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Arts Intel Report

Flight

Apr 3–25, 2021
363 Mercer St, Seattle, WA 98109, United States

Remember Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski in Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal (2004), stranded for months in Arrivals at JFK, forbidden to enter the United States and barred from returning home by a geopolitical Catch-22? Based on the same true history of the Iranian refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who was marooned at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, for a mind-bending 18 years, Jonathan Dove’s opera Flight landed six years before the movie. An instant hit, it has proved remarkably durable. Now, against the backdrop of the pandemic, Dove’s comedy takes on more existential shadings, even as the countertenor character that Dove calls the Refugee morphs alarmingly into Everyman. The Baroque specialist Randall Scotting takes the part in Seattle’s virtual production, which goes live for subscribers on April 3. Single admissions are available from April 23 to 25 only. —M.G.

“Flight,” Seattle Opera © Philip Newton.

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