STEPHEN STUBBS
After a thirty year career in Europe, Stephen Stubbs recently returned to his native Seattle to establish his new opera company, Pacific Operaworks, which received rave reviews in the national press with a production of Monteverdi's Return of Ulysses designed and stage-directed by South African artist William Kentridge with the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa in March 2009. Performances took place in Seattle and for SFMOMA in San Francisco.
Since 1997 he has co-directed the bi-annual Boston Early Music Festival opera. The Festival's recording of Conradi's Ariadne was nominated for a Grammy award in 2005, their recording of Lully's Thesee was nominated in 2007 and their Psyché, also by Lully, was nominated in 2009. At the June 2009 Festival he will co-direct Monteverdi's Poppea as well as Blow's Venus and Adonis and Charpentiere's Acteon with musical co-director Paul O'Dette and stage director Gilbert Blin.
With his direction of Stefano Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival, he began his career as opera director and simultaneously founded the ensemble Tragicomedia, which has since recorded numerous CDs and completed tours of Europe, North America and Japan. Stubbs has been invited to direct opera productions in Europe, the US, Canada and Scandinavia.
Stephen created the ensemble Teatro Lirico, who made their recording debut in 1996 with the CD Love and Death in Venice. A live recording of Antonio Sartorio's Orfeo of 1672 for Vanguard Classics was awarded the Cini Prize for best opera recording of 1999. Teatro Lirico now records for ECM records. Their debut CD on this label was a New York Times "pick of the year" for 2006.
To cultivate the singers and players of the next generation he founded an early opera course called the Accademia d'Amore in 1997, which is now located in Seattle under the auspices of the Seattle Academy of Opera, the educational department of Pacific Operaworks. As an educator, his deep knowledge of Monteverdi's three operas have lead to his direction of both The Coronation of Poppeaand L'Orfeo for Oberlin School of Music and Pacific Lutheran University.
Besides his ongoing commitments to the Boston Early Music Festival and Pacific Operaworks, other engagements as music director have taken Stephen to Bilbao's opera house in Spain to conduct Handel's Guilio Cesare and Gluck's Orfeo as well as Handel's Guilio Cesare in Murcia, Spain. In 2007 he returned to the Netherlands Opera, Amsterdam, where he directed Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, which he has been directing there since 1997. He has also taken an interest in the Passions of JS Bach, and he recently conducted the St John Passion in Bratislava, Slovakia.
As an artist in residence at St James Cathedral, Seattle, he directed the oratorio The Representation of the Body and the Soul by Emilio de Cavalieri in November 2007, which was filmed for the Seattle Channel.
Other guest directorships have included Seattle Baroque Orchestra, featuring Cyndia Sieden in an evening of arias by Handel and contemporaries originally written for the baroque diva Francesca Cuzzoni as well as directing performances for Apollo's Fire, Cleveland. One of last seasons' highlights was a recital with tenor Jean Paul Fouchecourt at Carnegie Hall. Another was conducting the performance of new sacred music by Slovak composer Vladimir Godard in Slovakia and at the sacred music festival in Freiburg, Switzerland with the Slovak Orchestra Solamente Naturali and soloist Iva Bittova.
Next season will include directing the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra in Versailles, a collaboration with German composer Heiner Goebbels in Seattle and conducting a US tour of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers.