Seattle is seeing the birth of a new movement of new opera outside traditional channels. “These productions bracket an extraordinary and sudden flowering—a dozen or so examples in as many months— of what might be called ‘homemade opera.’ Singers and composers are taking the impresario reins, presenting small-scale productions both of new operas and of neglected works by established names, making their own opportunities to perform and be heard outside a mainstream operatic culture in which young singers face stiff competition and composers are all but ignored.”