Pacific Northwest Opera gives emerging singers a start in their careers
Mitchell Kahn, artistic director of Pacific Northwest Opera, was formerly the house physician for New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Since arriving in Bellingham, he has transformed what was originally Skagit Opera into a place where young singers who are starting their careers in opera can build their resumes.
As one seasoned singer, Katie Van Cooten, said, “It’s hard to get an audition to a prominent company without experience, and it’s hard to get experience without being cast in a show.”
“It’s a region more known for tulips than tenors,” Kahn said.
Kahn started singing in the chorus of PNO — then called Skagit Opera — in 2008 in “La Traviata” and “Madama Butterfly.”
After that season, Kahn said, the company ran out of money and the founding general director resigned, and then the next general director after several months said there wasn’t enough money to put on an opera and quit.
Kahn was determined that he would not let this die. He said the company would put on the best opera they could for whatever money they had. He’s done so for 15 years.
The 2025–2026 season features Handel’s “Rinaldo” on Oct. 19, 24 and 26, and Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos,” with soprano Van Kooten in the lead role, on April 25 and May 1 and 3 in McIntyre Hall on the Skagit Valley College campus in Mount Vernon.
Kahn said PNO has been important both to give young professional artists opportunities to sing major roles in fully staged professional level productions with a great conductor and to show that immensely satisfying opera productions can be done without big-name singers and huge expenses.
Kahn’s wife, Sherrie, noted that PNO offers coveted roles to more experienced singers who have not yet sung them elsewhere, but would like to try them.
Van Kooten, who lives in Lynden, first sang with PNO three years ago, as The Marschallin, the titular role in “Der Rosenkavalier” by Strauss, a role she performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in its 2019–2020 season. She has also performed with Houston Grand Opera, Opera New Orleans and Opera New Orleans. She made her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, in 2004.
She now serves on the board for PNO as artistic consultant.
“Being a singer, making music, using my gift to encourage and uplift other people is essential to what I feel like I contribute to the world and even more importantly, to my own community,” she said.
Hallie Schmidt has sung in three productions with PNO: “Der Rosenkavalier,” “The Marriage of Figaro” and “The Abduction from the Seraglio.” She’ll be singing in both productions this season.
PNO has become a very sacred and special place to work for many singers in the business, she said, and Kahn has a great ear for good singers. “His ability to scout emerging professional singers and help them get a strong start in this career has made PNO a very desirable place to work,” she said.
As a young singer, it’s tricky to find principal roles, she said. “There comes a point in every young opera singer’s life when you must transition from being an ‘apprentice artist’ to a ‘principal artist.’”
An apprentice artist typically covers leading roles, sings smaller roles, or chorus, while a principal artist sings leading and supporting roles.
Kahn gives emerging professionals those credits as a first step into the opera world.
Schmidt said the productions are accessible, intimate and enjoyable both for newcomers to opera and seasoned fans.
Sherrie Kahn described McIntyre Hall as “an absolute gem of a theater — modern, and the perfect size for our productions, allowing everyone an up-close and personal view of what’s happening on stage.”
Audiences primarily come from Whatcom, Skagit, Snohomish and King counties, but for certain productions of less frequently performed operas, people have come from as far away as Vancouver, B.C., Portland, San Francisco, New York City and Atlanta.
There are also ties with Western Washington University’s opera program. Senior instructor of voice and opera baritone Mark Davies has performed in “Turandot,” “Il barbiere di Siviglia” and “La bohème,” and has served as PNO’s chorus master since 2018. Members of Western Washington University’s Opera Club frequently perform in the production’s choruses.
Bellingham PNO fan Susan Bennerstrom grew up listening to opera via her mother’s subscription to the Met’s opera-of-the-month club. She designed the sets for “Hansel and Gretel” in 2015.
She said that “people have the mistaken idea that opera is a bunch of strangled geese wandering around onstage in service to outlandish stories.”
Van Kooten said even casual listeners can be dazzled by the spectacles that are fully staged operatic productions.
“Try something new and expect to love it!” she said.
— By Margaret Bikman