Opera Workshop: Scenes from Ravel's L’Enfant et les Sortilèges

Stephen Stubbs and Cyndia Sieden lead students from the UW voice program in 20th century French and English songs, with select scenes from Ravel's L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. With stage direction by Deanne Meek.

Opera Workshop:  

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 Festival opera 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 of Ulysses 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. 

Deanne Meek

The American mezzo-Soprano, Deanne Meek, is a native of the Pacific Northwest. Formally a principal artist with New York City Opera, she has recently been making celebrated debuts in the UK and throughout Europe. Her performances of Octavian in director David McVicar’s acclaimed production of Der Rosenkavalier with Opera North were praised as ‘superb’ and ‘breathtaking’, she then made her debut with English National Opera as Ruggiero in Alcina, conducted by Richard Hickox. In the UK she has made two role debuts, firstly Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Opera North, again to critical acclaim, and most recently Angelina / La Cenerentola with Grange Park Opera.

Deanne Meek is on the roster of the Metropolitan Opera, making her Met stage debut in performances of Idomeneo and Madame Butterfly. As a principal artist with New York City Opera, where she made her USA debut in 1996, roles have included Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Second Lady in Die Zauberflöte, Mercedes in Carmen, Diana / Iphigénie en Tauride, Harriet Moscher in the acclaimed New York premiere of Tobias Picker’s Emmelineand Hänsel in Hänsel und Gretel.

A frequent guest in many of the major opera houses worldwide, Deanne Meek's European credits include Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni with Opera Ireland, Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the new David McVicar production at La Monnaie, Brussels and at the Liceu in Barcelona, directed by Robert Carsen. At the Bregenz Festival she performed Ines in Il Trovatore in Robert Carsen’s new production conducted by Fabio Luisi and most recently she made her Paris debut at the Châtélet as Rossweisse in Bob Wilson’s new production of Die Walküre.

In North America Deanne Meek's appearances include Fyodor / Boris Godunov for the Washington Opera, Sesto in Giulio Cesare with Portland Opera, Siebel in Faust with Vancouver Opera, Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte for the Portland Opera, Karolka in Jenufa and Dido in Dido and Aeneas at the Spoleto Festival USA, Javotte in Manon for the Dallas Opera, Jo March in Little Women with the Minnesota Opera, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier for Opera Pacific, and most recently Dryad / Ariadne auf Naxos with Los Angeles Opera. With the Opera Theatre of St. Louis she sang Zenobia in the US premiere of George Frideric Handel's Radamisto where she also sang Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, as well as for the Kentucky Opera. Deanne has also sung Nerone / L’incoronazione di Poppea for the Boston Baroque, as well as Mozart’s Requiem and G.F. Handel’s Messiah and a recording of The Beneficent Dervish for the Telarc Label.

An active recitalist, Deanne Meek has been a fellow at both the Tanglewood and Ravinia Music Festivals in the USA, and has sung in recital in Paris, New York, Baltimore, Washington D.C., St. Louis and the Pacific Northwest.

Future engagements include her return to the Châtélet, Paris and the Bregenz Festival, Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte in a new production with Opera National du Rhin, Strasbourg and Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos with Tulsa Opera.