Speight Jenkins Jr. (born January 31, 1937) is a classical music critic and music administrator. He was the general director of Seattle Opera from 1983 to 2014.

Early life and education

Jenkins, a native of Dallas, Texas, is the son of Speight Jenkins Sr. and Sara Baird Jenkins. His parents took him to his first opera at the age of 7, and he fell immediately in love with the art form. His B.A. degree is from the University of Texas at Austin, and he graduated in 1961 from Columbia Law School.

Career

Jenkins served in the U.S. Army as a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, and afterwards became a music critic and journalist. He worked for seven years at ''

Opera News ''Opera News'' is an American classical music magazine. It has been published since 1936 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a non-profit organization located at Lincoln Center which was founded to engender the appreciation of opera and also support ...

'' as its news and reports editor, and later at the '' New York Post'' from 1973 to 1981 as music critic. He has been a host for U.S. television's '' Live from the Metropolitan Opera'' and a guest speaker on the

Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts The Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts are a regular series of weekly broadcasts on network radio of full-length opera performances. They are transmitted live from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The Metropolitan Opera In ...

Tenure at Seattle Opera

In the early 1980s, Jenkins was a guest lecturer at Seattle Opera for the company's production of

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

's '' Der Ring des Nibelungen''. His knowledge impressed the Seattle Opera board of trustees, such that they offered him the post of general director of the company and he began his tenure in that post with the company in 1983. His contract was extended for another ten years, and in 2003, he signed another 10-year extension to his contract. At Seattle Opera he has produced two complete cycles of Wagner's Ring, the first one directed by François Rochais and the second one by Stephen Wadsworth. He also produced new productions of the other six frequently produced Wagner operas, as well as new productions of Prokofiev's '' War and Peace'', Debussy's '' Pelléas et Mélisande'', Dvorak's ''

Rusalka In Slavic folklore, the rusalka (plural: rusalky/rusalki; ; pl, rusałka}) is a typically feminine entity, often malicious toward mankind and frequently associated with water, with counterparts in other parts of Europe, such as the French Melus ...

'', Bellini's '' Norma'', Gluck's ''

Orfeo ed Euridice ' (; French: '; English: ''Orpheus and Eurydice'') is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, based on Orpheus, the myth of Orpheus and set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the ''azione teatrale'', mea ...

'' and ''

Iphigénie en Tauride ''Iphigénie en Tauride'' (, ''Iphigenia in Tauris'') is a 1779 opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck in four acts. It was his fifth opera for the French stage. The libretto was written by Nicolas-François Guillard. With ''Iphigénie,'' Gluck took ...

'', four Strauss operas, many by Verdi and Puccini, plus several contemporary works. In 2010 Seattle Opera commissioned and gave the world premiere of '' Amelia'', by Daron Hagen. Jenkins stepped down as General Director of Seattle Opera in August 2014, and was replaced by Aidan Lang.

Other work

Jenkins has written an art book, ''Pelleas + Melisande + Chihuly'', and narrated a 4-CD commentary called ''Enjoying Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung with Speight Jenkins''. In 2011 he won an Opera Honor from the National Endowment for the Arts. In the same year he received an honorary doctorate from the

New England Conservatory The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The conservatory is located on Hu ...

Personal life

Jenkins and his wife, the former Linda Sands, have two children, Linda Leonie Jenkins and Speight Jenkins III.

References

Notes Other sources *Melinda Bargreen (2 August 2014)
"Speight Jenkins: Gracefully bowing out of Seattle Opera"
''The Seattle Times'' at seattletimes.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Jenkins, Speight Opera managers 1937 births Living people Classical musicians from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni Columbia Law School alumni New York Post people Classical music radio people People from Dallas Journalists from Texas