Feb 12, 2019
Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces the baritone voice, a sound which celebrates the beauty and power of masculinity. In opera, baritones play clowns and kings, urban sophisticates and unlettered innocents; good, bad, and every shade of grey. They win our hearts, melt our hearts, and break our hearts....
Jan 11, 2019
Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces several different types of tenor, from the agile-voiced, graceful and elegant tenori di grazia, to the heroic and powerful tenori di forza, and all points in between. Includes musical examples featuring many favorite Seattle Opera tenors: Antonello Palombi, Edgardo Rocha,...
Jan 2, 2019
“Men die and governments change, but the songs of La bohème will live forever,” wrote Thomas Alva Edison to Giacomo Puccini. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces La bohème, with musical examples from Seattle Opera’s archival recordings of La bohème: from 2007, with Rosario La Spina (Rodolfo) and...
Jan 2, 2019
A new opera that combines jazz and classical? Charlie Parker’s Yardbird is about music, creativity, communication, race and racism, drugs and addiction, and life and death and freedom. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces this new opera with music by Daniel Schnyder and a libretto by Bridgette A. Wimberly....
Jan 2, 2019
Tchaikovsky’s most beloved opera is a breathtaking and unique work about the human heart. Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean introduces Eugene Onegin, with musical examples from Seattle Opera’s 2002 archival recording of Eugene Onegin, starring Vladimir Chernov as Onegin, Kurt Streit as Lensky,...