[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 62 (Thursday, April 29, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              HONORING THE RAINIER CLUB'S ARTIST LAUREATE

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JIM McDERMOTT

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 29, 2010

  Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I rise today, on the occasion of the 
honoring of Stephen Wadsworth's lifetime achievement by one of 
Seattle's historic organizations and keeper of the arts, the Rainier 
Club. The people of the State of Washington hold up as a national 
inspiration the work of Stephen Wadsworth, stage director and writer.
  Associated with Seattle Opera for more than 25 years, Stephen 
Wadsworth is a renowned director whose work has included acclaimed 
productions at the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera 
Covent Garden, Vienna Staatsoper, Nederlandse Opera, and Edinburgh 
Festival, and in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Santa Fe. He 
made his Seattle Opera debut with Jancek's Jenufa and has returned for 
Gluck's Iphigenia in Tauris (a co-production with the Metropolitan 
Opera) and Orphee et Eurydice; Handel's Xerxes; and Wagner's Lohengrin, 
Fliegende Hollander, and Ring.
  Highlights of his operatic work include the Seattle Orphee (1988), on 
which he collaborated with Mark Morris. Of that production, The New 
Yorker magazine wrote ``Inspired productions touch the heart of a 
listener's being, reveal music's power to sound every string of a 
psyche; make the theater what it should be, a place of, at once, 
ecstasy, entertainment, and moral and political enlightenment. The 
Seattle Orphee was such a production. It made the absurd extravagances 
of opera, all that it costs in public and private money and personal, 
hardworking devotion, seem worthwhile.''
  Wadsworth has staged much-traveled productions of plays by 
Shakespeare, Moliere, Marivaux, Goldoni, Shaw, Wilde, and Coward. 
Wadsworth wrote the opera A Quiet Place with Leonard Bernstein, and 
directed the world premieres of Daron Aric Hagen's Shining Brow and 
Peter Lieberson's Ashoka's Dream, as well as new plays by Beth Henley 
and Anna Deavere Smith. He has translated a number of works for the 
stage, including works by Monteverdi, Handel, and Mozart.
  The French government named Stephen Wadsworth a Chevalier de l'Ordre 
des Arts et des Lettres for his work on Moliere and Marivaux. He is the 
Head of Dramatic Studies at the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young 
Artist Development Program, and the James S. Marcus Faculty Fellow and 
Director of Opera Studies at the Juilliard School, where he has 
launched the first intensive acting program for opera singers.
  Stephen Wadsworth's influence is international and broad in scope, 
but it is our honor that his presence is local to Washington State's 
7th Congressional District. His work has brought a rich luminosity to 
the Seattle arts community for many years, and I am privileged now to 
note his profound contribution to our cultural life.

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