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For the Love of Opera
A Conversation with Speight Jenkins

By Robert Wilder Blue

It would be safe to bet that no one loves opera more than Speight Jenkins. As a child, he wanted nothing more when he grew up than to attend the Metropolitan Opera every night of the week. But, destiny had other plans for him and it is not surprising that Mr. Jenkins, after an illustrious career as a music journalist, is now celebrating 20 years as general director of Seattle Opera. His love for opera has been the guiding light of his own life as well as the beacon that leads the artists and administrators of Seattle Opera. USOPERAWEB spoke with Mr. Jenkins recently about his life in opera and the path he took to get where he is now.

Jenkins was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. "I didn't really come from a musical family," he divulges. My parents went to opera as a social thing and they enjoyed it. They had both heard Caruso. I started with opera when I was six. I remember it was mentioned in class and I came home and asked my mother about it and she told me it was theater in which people sang when they ought to talk. I asked her what they sang about. She told me about an opera in which a young woman who disobeys her father and is put on a rock surrounded by fire and her sisters fly through the air. She brought home a book the next day and I started reading about the Ring. I heard shortly thereafter about the Met broadcasts and I started listening to those and it was an instant take with me. I think it was the next fall that I heard The Valkyrie and there was something about it that turned me on so totally that from then on I was an opera nut. I would not play or work on Saturday afternoons; I would stay in and listen to the opera. I started going to the opera when the San Carlo was coming there during the war and when the Met started coming back in '46, I went every year.

"I never wanted to be a singer or a conductor or a director, though. That's what drove my parents crazy-'what the hell does he want to do, sit in an opera seat the rest of his life?' [he laughs]. What I wanted to do was what I am doing now, but I didn't know how to express that, even to myself. I got a degree in English and I went to medical school in New York for a year but I flunked out. So, I went to Columbia Law School and became a lawyer. The entire time I was going to the opera. Then, I went into the Army and it was after I got out that I decided I had to be in the world of opera. I returned to New York and decided to become a journalist. At least, I could write about opera."

You had a very successful career as a writer and you also became well known to opera lovers via the Met broadcast intermissions.

"We were laughing the last time I was on the Met broadcast intermission about how many times I had been on. I had never bothered to keep track; the first time was in 1968 and I've been on every year since Richard Mohr took over."

From music journalist to running an opera company sounds like a big step. How did you get the job in Seattle?

"I came out here to lecture on the Ring and they were looking for a new general director at the time. One of the board members asked me to talk about opera to the search committee. So I talked to them for three hours, at the conclusion of which they suggested I become a candidate for the job. I told them I'd never even put on La Bohème.' But, they told me I had the ingredients. I thought about it and immediately jumped into the fray. James Levine helped me with some advice as to what I should and should not say to them and it all came about very quickly. Once it was announced, the people in Seattle thought they were insane to give me the job, because I was just a journalist. That was one of those funny things that was helpful to me though, because the local journalists heard so many people saying, 'what does he know, he's only a journalist,' that I started off friendly with them.

"I learned things the hard way. The learning curve was very difficult at first. We changed the company completely artistically and we went into debt. Then we figured out in the early '90s how to get out of debt and we've stayed out ever since. This will be our eleventh consecutive year balancing the budget, but I had to learn a lot things to get there. A lot of this was taught to me by Kathy Magiera, the administrative director who died in December, from whom I learned a great deal about the business side of things."

Where you prepared for all the fundraising?

"[heavy sigh] I was just doing that today. Fundraising is basically believing in your own product. If you believe in what you're doing and get the opportunity to sell it, you can raise money. But, I'm blessed in how little of it I actually have to do. The situation in Seattle couldn't be better in terms of the loyalty of the audience and the supporters. But something that is an unusual characteristic of Seattle--which is not the case in most cities--is that they know I am an artistic director who is intimately connected with the rehearsals and performances. They do not ask me or expect me to be socially involved the way many of my colleagues are in other places. That's a great tribute to my board and the people who support us here."

Seattle Opera is about to do an American opera with an interesting history, Marvin David Levy's Mourning Becomes Electra. I have to point out respectfully, though, that you don't have a habit of doing many American operas.

"In general, American opera doesn't sell as well. Personally, I find a lot of recent American operas libretto-driven, which is to say they have wonderful librettos and not very good music. I won't mention specific operas, but I will say that it is the reason I don't put a lot of them on here. The reason I'm doing Mourning Becomes Electra is because it's musically driven and I find the music profoundly wonderful. Now, I do know some of these recent operas sell tickets. I would love to do more American opera and I want to commission a new work. But I will not do a work just because it is American and will sell tickets. David Gockley in Houston has a great reputation and there is a niche in his company's season for American opera. I think that is wonderful. But I don't think that would work for our company."

But is an opera such as Lakmé , which you did recently, so much better than certain American operas?

"Lakmé contains a lot of wonderful music and it was wildly successful here. I suppose there are American operas that I should look at again. It's a very hard question and it depends on so many factors-what production is available, what singers we can get and so forth. But, I have to react to music as I think my audience will. I know I've been somewhat conservative about this. We had some success with Vanessa and I think it's a wonderful opera-musically Sam Barber wrote a great piece. There are certain other works I'd like to do. Ballad of Baby Doe is also a wonderful opera and there is an audience for it, just as there is for Susannah."

But if American opera companies don't produce American operas, how do audiences become acquainted with the composers and their works? Doesn't an American opera company have some obligation to support American composers?

"Yes, I think that is the right thing to do and I feel guilty for not doing that more. It's not that I don't listen to new music. But my problem goes back to the same thing, which is: give me a score I can get excited about. There are a lot of operas that are great on stage. But I don't think in many cases that the music is expanding the story, which is to me what opera is all about. The reason I like Daniel Catán's Florencia en las Amazonas--and the reason I'm going to do it again--is because it is all about Catán's music and what he has to say with it. It's not a particularly exciting story, it's about the expansion of the story through the music. It was a great success here and we're going to do it again in 2004-5."

How will the U.S. ever produce a Verdi or Donizetti if impresarios don't take a leap of faith at some point and give American composers the opportunities to write operas?

"You're mixing apples and oranges. Remember, in the time of Rigoletto, the orchestra and chorus were hardly paid. Opera made money for the impresario or the company closed. It was a whole different money structure than you have today. The amount of money it takes to do a new opera is staggering. The cost of doing a new production of anything is astronomical. I used to do productions for under $1 million. Now I can't even touch that. Opera costs so much more than it did in the 1920s. I can promise you that Gatti-Casazza would not have brought an American opera to the Met every year as he did between 1908-1930s if he had to pay the prices we do now.

"The flourishing of opera in Italy in the 19th century was based on slave labor, paying a few prime donni a lot of money, paying comprimarios nothing. It was a completely different world. You could put on five or six new operas a year. Also, there were no scenic demands then. I'll bet you that the sets for La Sonnambula and Norma were the same when they were done in most opera houses. The stars wore their own costumes and just put a symbol on the costume to indicate who they were or what country they were in. Now we pay living wage to everybody. I'm not saying we should run a sweat shop-I'm happy we pay people living wages. But that was not the case in the 19th century.

"I agree with everything you've said about nourishing young composers and replenishing the repertory. But if I'm not excited about what someone has composed, I am not going to gamble on a commission from the same composer. I just don't have the money to do it. We play too close to the edge. So, if I am confronted with a tight money situation and I'm trying to build an audience, I'm going to do the operas I think will sell tickets, especially in this economy.

"Our niche here is Wagner, which I consider to be very important. One of the first goals I set when I got into the job was to do all ten Wagner operas. As of this summer with Parsifal, we will have done all ten. It was important to me to focus the company in that way. Another goal was to have a group of singers who came back often and represented the company and understood what I wanted here. You know, Mr. Bing was laughed at back in 1950 when he said he wanted to have a group of stars that belonged to the Met. But that was my idea here. Because we're not a repertory house--we put on only five operas a year (eight when we do the Ring)--I wanted to have a rolling Seattle Opera roster and I've succeeded in doing that over the years. Every year we bring in new singers, but there are a core group of singers who perform here and who are popular with audiences.

"We had an earthquake when Ewa Podles came here to sing Adalgisa in Norma just a couple months ago. Why? Because she has a voice like none anyone has ever heard. I know that because in 60 years I've never heard a voice like it. She set the audience totally crazy. That shows you what opera is about, which is the voice."

"I am really looking for voices that are individual and that speak to me. I'm very strong-willed and opinionated in what appeals to me and I don't apologize for that. I think a company should represent the tastes of the person who runs it. What thrills me, and the reason I love Seattle, is that somehow, miraculously, what I like are the things that seem to work here. And that makes me happy.

Seattle Opera has been one of the few U.S. companies to consistently hire African-American singers.

"I don't think any of the larger companies has done as much for black male artists as we have here in Seattle. I've never done it out of a sense of affirmative action; I've done it because I really believed they were the best and that's what I believe we should do in opera. I started with Vinson [Cole] in 1988 with Orpheus [and Euridice]. But then I had him in bed with Cathy Gamberoni in Romeo and Juliet the next season. To be honest I didn't think about that until after I had cast them. But, I knew it would be interesting. After all, this is all about sex, it's not about anything else. I can say with great pride that was not even a raised eyebrow from the Board or the audience. I did a Lucia [di Lammermoor] a few years ago with Harolyn Blackwell and Gordon Hawkins. I've never done an all-black cast, but I have put a cast together with two or three black singers. Now, if you're dealing with an historical, realistic American scene, it gets a little tricky.

"I know it's a big problem in the opera world. Gordon should have a much bigger career, because I think he is one of the few Verdi baritones around. He has sung many of the major Verdi roles here and he will sing Macbeth here in the future. Gordon is an opera company's dream because he used to be a baseball player. Taking him around to schools is heaven because kids think it's the greatest thing in the world to have a former professional baseball player who's an opera singer.

"You know, all this needs--and it's really simple--is for us to have a Leontyne Price among men. And that man is going to have to be a tenor, and this is just a practical reality in opera. You're going to have to have a tenor who can make people forget there is a color barrier for men. I think there is one person who might do this and that is Larry [Lawrence] Brownlee. He's singing at La Scala right now. It's a remarkable voice."

Do you think opera companies have any obligation to cast operas based on the demographics of the communities in which they reside?

"I suppose so. The fact is that during any one season, our black representation on stage is at a higher percentage than black people in the audience. But, you tell me how to get black people to come to the opera. Except for the African-Americans on our board and the ones who already come, the black community, in general, does not support the opera. The Chinese and Japanese communities do not support the opera either. People will say so glibly that you have to reach out to those communities, but I just don't know how. If they don't want to buy the tickets, you can't force them to spend their money.

"Now in the last ten years, life for opera everywhere in the country has gotten better. We're getting lots of young people who want the experience of opera who don't come from opera families. They've been alerted by our education programs and they come because they're fascinated by the idea of it. There have been studies about this and I think one of the most intelligent explanations is that for the MTV generation, the opera is the one place they get bombarded with the kind of stimuli they see on TV. Now, in Bravo, our 20-to-40 group, about 18% are non-white, which is about the same as the city of Seattle. That's very good.

"But, here's a question for you. Are you aware that whenever a foreign opera company goes to Japan to perform, it plays to sold-out houses? Japan is wild for opera everywhere you go. But, show me how many Japanese-Americans ever come to the opera here. In general, they don't, which is a mysterious thing to me. I've tried to raise money in the Japanese community and tried to get them to come to the opera and it just doesn't work.

"We are always accused of being elitist and we are elitist in terms of education. I don't think we are elitist in terms of money, however, and as far as who we welcome into the opera house. I get mad when I hear people say that only rich people come to the opera because there are many people in our audience who save their money to get subscriptions and who will put other things aside so they can come to the opera."

How has the job in Seattle lived up to your fantasies or expectations?

"I never fantasized about having a job like this because I never dreamt it could come to me. When I was young, if I had any fantasy, it was to make enough money so that I could have a seat at the Metropolitan and be able go every night if I wanted to. I didn't know how you got to be a general director, but I figured you had to be European, like Mr. Bing or Mr. Adler. But, by the time I was 25 or 30, I was going crazy because I couldn't just keep soaking it in. I had to do something. I had to produce in some way. So that's when I went into journalism. Now, whether it was meaningful to produce as a writer or a critic, I don't know if others would feel so. But I felt it was and I still do feel it was. There were always rumors going around New York that I was going to get this or that position and I never got anything. I figured I was doing what I was meant to do. When the Seattle thing came up, it was truly a nonfantasized dream come true."

You have spoken about education and about selling opera. What do you tell someone who asks why opera should matter to Americans today?

"[long pause] Opera is the highest expression of dramatic art. It is great music combined with a great dramatic situation combined with the human voice. There's nothing that has the same impact-the visceral impact-as a great opera performance. Wagner was right when he said that in an ideal situation opera was a combination of Beethoven and Shakespeare. Even when you succeed in getting people who were raised on grunge or rap or whatever to come to the opera house and you give them the opportunity to understand a story that's meaningful to them and they are able to see it in a way in which the music expands on the story and the emotions are fleshed out, there's nothing like opera."