{"id":3992,"date":"2026-06-02T23:28:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T03:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3992"},"modified":"2026-06-02T23:28:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T03:28:27","slug":"americas-greatest-opera-boss-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2026\/06\/americas-greatest-opera-boss-has-died.html","title":{"rendered":"“America’s Greatest Opera Boss Has Died”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Norman Lebrecht\u2019s obituary notice for Speight Jenkins, which ran today<\/a><\/strong>, is titled \u201cAmerica\u2019s Greatest Opera Boss Has Died.\u201d I couldn\u2019t agree more.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Seattle, Speight created the most important Wagner house in North America. I remember his first \u201cRing,\u201d directed by Francois Rochaix, as the most memorable mounting I have ever encountered (a rung above the Patrice Chereau \u201cRing\u201d I admired in Bayreuth). I wrote about it at length in my book \u201cWagner Nights<\/strong>\u201d<\/a> \u2013 and continued to review Wagner in Seattle for the Times Literary Supplement.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this space, I wrote about Speight most extensively on May 31, 2021<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong> \u2013 juxtaposing his stewardship of the Seattle Opera with Peter Gelb\u2019s deficiencies running today\u2019s Met. This is part of what I said:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Speight Jenkins, the Seattle Opera\u2019s general manager from 1983 to 2014, who engaged (Stephen) Wadsworth and (I have no doubt) requested a credible swan [for Lohengrin<\/em>]. But Jenkins\u2019 real find was the Swiss director Francois Rochaix. Rochaix\u2019s Seattle Ring of the Nibelung<\/em>, lucidly designed by Robert Israel, was the most memorable of my experience. He also staged Parsifal<\/em> and Die Meistersinger<\/em> in Seattle. His version of Regietheater was musical, assiduous, and original, scrupulous and creative in equal measure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins went his own way. An impassioned, informed Wagnerite, he built on the Seattle Wagner festivals of his predecessor, Glynn Ross. He made the Seattle Opera the Wagner capital of the Western hemisphere. Beholden to no one, defying fashion, he set parameters. He refused to denigrate the operas with imputations of anti-Semitism or sexism. He shrunk the house and enhanced its acoustics. He was omnipresent in the lobbies, in the community. In Wagner Nights:<\/em> An American History<\/em>(1994), I summarized: \u201cRochaix\u2019s response [to Wagner] is not esoteric but fresh, not complex but sincere. And the same can be said for the Seattle Wagner enterprise as a whole. Jenkins has aimed for a balanced Wagner ensemble. He has not courted celebrity performers, pedigreed by Deutsche Grammophon, Salzburg, and Columbia Artists Management. Rather, he has stressed world-class Ring<\/em> lectures, four-hour Ring<\/em> symposia, and a serious bookstore. His English supertitles, an innovation so far shunned by the Met, transformed the ambience of the house. . . . Something special has been rekindled: a company whose mission transcends self-promulgation.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EXTRA CREDIT: Two memories of Francois Rochaix\u2019s Seattle Wagner productions:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 The Rochaix \u201cRing\u201d showed how a bold exercise in Regietheater can at the same time remain keenly attuned to Wagner\u2019s synthesis of the arts. I write in \u201cThe<\/strong><\/em>Post-Classical Predicament\u201d (1995 \u2014 reprising a long article \u201cOn Staging Wagner\u2019s \u2018Ring\u2019\u201d in \u201cOpus\u201d Magazine, April 1987):<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To underline Siegfried\u2019s coming of age, Rochaix inserts a touching pantomime . . . just after Siegfried penetrates the Magic Fire: he envisions his father\u2019s murder, his mother\u2019s death in childbirth, Fafner\u2019s warning, and the Forest Bird\u2019s summons. Fortified by new self-knowledge, he tentatively kisses Brunnhilde. Rochaix\u2019s handling of this long final scene is so honest that for once Siegfried\u2019s astonished exclamation \u2018Das is kein Mann!\u2019 is astonishing, not comic. Disregarding Wagner, Rochaix has Siegfried flee his awakened bride; when Brunnhilde sings \u2018Wer ist der Held, der mich erweckt?\u2019 [\u2018Who is the hero who has awakened me?\u2019], he stands, terrified, well outside her field of vision. Brunnhilde\u2019s gradual transformation from goddess to woman, Siegfried\u2019s coming to terms with adult feelings, their growing proximity, mutual awareness, and commitment \u2014 Rochaix\u2019s detailed understanding of all of this, his use of blocking and gestural detail to bind the momentous, compressed emotional scenario, is a triumph of creative empathy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many at Seattle found Siegfried\u2019s interpolated pantomime\/vision intrusive. The problem is partly Wagner\u2019s; his layoff partway through act 2 of Siegfried<\/em> created discontinuities in the Ring<\/em>. In particular, Siegfried and Brunnhilde became somewhat different personalities. Rochaix\u2019s masque intelligently attempts to explain the new Siegfried, whom Brunnhilde eventually praises for his loyalty and valor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/em>For more than a decade I regularly reviewed music books and New York operatic performances for the Times Literary Supplement (UK). Here\u2019s my review, from August 2003, of Francois Rochaix\u2019s Seattle Opera \u201cParsifal\u201d production:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most of the twentieth century, opera in the United States was synonymous with the New York\u2019s Metropolitan Opera. Nowhere else was anything like a fulltime opera season sustained for decades without interruption. Only in Chicago and San Francisco was a local tradition of opera-giving substantially implanted. But beginning in the 1960s regional companies began to grow dramatically in number, size, and achievement. In 1987 the Met abandoned its annual national tour. Concurrently, English-language supertitles everywhere won converts to opera as theater. Today, America\u2019s leading regional opera companies have acquired unprecedented individuality and sophistication \u2013 and nowhere more than in Seattle, which now boasts North America\u2019s leading Wagner house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Seattle Opera began presenting summer cycles of the Ring of the Nibelung<\/em> in 1975 under Glynn Ross, an entrepreneurial visionary who started from scratch. Ross\u2019s successor as of 1983, Speight Jenkins, is also a zealous Wagnerite (he closes the office for Wagner\u2019s birthday). Jenkins opted for a more ambitious Ring<\/em>, one he could not afford to mount every summer, but more carefully cast, more strongly conducted, and more provocatively staged. The resulting 1986 cycle, directed by Francois Rochaix and designed by Robert Israel, was a landmark event. If the influence of Patrice Ch\u00e9reau\u2019s 1976 Bayreuth centenary Ring<\/em> was discernible, in most respects Rochaix (best-known in his native Switzerland) and Israel (then keenly associated with Philip Glass\u2019s Satyagraha<\/em>) went their own way. Such signature images as the airborne carousel horses ridden by the Valkyries achieved an iconic intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, back in New York, the Met entrusted its Ring<\/em> and three other Wagner operas to Gunther Schneider-Siemssen and Otto Schenk. The goal was something like the naturalism Wagner himself prescribed, abetted by modern stage technology. The outcome fulfilled Wieland Wagner\u2019s prediction that \u201ca naturalistic set today would simply destroy an illusion, not create one.\u201d Seeking authenticity, Schenk assumed that sin and redemption were concepts whose self-sufficient meanings could shock and inspire as Victorian audiences were shocked and inspired when the Ring<\/em> and Parsifal<\/em> were new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins mounted fresh Seattle productions of The Flying Dutchman, Tannh\u00e4user<\/em>, Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger<\/em>, and Tristan<\/em> between 1984 and 1998. He also, in 2001, unveiled a new, hyper-realistic Ring<\/em> conceived by Stephen Wadsworth \u2013 a production [which I reviewed for the TLS] both more beautiful than the Met\u2019s and more meddlesome in its psychological portraiture. This summer, Seattle finally completed its traversal of the Wagner canon with a work never before given locally: Parsifal<\/em>. As the production was assigned to Rochaix and Israel, and happened to coincide with the opening of a new home for the company, expectations ran high: as at Bayreuth in 1882, Wagner\u2019s B\u00fchnenweihfestspiel inaugurated the hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former Seattle Opera House, a product of the 1962 World\u2019s Fair, was merely functional. The Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, on the same site, is in every way an improvement<\/strong>. From stage and pit, the sound is more vivid than before. The voices project easily. The excellent orchestra \u2013 mainly members of the Seattle Symphony \u2014 has acquired new tonal richness and depth. Visually, the new building seems as airy and spacious as the old one felt ponderous and square. Though the seating capacity has been only slightly reduced \u2013 from 3,017 to 2,900 \u2014 the gain in intimacy is notable. The central downstairs seating space is narrower, flanked by more sharply raked seats themselves flanked by \u2013 the most arresting touch \u2013 \u201cfloating\u201d boxes rising in a diagonal along the side walls.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cParsifal\u201d in Seattle (2003), designed by Robert Israel (photo: Chris Bennion)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new Parsifal<\/em> is a more qualified triumph. Jenkins wanted a production that did not underline the work\u2019s decadence or loudly infer racism. He wished to afford his first-time <\/strong>Parsifal<\/strong><\/em> audience a positive experience of Wagner\u2019s confusing final opus. At the same time, in engaging Rochaix, he was certain not to obtain a whitewash.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rochaix dispenses with obvious effects and cheap thrills: the cup does not glow red; the spear is not caught in mid-air. A non-sectarian universality is stressed. The costumes are as often Eastern as Western. The flower maidens include an American flapper and an Arabian Scheherazade. What most stays in the mind\u2019s eye, and teases the brain, is the treatment of the grail knights: a motley assemblage of robed Middle Eastern types, including some whose trance-like gestures and gyrations connote a religious fundamentalism much in the news today. These tableaus are executed with exceptional conviction and attention to detail. They achieve an authentic strangeness \u2013 and also insure that we are not to equate holiness with wholesomeness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel\u2019s sets are typically spare. The transformation scenes are chiefly achieved by moving a gigantic slab of stage into a vertical position. Klingsor\u2019s wooden tower occupies the full height of the stage; its \u201cdestruction\u201d entails a startling 47-foot descent into the bowels of the theater. A striking inspiration is the macabre coffin\/crib in which Titurel sits erect, a severe presence counterposed with his wayward son. In place of scenery, the production mainly opts for color-saturated images produced and manipulated by digital projectors from a behind a screen forming the back of the set. To begin act two, before the prelude in the pit, the ruddy mountain range of act one is digitally rotated to reveal the parched landscape \u2013 the mountain\u2019s other side \u2014 of Klingsor\u2019s realm. The projectors offer a verdant Classical version of the magic garden \u2013 which blurs when Parsifal strives fruitlessly to remember \u201cwhat I have forgotten\u201d and cannot. Destroyed, the garden digitally decomposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A special strength of Rochaix\u2019s Ring<\/em> was his penchant for adding eloquent witnesses to the action \u2013 Wotan, vigilant in a side-stage chair, unforgettably followed the actions of his harried and beloved offspring during Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em> act one. Rochaix similarly situates Kundry in a peripheral space, where her act one presence is prolonged beyond the exit specified by Wagner. Amfortas appears, ghost-like, while Kundry administers her seductive act two kiss. When Parsifal returns to Monsalvat in act three, the squires, richly differentiated, gather excitedly to follow the benedictions bestowed by Gurnemanz and Kundry. Far from constraining the singers, these additions, subtly choreographed, create fresh opportunities for characterization while inviting empathy on stage and off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the principal singers, Stephen Milling achieves greatness as Gurnemanz. Like Germany\u2019s Ren\u00e9 Pape, this young Danish bass, whose Seattle Fasolt and Hunding two summers ago (his American debut) announced the arrival of a major singing actor, has everything: voice, presence, intellect. Not yet 40, he has mastered the long act one narratives: every word, every gesture tells. He credibly impersonates an old man in act three. During the Good Friday music, his large, full-featured face is as expressive an instrument as his huge voice. He next sings Gurnemanz at the Vienna Staatsoper in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Parsifal of Britain\u2019s Christopher Ventris is also a major achievement, magnificently acted and strongly sung. Greer Grimsley, the Amfortas (and a Seattle mainstay), was indisposed on August 16; his cover, Gary Simpson, was in every way impressive. Willa Cather, in an indelible 1916 commentary, called Kundry \u201ca summary of the history of womankind,\u201d and continued: \u201c[Wagner] sees in her an instrument of temptation, of salvation, and of service; but always an instrument, a thing driven and employed. . . . She cannot possibly be at peace with herself.\u201d Describing the Kundry of Olive Fremstad, the Met\u2019s principal Wagner soprano from 1903 to 1914 and the Callas of her day, Cather wrote that she \u201cpreserves the integrity of the character through all its changes. In the last act, when Kundry washes Parsifal\u2019s feet and dries them with her hair, she is the same driven creature, dragging her long past behind her, an instrument made for purposes eternally contradictory. . . . Who can say what memories of Klingsor\u2019s garden are left on the renunciatory hands that wash Parsifal\u2019s feet?\u201d The tragic entrapment of this extraordinary Wagner creation eludes Linda Watson in the Seattle production. Having sung the role in Bayreuth, New York, and Berlin, she is a singer conscientious, sincere, and skilled. But she lacks the demonic. Rochaix does not help by replacing Kundry\u2019s expiration at the opera\u2019s close with an ecstatic tableau in which she lifts the sacred spear alongside Parsifal and the uplifted grail. Both Kundry and her fate are made to seem the more conventional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seattle\u2019s conductor is an Israeli, Asher Fisch, who has led Parsifal<\/em> in Vienna, Dresden, and Berlin. His authority is evident. Not the least satisfactory aspect of Wagner<\/strong> in Seattle is the audience. Jenkins provides a full menu of pre-performance lectures and<\/strong> post-performance discussions, two symposia, and a CD companion. His audience trusts<\/strong> him, and also Wagner. Once past the prelude, there is no coughing. When people<\/strong> applaud, they mean it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another manifestation of loyalty is the new hall itself: of its $127 million cost, more than $70 million comes from non-governmental sources. At a time when other American opera companies are reeling from the recession \u2013 Chicago Lyric, Los Angeles, and San Francisco have all cancelled major productions \u2013 Jenkins has balanced his<\/strong> budget 12 years in a row<\/strong>, a feat the more remarkable given the collapse of the local economy, with its dependence on .com companies and a Boeing plant greatly diminished in scope and personnel. The summer\u2019s nine <\/strong>Parsifal<\/strong><\/em> performances were 85 per cent sold<\/strong> out<\/strong>. The paucity of non-North American visitors \u2013 about 1 per cent \u2014 was notable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wagnerites from outside the United States and Canada should know that the Wadsworth Ring<\/em> will be repeated in summer 2005 under Robert Spano. Other Seattle Wagner productions will be reprised in the summers of 2004, 2006, and 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two postscripts complete this American Parsifal<\/em> report. This past spring, for the first time since 1974, someone other than James Levine led Parsifal<\/em> at the Met. The someone was Valery Gergiev, and he breathed new life into a tired and tedious production. Gergiev is always heard to best advantage in New York with his own Kirov company. On this occasion, something like the dark ceremonial majesty of a Kirov Boris<\/em> or Khovantschina<\/em> was frequently suggested. Also new to the Met Parsifal<\/em> were Ren\u00e9 Pape\u2019s Gurnemanz and Falk Struckmann\u2019s Amfortas \u2013 unsurpassed characterizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also: thanks to andante.com, the complete Wagner recordings made by Leopold Stokowski for RCA between 1921 and 1940 are now readily available in a 5-CD box (AND1130). These performances document the Philadelphia Orchestra in its peak estate (of which Rachmaninoff said: \u201cPhiladelphia has the finest orchestra I have ever heard at any time or any place in my whole life. I don\u2019t know that I would be exaggerating if I said that it is the finest orchestra the world has ever heard\u201d). And they document the most anomalous of all the great Wagner conductors: a New World original, the ultimate sonic sybarite. Stokowski\u2019s 40 minutes of Parsifal<\/em> excerpts constitute the most beautiful Parsifal<\/em> performance on records \u2013 even, I would say, the most beautifully sung (though there are no human voices). As surely as Karl Muck at Bayreuth keyed on the drama\u2019s ascetic hero, Stokowski singularly inhabits Klingsor and his magic garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Norman Lebrecht\u2019s obituary notice for Speight Jenkins, which ran today, is titled \u201cAmerica\u2019s Greatest Opera Boss Has Died.\u201d I couldn\u2019t agree more. In Seattle, Speight created the most important Wagner house in North America. I remember his first \u201cRing,\u201d directed by Francois Rochaix, as the most memorable mounting I have ever encountered (a rung above […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-12o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3992"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4003,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992\/revisions\/4003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}