Seattle Opera

Attila: Conductor Speaks - Carlo Montanaro

Attila: Cast Speaks - John Relyea

A preview of 'Attila' with General Director Speight Jenkins.

General Director Speight Jenkins waxes poetic about Attila, its beautiful music, and the stellar cast he hand-picked for this opera. Special guest Costume Designer Melanie Taylor Burgess joins Speight to discuss the new costumes being created for the production.

Meet the Young Artists singing the lead roles, and hear why the program is performing this “specialty” (according to Stage director Peter Kazaras) opera. Find out which role Kazaras calls “a killer” because of its difficulty, and see it all coming together in rehearsal.

Meet Director Bernard Uzan and go inside the first week of Carmen rehearsals where you can see both casts at work and hear the voices making their Seattle Opera debut. Uzan describes and demonstrates why this production is worth seeing, no matter if it's the 100th time you've seen Carmen or if it's your first opera ever.

The children’s chorus in Carmen—albeit so cute they melt your heart—has a tough job each night as they perform very challenging music. This video follows their progress in vocal coachings, to costume fittings, to delivering top-notch performances in rehearsals.

General Director Speight Jenkins reveals how he assembled the Carmen cast and who he’s thrilled to see in their American debut. Plus, our leading Carmen comes to Seattle after bringing down the La Scala house, and this video features an excerpt from her ravishing performance.

After every performance, General Director Speight Jenkins hosts a free Q&A session in the lecture hall at McCaw Hall. Listen to this live recording as Jenkins candidly answers the audience's questions after the Saturday, August 6 performance of Porgy and Bess.

A self proclaimed “Porgy rookie”, two-time Artist of the Year Chris Alexander talks about the challenges of working with “Porgy veterans” and his goals for telling the story on stage.

Her character, Clara, sings the most famous aria in the opera. Angel Blue describes each occurrence of the tune and her character’s transformation for each iteration.

Hawkins discusses the rehearsal process and how to keep the role of Porgy fresh.

Daltirus speaks on the motivations for her character, working with Director Chris Alexander, and why she keeps coming back to Bess time and again.

Some of opera’s most memorable music is in Porgy and Bess, and the orchestra is responsible for making it come alive to us. Go backstage to an orchestra rehearsal and hear the songs you know and love, plus Maestro John DeMain walks us through some of the challenges of this work, why Gershwin is so difficult to perform, and why our orchestra is up to the task.

The artists are hard at work in rehearsal, and Stage Director Chris Alexander brags on the amazing talent found in the cast and conductor. Watch Alexander's take on this production, peek behind-the-scenes at the rehearsal process, and hear commentary from the star singers themselves.