The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often with double casts in major roles to allow for successive evening presentations.

The second, and current, general director of Seattle Opera since 1983 is Speight Jenkins. Since August 2003, the company has presented operas in the Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, built on the site of the old Seattle Opera House at the Seattle Center. The company does not have a full-time music director. In October 2007, Seattle Opera announced the appointment of Asher Fisch as the company's principal guest conductor.

From the outset, Ross saw opera as something that had to be sold using similar techniques to those used to sell popular entertainment. "To sell opera…you have to get their attention with a little razzle-dazzle. You've got to be simpatico. You have to be able to communicate, and you have to deliver your message with the best possible product you can manage." In 1970, H. C. Schonberg of the New York Times contrasted the Seattle Opera's approach to marketing to the then still staid marketing of New York's Metropolitan Opera: "Out there, you see campaign buttons with the legend Opera Lives. It is in Seattle where you can look at the sky and find an airplane skywriting the virtues of Seattle Opera. There are even auto bumper stickers about opera." Further, Schonberg remarked favorably on the "air of freshness and experimentation that contrasts vividly with the dull, tried and true, tired professionalism in other opera houses one could mention."

Seattle (pronounced /siːˈætɫ̩/ ( listen) see-AT-əl or /siːˈæɾɫ̩/) is the county seat of King County, in the U.S. state of Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country. The city is a major coastal seaport situated on a narrow isthmus between Puget Sound (an arm of the Pacific Ocean) and Lake Washington, about 114 miles (183 km) south of the Canada–United States border. In 2010, Seattle was the sixth busiest port in the United States, serving as a major gateway for trade with Asia.

The Seattle area had been inhabited by Native Americans for at least 4,000 years before the first permanent white settlers.Arthur A. Denny and his group of travelers, subsequently known as the Denny Party, arrived at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. The settlement was moved to its current site and renamed "Seattle" in 1853, after Chief Seattle of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes.

Laura Nyro /ˈnɪəroʊ/ NEAR-oh (October 18, 1947 – April 8, 1997) was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist. She achieved critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and New York Tendaberry, and had commercial success with artists such as Barbra Streisand and The 5th Dimension recording her songs. Her style was a hybrid of Brill Building-style New York pop, jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, show tunes, rock and soul.

Between 1968 and 1970, a number of artists had hits with her songs: The 5th Dimension with "Blowing Away", "Wedding Bell Blues", "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Sweet Blindness", "Save The Country" and "Black Patch"; Blood, Sweat & Tears and Peter, Paul & Mary with "And When I Die"; Three Dog Night and Maynard Ferguson with "Eli's Coming"; and Streisand with "Stoney End", "Time and Love", and "Hands off the Man (Flim Flam Man)". Nyro's best-selling single was her recording of Carole King and Gerry Goffin's "Up on the Roof."

On April 14, 2012, Laura Nyro was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

John Klemmer (born July 3, 1946) is an American saxophonist, composer, song writer and arranger.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois and began playing guitar at age 5 and alto saxophone at age 11. His other early interests included graphics and visual art, writing, dance, puppetry, painting, sculpting and poetry. He studied at schools that include The Art Institute of Chicago and began touring with various local midwest "ghost big bands" [Les Elgart, Woody Herman] as well as playing with small local jazz and rock groups. After switching to tenor saxophone in high school, Klemmer participated actively in the local Chicago jazz scene, playing with commercial small groups and big bands while leading his own groups in the Chicago area and touring.

Klemmer had extensive studies in music, taking private lessons as a youth and in college in piano, conducting, harmony, theory, composition, arranging, clarinet, flute & classical & jazz saxophone. He studied saxophone and jazz improvisation with noted Chicago saxophonist and teacher Joe Daly. He attended the prestigious Interlochen's National Music Camp. The year he graduated from high school, Klemmer was signed by producer Esmond Edwards at Cadet/Chess Records, eventually recording five albums with Cadet/Chess, including his innovative hit album, Blowin Gold [co-produced by ex-Rolling Stones producer Marshall Chess]. This album was considered by many as the first of the jazz/rock fusion genre; follow-up albums introduced innovative rock rhythms, sounds and production techniques and debuted electronic effects with the saxophone that became his now trademark "delay" sound.

Daniel Catán (April 3, 1949 – April 8, 2011) was a Mexican composer of Russian Sephardic Jewish descent known particularly for his operas and his creative friendship with the tenor Plácido Domingo.

Born in Mexico City, he studied philosophy at the University of Sussex and music at the University of Southampton. He received a Ph.D. from Princeton University, where he studied with Milton Babbitt, James K. Randall, and Benjamin Boretz.

Catán was the first Mexican composer to have an opera produced in the United States, when San Diego Opera produced his opera Rappaccini's Daughter in March 1994. He has also composed orchestral and chamber works and film music. His style can be described as neo-impressionist. His music is richly lyrical, often painting evocative colours with the orchestral palette with soaring melodies atop.

In addition to composition, Catán had a fruitful career as a writer on music and the arts. He lived in South Pasadena, California. In 1998, Catán received the Plácido Domingo Award for his contribution to opera, and he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000. His last opera, Il Postino, whose premiere featured Plácido Domingo in the role of Pablo Neruda, is based on the 1983 novel Ardiente paciencia by Antonio Skármeta and the 1994 film Il Postino by Michael Radford; it premiered at the Los Angeles Opera in September 2010.