Over 15 years, James Robinson has transformed Opera Theater of St. Louis into a powerhouse for new work, crowned by a series of high-profile transfers to New York’s Metropolitan Opera. An inspirational and diplomatic creative artist, he believes in giving contemporary opera time to mature. Only then can a commission make the successful leap from page to stage.
In 2019, James Robinson was making his Metropolitan Opera debut with its season opening production of Porgy and Bess while also thinking that after decades as a sought-after stage director, he might be ready for a bigger role in the opera world. Five years later, he has one: In August, he was named general and artistic director of Seattle Opera.
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For Robinson, 62, it builds on formidable accomplishments. As artistic director of Opera Theater of St. Louis for 15 years, he shaped the company’s profile as a center for new American operas, nurturing their creation in addition to directing them. Commissions included Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2019), chosen by the Met to open its 2021-22 season—its first-ever opera by a black composer and a hit.
Fire was Blanchard’s second opera for OTSL after Robinson persuaded the renowned jazz trumpeter and composer to write Champion, which premiered in 2013 (it would follow Fire to the Met in 2023). Robinson recalls that some board and staff members were worried when he first commissioned Blanchard, who had never written vocal music. He was not.
Working with composers is a natural fit. Robinson studied to be one himself but summer jobs at the Santa Fe Opera set him on a new path. “I got tired of the ‘agonizing alone in the room’ bit,” he says. “I liked seeing things move and communicating. It seemed more natural to direct.”
Learning his craft as staff stage director for a conservatory opera program, he was soon getting invitations to helm shows. Robinson decided early on that he would only do new productions. “I like designing things from the ground up,” he says. Many of his projects were coproductions—like an Abduction from the Seraglio set on the Orient Express—which introduced him to multiple opera companies and made him a regular in houses like Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, Canadian Opera Company, and many others. His witty 2004 production of John Adams’s Nixon in China, its first major American staging since the 1987 premiere, traveled widely, putting the piece back on the map and positioning Robinson as a key figure in contemporary opera.
Arriving at OTSL in 2009, he and new General Director Timothy O’Leary sharpened the company’s artistic focus. “It’s hard to write, workshop, and produce an opera, to bring it to its full capacity,” Robinson says. “You can’t just call a composer and say, write an opera, good luck, see you in three years. The nurturing and fostering of those enterprises—which are very expensive—takes a huge amount of effort. I think one reason some new operas don’t do well is that not enough time is devoted to actually getting them right.”
One frequent problem, he says, is librettos with too many words. “Getting a librettist to understand ‘you have to trim this because right now, the music doesn’t have a reason to be there’ takes a huge effort,” he says. “There’s a lot of diplomacy involved.”
For some St. Louis projects, older operas like Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk were pared down, giving them new life. Huang Ruo’s An American Soldier got the opposite treatment: Robinson saw an hour-long version at Washington National Opera and thought it needed to be a two-act opera. “Composers are never asked to make anything longer!”
For Seattle, Robinson is contemplating commissions, partnerships with other companies, and using a small supplemental theater to nurture experimental work. As he and O’Leary did so successfully in St. Louis, he plans to find ways to open the company’s inner workings to the community, audience, and donors, sparking their interest and investment.
“There’s a lot of energy there; it’s an incredibly wealthy city. Seattle has a big Asian population; they’ve never done an opera by an Asian composer. And they’ve never had anyone in a leadership position who was an active artist. I can direct one show a year, and really explain how this is all done.”
That show could be an older piece—Robinson jokes that his association with new operas, especially after doing the Blanchard works, means he “can’t get arrested in the world of traditional opera.” Next summer’s freelance project is typical: The OTSL world premiere of This House, a ghost story about a brownstone in Harlem, by Ricky Ian Gordon, Lynn Nottage, and Nottage’s daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber.
Robinson looks forward to digging into the show. “I was excited that Ricky and Lynn wanted to collaborate again, after Intimate Apparel. Lynn has a natural lyricism to her writing, and Ricky is one of my favorite people, he always has a zillion ideas.” And Robinson will be there to make sure it all works. •
Heidi Waleson is opera critic of The Wall Street Journal and the author of Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2018)
