Remembering Seattle Opera's Perry Lorenzo

Perry Lorenzo, known to thousands as Seattle Opera's education director, died over the weekend, succumbing to lung cancer. He was 51.

Perry joined the Opera in 1992, after ten years at Burien's Kennedy High School. Very quickly, he transformed the education department: His standing-room-only preview lectures became a sold-out $5 ticket, and helped fund the beginnings of a Young Artists Program, which over the years has become one of the country's leading opera training programs.

His popularity as a lecturer on opera never waned, and he traveled far and wide to share his enthusiasm for the art form, to San Francisco and New York, and even to Bayreuth's Ring festival, as a representative of the world's other great Wagner town.

Now let me take a moment to remember Perry personally. We met in or around the B&O Café on Capitol Hill in 1991, through a fellow classmate of mine from Seattle University. (Perry often spoke and taught at Seattle U.) He was still teaching at Kennedy H.S. at the time, and when he learned I was working at Seattle U.'s writing center, he talked me into giving feedback on his AP students' papers.

"They think they are ready for college," he told me, "so let them know the bar will be higher." I tried to be diligent. After the first pass, he asked me, graciously, not to make his students cry. Occasionally they popped into the B&O to say hello to their favorite teacher, and he took great pleasure in introducing me as the person who wrote all those critical comments on their papers.

Perry arranged my first real editorial job out of college, vouching for me when a temporary position came open at the Opera, and I got a trial stint as managing editor of the Opera's magazine and programs. I ended up spending most of the 1990s at the Opera, and watched firsthand as Perry tirelessly voyaged first around Seattle, then the Puget Sound, then the state, always leaving new opera fans in his wake.

An immensely funny, intelligent, and sensitive man, in public he adopted a hortatory mood. Yes you can, he insisted to audiences restive with high art apprehension, not simply understand, but know the appeal of opera. A staunch Catholic, he loved the rituals and ceremony of opera as much, I think, as the art of it.

At this moment, what I recall most is those mornings we would meet for coffee before walking down Denny to the Opera offices. He was a man who had found his place in the world--each morning he brimmed over with excitement. Once he pulled up on the freeway overpass. "Stop and take this in, Michael," he told me, in a mock portentous way. The sun was rising behind us, Seattle before us. "We are princes of the city." I laughed, just as he intended, but I also walked on with a new appreciation of the day ahead. Also as he intended.

He was a very good friend.

[UPDATE: Speight Jenkins has written a touching memorial to Perry as well. A funeral mass will also be held on Wednesday, December 30, at 2 p.m. at St. James Cathedral. Seattle Opera will be holding a public celebration of Perry Lorenzo’s life on Saturday, January 9, at 3 p.m. in the McCaw Hall auditorium followed by a short reception in the grand lobby.]