Seattle Opera announced the appointment of James Robinson, the current artistic director of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, as its next general and artistic director beginning Sept. 4. Robinson replaces Christina Scheppelmann, who is departing Seattle for Brussels’ La Monnaie/De Munt in January.
During his tenure at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Robinson built a reputation for championing new works and non-white composers. Over 16 years, he commissioned 11 world premieres, including Terence Blanchard’s “Champion” and “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” both of which went on to be staged at the Metropolitan Opera to much acclaim. He also commissioned Huang Ruo’s An American Soldier, which was listed by The New York Times as among “The Best of Classical Music 2018.”
As a director, Robinson is perhaps best known for his production of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” that opened Met Opera’s 2019-’20 season. A recording of the production went on to win a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in March 2021.
Seattle Opera cites Robinson’s “community-based approach to programming” as one of the reasons for his appointment. In St. Louis, he co-led the New Works, Bold Voices program to commission “diverse, modern-day stories”; meanwhile, Seattle Opera is seen as a leader in efforts to modernize and diversify its management and programming to better represent the city around it. The company has recently mounted productions of Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” and the 2023 world premiere of Sheila Silver’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns” based on the novel by Khaled Hosseini.
Robinson also previously made a splash at Seattle Opera in January 2004, when he directed Bizet’s “Carmen” in a production that sold more tickets than any opera in the company’s history.
