Amelia: A Passionate Flight

There are quite a few reasons to see Amelia during its final weekend of performances.

Not the least of which is seeing the first production of the only opera ever commissioned by the Seattle Opera. As Speight Jenkins says:

"Commissioning a new work is one of the most important responsibilities any leader in our field can undertake and I firmly believe we must renew our 400-year-old art form if it is to survive."

Jennifer Zetlan (The Flier) with J.C. Casiano (Noonan). © Rozarii Lynch photo

Read the full review after the jump.

Jenkins collaborated with composer Daron Aric Hagen; librettist Gardner Fall and Stephen Wadsworth, who created the original story and directed the production. Their combined efforts resulted in a grand opera that is broad and universal, while simultaneously very personal.

Fall based the story on the loss of her own father, who, like Amelia's, was an aviator lost during the Vietnam War. She brings all of her skills as a poet to the libretto, with recurring symbols of the color blue and birds and flight. I was particularly struck by the powerful image that appears in Amelia's dream of a lawn strewn with dead blue jays, and her despair over the inability to bury them all.

Hagen wrote the musical part for Amelia specifically for Kate Lindsey's voice, and she was radiant in the title role, her voice soaring through the epic mood swings of the character. And the rest of Hagen's score is wonderfully complex and invigorating, employing mallet percussion and double-reeds to great effect in some of the more poignant places in the piece. The work reveals the influences of Ned Rorem and David Diamond, two of the composers that Hagen studied with, but his work clearly has its own dynamic personality.

William Burden (Dodge), Kate Lindsey (Amelia), and Jane Eaglen (Helen). © Rozarii Lynch photo

Amelia's father dies before she can remove him from his pedestal, causing Amelia to be trapped behaving like a petulant child. Having never experienced adolescent rebelion and resolution with her parents, she's stuck in a selfish mode, throwing tantrums, blaming everyone around her for her own suffering, and refusing to adopt the mantle of adulthood.

Behind and surrounding so much psychologically and emotionally dense material are fabulous sets, costumes and props, from an airplane to the doomed wings of Icarus to a frighteningly realistic hospital set.

On a more regional note, the recurring themes of aviation and of the perils of flying are of particular significance here in the Pacific Northwest, and all of the tie-ins with the Museum of Flight, and the show of portraits of aviators in the lobby of McCaw Hall helped to establish a focus on the opera's themes of planes and the passion for flight.

Nicholas Coppolo (Icarus), Kate Lindsey (Amelia), and Nathan Gunn (Paul). © Rozarii Lynch photo

It also bears mention that the section that takes place in Vietnam is sung in Vietnamese, which is quite effective and adds an important level of authenticity to the scene. And it is an interesting part in the narrative, underscoring the unattainability of resolution and truth about the facts around what actually happened to Amelia's father.

Seattle probably won't have another opportunity to experience an opera with Tim Burton-size daddy issues. Nor may we have the opportunity to see another production with such timely relevance and thematic importance either.

Along with nearly everyone else who has seen it, I applaud the Seattle Opera on the tremendous success of Amelia. It will, no doubt, see great success in other productions by other companies, but it will always feel like a work born here.