big show ahead in the company's debut, with the "Ulysses" production moving on to San Francisco following its Seattle run. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that he has chosen for his new company's premier a saga whose subject has some personal resonance: the return to one's homeland.

Melinda Bargreen reviews concerts for 98.1 Classical KING FM at www.king.org. She can be reached at mbargreen@aol.com.