After a thirty year career in Europe, Stephen Stubbs returned to his native Seattle in 2006 to establish his new opera company, Pacific Musicworks. The company received rave reviews in the national press for its inaugural 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.
The 2009–2010 season includes his direction of a program of Rameau in Versailles with the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, a new production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea in Boston, and a production of Cavalli’s Giasone for the UCLA Opera department. 2011 will bring the American Handel Society to Seattle for the bi-annual Handel Festival at which Stephen will direct Handel’s Esther as well as Handel’s Acis and Galatea imported from the Boston Early Music Festival, for which he is permanent artistic co-director. Since 1997 Stephen has co-directed the bi-annual Boston Early Music Festival opera. The Festival’s recordings of Conradi’s Ariadne, Lully’s Thesée, and Psyché were nominated for Grammy awards in 2005, 2007, and 2009.
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 J.S. Bach, and he recently conducted the St. John Passion in Bratislava, Slovakia. 2011 will see his debut conducting the Seattle Symphony Orchestra performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
To cultivate the singers and players of the next generation Stubbs founded an early opera course called the Accademia d’Amore in 1997, now in Seattle under the auspices of the Seattle Academy of Opera.
Anna Mansbridge (choreographer), Artistic Director of Seattle Early Dance, is from the U.K., where she studied early dance for many years with teachers foremost in the profession. She holds a First Class Honors Degree in Dance and Education from Bedford College, U.K., and an M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Mills College, CA, USA. She has been teaching and performing early European Court dance (16th–18th centuries) since 1990. In 1995 she co-founded Footwork OffLimits, a company committed to presenting early dance to audiences in ways both entertaining and informative. Ms. Mansbridge has been on the faculty of two early music courses in Europe: the Ringve International Summer School in Trondheim, Norway, and Aestas Musica in Varazdin, Croatia. She immigrated to Seattle in 1998, and in 2000 she founded Seattle Early Dance, which has quickly established itself as the Northwest’s premier early dance company, and has been the recipient of a number of grants. Recent choreography and performance credits include Monteverdi’s Il Ballo delle Ingrate, John Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Baroque Extravaganza with Gallery Concerts, and Spanish Baroque Meets Flamenco in collaboration with Flamenco dance specialist Rubina Carmona. Ms. Mansbridge is also in demand as a solo performer, and has recently appeared with both Seattle Symphony and Bellevue Philharmonic. In addition, Ms. Mansbridge has taught on a number of early music workshops, including The Dancing Master, and the Accademia d’Amore baroque opera workshop, both presented by The Early Music Guild, Seattle, and the Cascade Early Music Festival.
Claire Cowie (costume and stage design) is a Seattle artist. She received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 1997 and an MFA from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1999. She is represented by the James Harris Gallery, Seattle and the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland. Recent awards include a Pollock-Krasner Grant and fellowships from Washington State Arts Commission, Artist Trust and the Behnke Foundation. Collections include Microsoft, Amgen Corporation, 4Culture, Tacoma Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery and Swedish Cancer Institute. Reviews have appeared in Art in America, Artforum, Artweek, and Los Angeles Times.
Tenor Ross Hauck (Testo) is a resident of Issaquah, WA where he lives with his wife, Laura, and twin boys, Daniel and Benjamin. After a very successful and critically-lauded debut in the title role of Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria, Mr. Hauck is very pleased to return for another collaboration with Stephen Stubbs and Pacific MusicWorks. He has been featured in early music with the Boston Early Music Festival, the Seattle Baroque, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, the Early Music Guild, the Dallas Bach Society, and Apollo’s Fire. Other collaborations with Stephen Stubbs have been as Nero and Lucano in Il Coronazione di Poppea, Intelletto in Rappresentazione di corpo e di anima, as well as the upcoming Monteverdi Vespers in December 2010. Other opera credits include Sacramento Opera, Tacoma Opera, Aspen Opera Center, Tanglewood, Indianapolis Opera, and Wolf Trap Opera. He has premiered new roles in works by American composers Libby Larsen and John Musto. Recital highlights include the Ravinia Festival, the New York Festival of Song, and the Wolf Trap Discovery Series. Upcoming work includes appearances with the Seattle Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony, and the Icicle Creek Music Center. Later this season Mr. Hauck will appear several times here in Seattle, in a creative cabaret series for Black Box Opera Theater, a Haydn Creation with his home church, a return engagement with the Seattle Symphony, and a world premiere work and recording by composer Lori Laitman, commissioned through Music of Remembrance.
Mr. Hauck holds degrees from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He is also a cellist, a voice teacher, an artist in residence at the First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue, and the co-founder and artistic director of the Sacred Music Foundation.
A graduate of Seattle Opera’s Young Artist Program, Terri Richter (Clorinda) has appeared in opera houses and symphony halls throughout the U.S. She enjoys performing all genres of music, and has a special interest in music from the baroque and renaissance eras. Upcoming opera roles include Euridice in Seattle Opera’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Sophie in Opera Cleveland’s Werther, and Clorinda in Monteverdi’s Tancredi and Clorinda with Pacific Musicworks. She will be performing Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers in nine U.S. cities during 2010, beginning in March with the Grand Rapids Symphony. Other upcoming performances include Bach’s Cantata 51, Haydn’s Creation, and cantata Cari Musici by female 17th century composer Bianca Maria Meda.
Thomas Thompson (Tancredi) has been singing in Seattle for the last 16 years with various local groups including the Northwest Boychoir, Vocalpoint! Seattle, the Renaissance Singers, the Compline Choir at St. Mark’s cathedral, Capella Romana, and the Tudor Choir. He has also appeared as soloist for the Christmas Revels in both Tacoma and Portland, and in the Seattle Symphony’s educational concert series. In his spare time he practices martial arts, something he has been doing since the age of 8, and works in his garden.