President’s Message
I want you to know that despite COVID, we are continuing to provide gatherings and entertainment for Guild members and their guests. We have a dozen board members who not only are dedicated to the Seattle Opera Guild but are fun-loving and deeply enjoy music. They are quite creative and have come up with several ways to reach out to you, all the while supporting the COVID protocols for safety.
Guild-wide Preview of Puccini’s La Bohème
Our first guild-wide preview (as Seattle Opera is no longer supporting our previews) was held at Cogir of Queen Anne on Sunday afternoon, October 10, and 38 attended (40 was the maximum allowed). We were able to enjoy our own preview in the privacy of the Cogir of Queen Anne facility, and to have the kind of “up close and personal experience” with our performers we have grown so accustomed to through our preview groups of the Seattle Opera Guild.
This site worked well as it is near Seattle Opera, has good parking below the building on a Sunday afternoon, and they provide free appetizers and beverages to patrons. The main event was the preview itself in their dining room which has a high ceiling that works well with operatic voices. Patricia Pavia was our event planner (VP of Special Events); she began the program around 2 PM, with Marilyn Leck, Chair of the Mercer Island Preview Group, serving as emcee. Suzy honored our host, Florence Rose-Thompson, with a silver SOG pin for her many years of service to the Guild. We were asked to keep our masks on during the performance, and we had to show proof of vaccination on arrival.
The singers performed three arias for 25 minutes, with Li Tan Hsu at the piano. Andrew Etherington, a competitor in our Singers Development Fund auditions in September, sang the role of Rudolfo, with his extraordinary tenor voice. The sopranos were Marissa Moultrie (Mimi) and Yoojeong Cho (Musetta). Andrew, whom several of us heard again in La Traviata at the Pacific Northwest Opera in Mt. Vernon in November, gave an interesting narration of La Bohème. Afterwards, we adjourned across the street to the other building, where we enjoyed appetizers and donated wine, and had a great opportunity to visit and enjoy each other’s company. Patricia Pavia made the whole event flow so easily. Also, Katie McCormick hosted a vintage opera book auction, donated by the family of Mary Ruth Ryan.
Annual Holiday Luncheon
Our annual Holiday Luncheon, which we missed last year due to COVID, was at the beautiful Seattle Tennis Club which, as always, had exquisite holiday decorations. We had a professional recording company, Mirror Sound, recording our performers, and Jay Wakefield, my husband, is arranging to have 100 CDs and 100 DVDs available for free after this event. (Members will be able to request getting a free copy sent to them.) Jay is doing this to encourage membership in the Seattle Opera Guild.
65 members and guests attended, almost the most recent pre-COVID numbers. We dined on chicken piccata, roasted vegetable tower, or roasted chicken with rice and vegetables—with plated desserts of lemon bars, blueberries and strawberries. Gift baskets, put together by our event coordinator, Patricia Pavia, were won by Paul Maffeo (the fruit basket) and Laura Superville of the Seattle Opera staff who won the wine basket, worth $150 with three bottles of wine, a cheese tray, and a corkscrew. Christina Scheppelmann, General Director of Seattle Opera, won one of the Amazon gift cards worth $100, and Emily Hartley won the other. (Ann Milam and Sally Buckingham donated the $100 Amazon gift cards.)
The program started with introductions by Patricia Pavia, followed by Suzy who introduced Lesley Chapin Wykoff, President of the Seattle Opera Board of Trustees. Then Christina Scheppelmann gave us an update on upcoming operas. Other staff members who joined us and sat with preview groups were Jane Repensek, CFO and CEO of Seattle Opera, Alejandra Valarino Boyer, Director of Programs and Partnerships, and Lauren Superville, Individual Giving Manager. Suzy also introduced our sponsor at the Seattle Tennis Club, Mark Metcalf.
Suzy then honored five past presidents, who have given so much support to the Guild over the past many years, with a special gift: Gayle Charlesworth (2017-2020), Christine Szabadi (2015-2017), Florence Rose-Thompson (2011-2013), Marlene Holbrook (2009-2011) and Betty Carter (2002-2003). Some of these past Board presidents have served the Guild for 20 years or more! Sally Buckingham was again honored for her Award of Distinction.
Our singers were Grace Skinner, mezzo-soprano, winner of the Guild’s Singers Development Fund auditions in September 2021, and Ivy Zhou, soprano, finalist from the year before. Elisabeth Ellis accompanied them on the piano. They performed opera favorites: “Caro nome” from Verdi’s Rigoletto, Belle Nuit from Les Contes d’Hoffman by Offenbach, and “O Zittre Nacht” from Die Zauberflöte by Mozart. They also treated us to festive music of the season. Both singers displayed great stage presence.
This was a high energy luncheon program; we even sang Happy Birthday to Emily Hartley, with Elisabeth Ellis accompanying us on the piano!
We certainly hope to see you in 2022 as we continue to share our talented young singers and plan special events for you. We feel so fortunate to be helping our aspiring young singers, some of whom will go on to compete in local, regional and national competitions. It is an awesome opportunity to be with them at this point in their careers, and to be able to say some day, “We knew them when…”