General press coverage
When Stubbs came here from Germany, he brought his highly successful opera course in Baroque opera called Accademia d’Amore. It remains intact as a summer workshop. The Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera is the umbrella organization run by Stubbs and his wife, the baroque harpist Maxine Eilander, who performed with Stubbs in his October concert at Nordstrom Recital Hall.
His major future project is the founding of an opera company dedicated to works that Seattle Opera has little interest in doing, mostly from the 17th century. The name is already firm—Pacific Operaworks.
Stubbs was co-music director of the Early Music Guild production of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea at Intiman Playhouse a season ago. For the inaugural production of his new company, he wants to do another Monteverdi opera, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse, also premiered in Venice, in a production designed by the artist William Kentridge, with video and life-size puppets.
—Richard Campbell, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (November 15, 2007)
Local musical review
This performance before a large and enthusiastic audience is the opening gesture of Stubbs’ chamber opera company.
St. James Cathedral is a place where there is extraordinary music and music-theater. So it comes as no surprise that a piece like this should work so effectively. The action took place around the altar. The small orchestra was off to one side, and singers and dancers made their entrances and exits to and from a variety of aisles and corners.
In addition to superb lighting, there was Anna Mansbridge’s inventive stage direction and choreography. The difficulties of theatre in the round did not hamper Mansbridge’s imagination but stimulated it, which gave life to what could have been static in someone else’s hands.
Given Stubbs’ international credentials and reputation, it is not surprising the musical standards he revealed in this production were high.
He chose his singers carefully: They were, in general, young and earnest in their delivery, sensitive to period style and able to adapt to their surroundings.
What a notable beginning.
—Richard Campbell, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (November 18, 2007)