Seattle Opera Unveils New Website in Honor of 50th Anniversary

Seattle Opera dives into their 50th Anniversary by launching a mini-website: SeattleOpera50.com. This new mini-site features thousands of fantastic photos and unique audio and video clips. New content, which includes posts and resources submitted by Seattle Opera patrons and community members, will continue to be uploaded over the course of this 50th Anniversary season. The company invites the community to contribute to the site by commenting on posts and sharing memories of Seattle Opera.

"I am thrilled that we are making 50 years of Seattle Opera history available to the public," says Speight Jenkins, General Director of Seattle Opera. "Performances are ephemeral but GREAT performances live on in our memories. The audio clips alone on this site will put you right back in the theater. This website conveys the passion that I have sought throughout my 30 years with Seattle Opera."

Explore photo galleries of every Ring cycle produced by Seattle Opera; audio clips showcasing every recipient of the company's Artist of the Year Award; remember such Seattle Opera milestones as the 1962 World's Fair Aida, the 1971 world premiere of The Who's Tommy starring Bette Midler, the leadership transition from Glynn Ross to Speight Jenkins in 1983, the 1990 War and Peace that opened the Goodwill Games, the creation of the Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, and much more, including Seattle Opera's history of strong education and community engagement programs. It's easy to comment on and/or share any of the site's thousands of posts, and opera-lovers are encouraged to submit stories and memories-just click on the "Your Stories" tab at the top.

Over the course of this 50th Anniversary Season, the content of the new site's landing page will change to honor current mainstage programming. To celebrate this summer's successful production of the Ring, the landing page currently focuses on Seattle Opera's Wagner productions. In time for this fall's The Daughter of the Regiment, the focus will shift to comedies, and then to productions of popular Italian operas for January's Rigoletto. We'll showcase rarely-performed operas and American artists in time for The Consul; and for May's The Tales of Hoffmann, the last opera production of Speight Jenkins's career, the site will showcase Speight's own special favorites.

This 50th Anniversary site is the latest example of Seattle Opera's use of technology to share its work. In addition to broadcasting each production live on Classical KING FM 98.1 (streamed at king.org), the company maintains a lively blog (seattleoperablog.com) and strong followings on Facebook and Twitter; regularly posts audio and video from its performances and events to SoundCloud and YouTube; and offers its Spotlight Guides and performance programs as aniPad App. Pertinent information about current productions are available at seattleopera.org, with information about past accomplishments now available at the new SeattleOpera50.com site.

To post a comment, you must register and login.