Eric Owens Brings Wagnerian Expertise to Seattle Re-opening

Dario Acosta

INTERVIEW: Eric Owens

Fisher Pavilion, Seattle 

ERICA MINER 

Bass-baritone Eric Owens’ appearance as Wotan in Seattle Opera’s Aug. 28 Welcome Back Concert performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre will be multiply eventful. It is his SO debut among a stellar cast of other notable Wagnerians. Just as significant, the exciting outdoor event, at Seattle Center's Fisher Pavilion Lawn, with Seattle Symphony Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot at the helm, will be the first live post-pandemic opening for the company. 

The two-time Grammy award winning Owens has a CV on the world stage that would be the envy of many opera singers in his fach. He champions both the classical/romantic repertoire and new music: from Mozart and Beethoven to Verdi and Gershwin, the Met Opera to Chicago and Santa Fe, playing heroes, villains, and everything in between. 

Erica Miner: Welcome to Seattle! Is this your SO debut?

Eric Owens: Yes, and it’s so exciting. Seattle Opera is a company I’ve admired for so long. It will be so nice to be performing there. 

EM: And what a way to make your debut, as Wotan.

EO: Yes! Thought it will be quite different in a concert version, and also not the full opera. They have made alterations and cuts to accommodate the time and space requirements. Still, it’s so exciting, a role I very much enjoy doing. With wonderful friends of mine singing (Angela Meade, Brandon Jovanovich, Raymond Aceto, Alexandra Lobianco), that really makes it special. I adore Christina Scheppelmann, and so admire her for making it happen.

EM: Have you sung with any of these singers before?

EO: I’ve sung with Brandon. I know Angela very well, though I’ve not sung with her before.

EM: And you and they are all great in Wagnerian roles. Let’s go back in time a way. What was your journey to the opera stage?

EO: [Laughs] Oh, wow. I started taking piano age 6 at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia. While I was there, I found myself listening to singers and got interested in the operatic voice. Then I listened to recordings, especially, Luciano Pavarotti’s I Puritani. That especially inspired me. I also learned to play oboe at age 11, which I did for quite a while, eventually becoming a professional at age 16 freelancing in Philadelphia. I began singing in my high school choir, and the director noticed something worth pursuing, so he gave me solos and I started taking voice lessons senior as a high school senior. I studied as an undergrad at the Boyer College of Music at Temple University and did my grad work at the Curtis Institute. After that I was a Young Artist at the Houston Opera Studio and my career launched from there.

EM: Did you find that your study of the oboe helped with your breath control as a singer?

EO: They’re so different. With the oboe, it’s a question of getting rid of enough air. Before you take a breath, you have to exhale get rid of bad air. That of course is not the case with singing. So, one didn’t necessarily help the other.

EM: You have quite a history with Wagner operas: Chicago, the Met. Tell us about those.

EO: I sang Wotan in Chicago, all 3 Ring operas. Alberich in the Met Ring and also Hagen in the Met Götterdämmerung. So, I’ve sung in all 4 Ring operas. I also sang Flying Dutchman with Washington National Opera.

EM: You are quite the Wagnerite.

EO: It’s funny because some Wagner I really love to sing. I’ve been fortunate enough to sing all 4 Ring operas.

EM: Which you could say are the pinnacle of his works. Do you plan to perform more Wagner in the future?

EO: There are some Ring cycles in my future, though I can’t yet say which companies, since they haven’t been announced. I’m also going to sing King Marke in Tristan.

EM: That’s a whole other level.

EO: Isn’t it! I see Wagner like Bach. The music is so emotional, so ingenious, without advertising that genius.

EM: In both, the emotion is deep underneath, and they were both such geniuses.

EO: Yes. You can look at them in terms of being mathematicians, but the music is not so cold.

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EM: Which Wagner roles would you most love to play?

EO: I would love to play Amfortas in Parsifal. I’ve sung that part in concert and would love to do it onstage. The music speaks to me, the depth of his despair. The way it’s written grabs your heart and takes you on this journey.

EM: The ultimate thing, Wagner’s final glory of a masterpiece. You’ve performed both on the opera and concert stages. What are some of your most memorable appearances in either or both?

EO: In concert, I had an amazing experience in the staged St. Matthew Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic. We performed it in Berlin and then went on tour with it to New York and London. The piece is incredibly powerful. It speaks to me. The whole experience was a tremendous gift. Those are events I’ll never forget. On the opera stage, a L’Incoronazione di Poppea with English National Opera was in ways the pinnacle experience of my career. Everyone in the cast was totally at the service of music, the drama. We all were there for everyone else.

EM: Who conducted?

EO: Harry Christophers.

EM: He’s a Baroque specialist?

EO: Yes, he is.

EM: Sounds like a win-win.

EO: The Baroque is my favorite musical period. I’m not necessarily known for performing it, but I love the music and spend a lot of time listening to it.

EM: Your experience with contemporary opera is quite extensive. Describe some of the highlights.

EO: The highlights are especially when the piece written for me, like John Adams’ The Flowering Tree, which premiered in Vienna, and the world premiere of his Doctor Atomic at San Francisco Opera. At the Houston Opera Studio, every year a new piece is written for the members. I remember Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Jackie O by Michael Daugherty. That was very early on in my career.

EM: It must be exciting to do a work that no one’s ever heard before.

EO: There’s a certain responsibility, but also a level of comfort. No one can compare you to anyone else! But to have a chance to work with the composer, learn what they meant by the music. I would kill to have conversation with some of the long-gone composers. It’s such a gift to have the composer right there.

EM: Tell us about serving on the Board of Trustees of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, and Astral Artistic Services.

EO: I’m no longer on those boards, but it was a great experience. NFAA is now called Young Arts. I was one of their award recipients in high school. I served on the board for 3 or 4 years. I always find working with young artists very fulfilling. Both organizations all about young artists. Serving on the boards was a way of giving back. AAS is a Philadelphia organization that helps young artists by giving them performing opportunities. Going into the community, schools, retirement communities, who desperately need the gift of music. The outreach amazing, plus they put on their own live recitals in the Philadelphia area. I credit them with giving me many opportunities to perform, hone my craft, speak to audiences, when I was a young artist. To connect with the audience, not just musically but verbally.

EM: Especially this past year, with all the performances online, verbal connection has become incredibly important.

EO: Making use of that, the audience gets more from the experience overall. That’s very important.

EM: Is there anything you would like to add to our discussion?

EO: Just to reiterate I’m really excited about making my debut with Seattle Opera.

EM: And as Wotan, who makes trouble for everyone!

EO: Yes! [Laughs.]

EM: Thanks so much, Eric. We’re so looking forward to hearing and see you, live.

EO: Thank you, Erica. 

Details about Seattle Opera’s Welcome Back Concert can be found at: https://www.seattleopera.org/on-stage/welcome-back-concert/

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Photo credits: Dario Acosta, Seattle Center Marketing

Erica can be reached at: [email protected]

Madame Butterfly takes wing in Santa Fe

Revival confirms the work's enduring relevance

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Friday, July 16, 2010

Review by Rodney Punt

The plot could not be simpler: American naval officer jilts Japanese wife who later commits suicide. But Puccini’s Madame Butterfly was not at all easy to compose, nor initially to stage. For all its subsequent popularity, its premiere was a flop at La Scala in 1904. Puccini felt the need to tweak it obsessively for two more decades.

Madama Butterfly can easily lapse into picture-book sentimentality, and the work has been tarred in some quarters as a period piece - pretty but passé. Contemporary stagings must straddle potential minefields: depicting cross-cultural encounters without succumbing to kitschy stereotypes; addressing modern skepticism of some character motivations while staying true to the work’s emotional intensity.

Attempts to walk this line, even in top-tier productions, occasionally stumble. Robert Wilson’s Kabuki concept at the LA Opera was classy and lovely to look at, but its human dimension so bloodless as to drain the truth from Verismo.

Casting Cio-Cio-San (aka Madame Butterfly) is, frankly, a task. The eponymous heroine must croon as a lyric waif in the first act, then wail tempestuously as the jilted woman in the second, all the while possessing the emotive ability to convince us of her steadfast faithfulness to a man clearly seen by all - on and off stage - as a first class cad. Likewise her Lieutenant Pinkerton must be thoroughly despicable but retain an ounce of redemptive potential for a wrenching last scene.

Enter the Santa Fe Opera. Butterfly has been a special province of the company since its inception in 1957. It has opened each of the Opera’s three stages, and it launched this season, after a 12-year absence, with a new production dedicated to the company's visionary founder, John Crosby.

With top-flight singing and acting, an inspired stage direction by Lee Blakely, and an insightful stewardship of a clearly articulated orchestra and chorus under Antony Walker (Susanne Sheston, Chorus Master), this Butterfly triumphs. Potential vulnerabilities are avoided, and the work’s enduring psychological impact and musical riches have been validated for a new generation. Just as important, higher standards of interpretation are set.

For the fated home on a Nagasaki hilltop, Jean-Marc Puissant’s scenic design employs a central cube that rotates on its axis and migrates around the stage in varying perspectives, in and out of doors. Cio-Cio-San’s tragically fleeting ties with Pinkerton and her family and community contribute to her increasingly isolated and impoverished stasis within it. Japanese screens reveal and obscure many of the interactions and emotional states. Rick Fisher’s lighting alternates day and night to mirror Cio-Cio-San’s own hope and despair.

The passage of time is hinted at with the sudden appearance of telephone poles in Act II, a reminder of the rapid transformation of a hermetic Japan after the visit of Admiral Perry’s naval flotilla, an intimidating modernization that parallels Cio-Cio-San’s personal Americanization under the influence of the blustery Pinkerton.

Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s costumes ably establish the contrasting cultural identities of characters, revealing the gentle beauty of the Japanese aesthetic in contrast to the lack of nuance in its American counterpart. Facial make-up studiously (and wisely) avoids orientalizing the “Japanese” cast with pasty skin-tones or painted eye-slants.

The emphasis overall is on emotional veracity over ritual, naturalness over pictorialism.

As Cio-Cio-San, Kelly Kaduce brings an amber-tinted soprano, particularly rich at mid-register, to her deeply felt, dramatically satisfying interpretation. Whether coming to grips with Pinkerton, warding off suitors and slanderers, or chastising her maid Suzuki for her lack of faith, Kaduce’s is a full-blooded Butterfly - strong, stoic, and vulnerable only in private. She is also a hands-on mother. Singing at full voice, this Butterfly picks up her son Trouble (Makai Pope), and carries him around as she converses with him.

Waiting for Pinkerton all night, she sits erect, motionless, in Zen-like determination before singing with aching pathos. (An American flag scene later induces tears, even in jaded eyes.)

This is a bravura performance to treasure.

Brandon Jovanovich is no less impressive. His silvery-bright, powerfully ringing tenor, with a visage of pug nose and jutting jaw, enhance a stage swagger that nails the character of the domineering, superficially charming, but ultimately boorish Pinkerton. The navy officer's gauche manhandling of Butterfly’s precious ancestral dolls is intrusive; his bar-style toasting at the wedding is painful to behold, especially in contrast with the deliberate and delicate tea ceremony of his wife’s family.

After such antics, Pinkerton’s emotional breakdown at the return encounter with Butterfly, his American wife in attendance, is all the more pathetic.

Jovanovich owns this role, his contribution an essential element to the tragedy.

Secondary roles are also strong. Baritone James Westman’s Sharpless is sympathetic right-mindedness itself.

Elizabeth DeShong’s lushly-timbered mezzo-soprano provides the necessary robustness for Suzuki’s heroic support, and occasional endurance, of Butterfly’s stubbornness.

Harold Wilson’s Bonze brings fierce wrath to his denunciation of Butterfly’s religious conversion. Keith Jameson’s Goro is the perfect snake of a marriage broker. Matthew Hanscom’s elegant but slimy suitor, Prince Yamadori, could never convince even a more practical and compliant Butterfly to go with the flow. Remaining cast members perform admirably.

Great art has a way of extending its message into other spheres. Madame Butterfly has always been one of the most popular operas the the repertory. But this production recertifies its continuing relevance as well.

Strong breezes blew through the seats of the open-sided Crosby Theatre all Friday evening. Could they be the winds of change urging a dose of humility in America’s constant pursuit of global hegemony? Can we afford any more Pinkertons in a realigning, multicultural world?

If Madame Butterfly strikes the chord that will help answer these questions, its revival will serve humanity as well as art.

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Madame Butterfly runs through August 26, 2010, at the Santa Fe Opera. Tickets: Santa Fe Opera

Rodney Punt can be contacted at [email protected]

All photos are by Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera