James Robinson Named GD, AD of Seattle Opera

In what Terence Blanchard rightly describes as a “coup,” the Seattle Opera has lured director James Robinson away from Opera Theater of St. Louis to be its next general and artistic director. His 15-year tenure with OTSL has been marked by multiple premieres, commissions, and revelatory collaborations, with composers as well as with the local community, with which he built key connections that yielded new and capacity audiences. In Seattle, he succeeds Christina Scheppelmann, soon to take the helm of Brussels’ La Monnaie/De Munt.

“I have my opera career due to James Robinson,” said Blanchard, composer of Champion and Fire Shut Up in My Bones, both of which originated in St. Louis. “Jim saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself,” says Blanchard, who was first approached by Robinson to write an opera 12 years ago and has since seen both operas arrive at the Met Opera.

Robinson can lay claim to 75 new productions and over 30 world premieres, in the major houses of London, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and many more; among standard repertoire highlights, Seattle Opera claims that his 2004 staging of Carmen sold more tickets than any opera in company history. The Met revived his new take on Porgy and Bess twice, and the original recording of it won a Grammy award..

“Jim Robinson is one of our greatest visionaries—as a director, a commissioner of new work, and a producer,” said Timothy O’Leary, former general director of OTSL and now general director of the Washington National Opera. Speaking to the “New Works, Bold Voices” program the two launched in St. Louis—whose specific aim was to commission operas relevant to the lives of its local audiences—O’Leary said Robinson, “cares deeply that work is not just great artistically, but also resonates with the audience, and many of his commissions have been box office hits, attracting new and diverse audiences.”