Artists-in-Residence Stephen Stubbs and Cyndia Sieden lead UW voice students in staged scenes from Henry Purcell’s monumental Baroque opera Dido and Aeneas. With staging by Anna Mansbridge.
Staging and Choreography: Anna Mansbridge
Musical Direction, Lute and Baroque Guitar: Stephen Stubbs
Repertoire
Prologue from Fairy Queen
Scene of the Drunken Poet
Drunken Poet – Baritone – Nic Varela
First Fairy – soprano – Krissy Terwilliger
Second Fairy – soprano – Arriane Noland
Dido & Aeneas
Dido – Suzanna Mizell
Aeneas –Joshua Lutman
Belinda – Gemma Balinbin
Second Woman – Yun Hye Kim
Sorceress – Dakota Miller
First Witch – Yoojeong Cho, Inna Tsygankova
Second Witch –Addison Francis, Erika Meyer
Spirit – Brittany Walker
Sailor – Jacob Caspe
Epilogue from Fairy Queen
See, even night - Night - Christine Oshiki
One charming Night – Secrecy – Trevor Ainge
The Plaint – Katie Kelley
Dancers:
Morgan Houghton
Rosemary Adams
Julia Tran
Warren Woo
Orchestra:
Corentin Pokorney 1st violin
Jonathan Kuehn 2nd violin
Vijay Chalasani – Viola
Chris Young – cello
Wyatt Smith - harpsichord
Director Bios
Stephen Stubbs
After a thirty year career in Europe, musical director and lutenist Stephen Stubbs returned to his native Seattle in 2006. Since then he has established his new production company, Pacific Musicworks, and developed a busy calendar as a guest conductor specializing in baroque opera and oratorio.
With his direction of Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival, he began his career as opera director and founded the ensemble Tragicomedia. Since 1997 Stephen has co-directed the bi-annual Boston Early Music Festivalopera and is the permanent artistic co-director. BEMF’s recordings of Conradi’s Ariadne, Lully’s Thesee, and Psyché were nominated for Grammy awards in 2005, 2007, and 2009.
Stephen was born in Seattle, Washington, where he studied composition, piano and harpsichord at the University of Washington. In 1974 he moved to England to study lute with Robert Spencer and then to Amsterdam for further study with Toyohiko Satoh and soon became a mainstay of the burgeoning early-music movement there, working with Alan Curtis on Italian opera in Italy, William Christie on French opera in France and various ensembles in England and Germany particularly the Hilliard Ensemble.
With his return to Seattle in 2006 he formed the long-term goal of establishing a company devoted to the study and production of Baroque opera. His first venture in this direction was the creation of the Accademia de’Amore, an annual summer institute for the training of pre-professional singers and musicians in baroque style and stagecraft, now housed at the Cornish College of the Arts.
In 2008 he established Pacific MusicWorks. The company’s inaugural presentation was a revival of South African artist William Kentridge’s acclaimed multimedia marionette staging of Claudio Monteverdi’s penultimate opera The Return ofUlysses in a co-production with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. After a warmly received 2010 presentation of Monteverdi’s monumental Vespers of 1610 at Seattle’s St. James Cathedral, PMW presented a full subscription season, opening with a program based on the Song of Songs and ending with two triumphantly successful performances of Handel’s early masterpiece, The Triumph of Time (1707).
As a guest conductor Stubbs has led performances of Gluck’s Orfeo and Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Bilbao, Spain, and Monteverdi’s Orfeo at Amsterdam’s Netherlands Opera. Following his successful debut conducting the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 2011, he was invited back in 2012 to conduct the Symphony’s performances of Messiah. He will also debut with the Edmonton Symphony in Messiah this season.
Stephen Stubbs is Senior Artist in Residence and member of the faculty of the School of Music at the University of Washington.
Cyndia Sieden
American soprano Cyndia Sieden moves easily among the Baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary repertoires to worldwide acclaim. In addition, her performances and recordings of his works affirm her status as one of the sovereign Mozart interpreters of the present day.
Highlights of 2011 included performances in Morton Feldman's monodrama Neither for New York City Opera, Ariadne in Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos at the Netherlands Opera and Soprano I in Luigi Nono's Prometeo at the Salzburg and Berlin Festivals. In contrast to these knotty modern works, she returned to Blondchen in Mozart's Abduction with Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the 18th Century at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and on tour throughout Holland.
Sieden has starred at most of the world's great opera houses, including the Munich Bayerische Staatsoper, the New York Met, Paris's Opéra Bastille, the Wiener Staatsoper, Barcelona's Gran Teatre de Liceu, Brussels's La Monnaie, and London's Covent Garden and English National, as well as in Beijing and Australia. Her highly-praised Metropolitan Opera debut was as Berg's Lulu, and her success quickly led to reengagement in 2008 for Die Zauberflöte's Queen of the Night, one of her signature roles.
She is a brilliantly idiomatic interpreter of the works of Richard Strauss. She frequently performs Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos (Munich, Japan, Vienna), as well as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier (Paris Châtelet) and Aminta in Die schweigsame Frau (Palermo and Munich).
Her performances in the high-flying role of Ariel in the premiere of Thomas Adès's The Tempest at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, ignited rave reviews and an astonished public. She has garnered equal enthusiasm and devotion for her Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Blondchen in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, all over the world. Other specialties are Cunegonde in Leonard Bernstein's Candide, and the operas of Handel.
Sieden is much in demand for Orff's Carmina Burana, the oratorios and masses of Handel, Mozart, and Haydn, and works of Bach, Strauss and Mahler. She has sung with many of the most renowned symphony orchestras in the world, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and at New York's Mostly Mozart Festival. In addition, her Lieder recitals are always highly-anticipated events.
Cyndia Sieden was born in California, USA, and received her first vocal instruction there. The significant milestone in her studies was work with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in master classes in Carmel Valley, CA in 1982. Schwarzkopf then invited Sieden to become her private student, and also to work with her in master classes at the 1983 Salzburg Mozarteum. Sieden sang in the culminating concert/competition and won first place, the springboard for her first professional engagements.
In 1984, Cyndia Sieden made her European debut in Il Barbiere at the Bavarian State Opera; her American debut also took place in 1984, in La Fille du Regiment, in Tampa, Florida.
Anna Mansbridge, staging
Anna Mansbridge, Artistic Director of Seattle Early Dance, is from the U.K., where she studied early dance for many years with teachers foremost in the profession. She holds a First Class Honors Degree in Dance and Education from Bedford College, U.K., and an M.F.A in Choreography and Performance from Mills College, C.A. She has been teaching and performing early European Court dance (16th-18th centuries) since 1990. In 1995 she co-founded Footwork OffLimits, a company committed to presenting early dance to audiences in ways both entertaining and informative. Ms Mansbridge has been on the faculty of two early music courses in Europe; the Ringve International Summer School in Trondheim, Norway, and Aestas Musica in Varazdin, Croatia. She immigrated to Seattle in 1998, and in 2000 she founded Seattle Early Dance, which has quickly established itself as the Northwest's premier early dance company, and has been the recipient of a number of grants. Recent choreography and performance credits include Monteverdi's Il Ballo delle Ingrate, John Blow's Venus and Adonis, Baroque Extravaganza with Gallery Concerts, and Spanish Baroque Meets Flamenco in collaboration with Flamenco dance specialist Rubina Carmona. Ms. Mansbridge is also in demand as a solo performer, and has recently appeared with both Seattle Symphony and Bellevue Philharmonic. In addition, Ms. Mansbridge has taught on a number of early music workshops, including The Dancing Master, and the Accademia d'Amore baroque opera workshop, both presented by The Early Music Guild,Seattle, and the Cascade Early Music Festival.
Cast
A native of Houston, Texas, soprano Katie Kelley now attends the University of Washington, where she has appeared in such roles as Suor Infermiera in Suor Angelica, and Orphee in Orphee et Eurydice. Recent professional appearances include premiering the role of Judith in Red Lake, a production of Deseret Experimental Opera Company in Salt Lake City, and singing in the chorus of Cosi fan Tutte with City Opera Ballet in Bellevue. Katie Kelley is a student of Tom Harper and will complete the Master of Music in Voice Performance degree this June.
Addison Francis is a senior at the University of Washington majoring in vocal performance and communication disorders. During her musical endeavors, Addison has had the privilege of studying with Dr. Kari Ragan. In Fall 2017, Addison will be attending graduate school to pursue Speech Language Pathology.
Yun Hye Kim is in her first year of Doctoral Studies, pursuing her DMA in Vocal Performance. She recently appeared in scenes from Die Entführung aus dem Serail as Costanze and Die Zauberflöte as the Second Spirit in the UW’s Opera Workshop. She studies voice in the studio of Dr. Kari Ragan.
Hailing from Olympia, Washington, Christine Oshiki is a student of Thomas Harper who graduates with her Bachelors of Music in Voice in the spring 2017. While at the UW she has performed many roles through the Opera Theater program: Papagena in Die Zauberflöte, Giove and Diana in La Calisto, and in the ensemble of last year’s Orphée et Eurydice. She will also be performing as the Second Lady and Second Spirit in the Toronto Summer Opera Workshop production of Die Zauberflöte.
Jacob Caspe is a second-year at the University of Washington where he studies Classical Voice Performance under the instruction of the renowned coloratura soprano, Cyndia Sieden. Through his musical career, Caspe has performed in numerous musical productions and with an array of talented ensembles, both vocal and symphonic.
Dakota Miller is currently pursuing her DMA in voice at University of Washington. She received a Master's Degree in Voice from UW and a Bachelor's Degree in Vocal Performance from University of Indianapolis. Prior roles at UW include Ino in Handel's Semele, Zita in Gianni Schicchi by Puccini, Third Lady in The Magic Flute, Giunone in Cavalli's La Calisto, and Principessa in Puccini's Suor Angelica. As a soloist she has performed Wagner's Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde with the Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra. She studies with Tomas Harper.
Soprano Arrianne Noland graduated from Utah Valley University in 2015 with a BM in Vocal Performance. She is in her first year of her Masters in Vocal Performance studying under the direction of world famous soprano Cyndia Sieden. Ms. Noland performed in a production of Suor Angelica with the Utah Valley University opera performing the roles of Suor Genevieve and Suor Osmina, under the direction of Dr. Marc Reynolds. Arrianne was a studio artist with Utah Lyric Opera performing in a production of Die Zauberflote as Pamina, and Fiametta in The Gondoliers, working with known conductors and artists Maestro Giusti and Anthony Laciura.
Trevor Ainge is in his second year of the vocal performance program at the University of Washington. He began the study of voice in the private studio of Dr. Kari Ragan in 2014. Having joined UW in 2015, he has since continued his studies with her there. He has had the opportunity to sing the role of Linfea in the University of Washington Orpheus Ensemble’s production of La Calisto, and has also served as a chorus member in Pacific MusicWorks’ production of Orphée et Eurydice. In addition to his musical endeavors, Trevor is pursuing studies in speech and hearing sciences.
Joshua Lutman made his operatic debut in 2016 as Mercurio in La Calisto. A current scholarship recipient at the University of Washington School of Music, Joshua is in his second year of a Masters of Music in Vocal Performance and a student of Thomas Harper.
Soprano Erika Meyer is in her second year at the UW School of Music’s Vocal Performance program, in addition to fulfilling a Climate Science minor through the UW’s College of the Environment. As a third year member of University Chorale, this is her first time working and appearing in a UW Opera production. Erika is a student of Dr. Kari Ragan.
Soprano Yoojeong Cho recently graduated from University of Washington with double degrees in Vocal Performance (BM) and Italian (BA). Yoojeong's past performances with UW Opera include Satirino in La Calisto and Zerlina in Don Giovanni. Starting this fall, she will be pursuing her Master's degree in Vocal Arts at University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. Yoojeong Cho is a student of Dr. Kari Ragan.
Nic Varela is in his fourth year at the UW, studying opera performance with Tom Harper. He has served as chorus member for Pacific MusicWorks’ productions of Semele, Die Zauberflöte, and Orphée et Eurydice, as well as Bellevue City Opera’s production of Le Nozze di Figaro. This summer, he will be performing as Monostatos and the Tenor Priest in Toronto Summer Opera Workshop’s Die Zauberflöte