Stephen Stubbs

Stephen Stubbs stands among the foremost interpreters of early music, where his efforts have revived the central role of plucked-string continuo instruments from the Baroque era. Through his work with period ensembles he has directed and documented landmark productions of Baroque operas, and in 2023 he contributed lute to countertenor Randall Scotting’s album Lovesick.

Born in Seattle in 1951, Stubbs grew up surrounded by music and quickly developed equal enthusiasm for historically informed performance and the twentieth-century avant-garde. At the University of Washington he concentrated on harpsichord and composition while turning his focus toward the harpsichord and lute, the primary accompanying instruments of the Baroque. Those interests drew him to further training in Europe and a 1976 recital debut at London’s Wigmore Hall. By then his dual path as scholar and performer was gaining momentum; his explorations of the lute, citarrone, and Baroque guitar restored these instruments to their accustomed place in Baroque sonorities and, in 1980, secured him a professorship in lute and performing practice at the Hochschule der Künste in Bremen.

A decisive moment arrived in 1987 when Stubbs led a production of Stefano Landi’s opera La Morte d’Orfeo at the Bruges Early Music Festival. The project’s acclaim established him as a sought-after director of early opera and gave rise to the ensemble Tragicomedia, initially comprising Stubbs together with harpist Andrew Lawrence-King and lirone specialist Erin Headley. Tragicomedia became the nucleus for complete stagings of Monteverdi’s three surviving operas, Francesca Caccini’s Ruggiero, Sartorio’s L’Orfeo, Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo, and Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo. The group appeared at every major European and American early-music festival and collaborated with Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices, William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, and lutenist Paul O’Dette, who later joined its ranks. In 1994 Tragicomedia received an Edison Award for its Monteverdi madrigal program.

Stubbs launched the late-Baroque orchestra Teatro Lirico in 1996; its first recording, Love and Death in Venice, appeared on Virgin Veritas. He began sharing the direction of operas at the Boston Early Music Festival in 1997, opening with Rossi’s Orfeo, and in 2003 was appointed the festival’s artistic co-director alongside O’Dette. Returning to Seattle in 2006, he established Pacific MusicWorks the following year as a vehicle for combining early repertory with contemporary sensibilities. The ensemble’s inaugural presentation was a multimedia staging of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses directed by William Kentridge.

Stubbs’s 2014 release of Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs, recorded with Boston Early Music Festival forces and Paul O’Dette, earned a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. His debut album with Pacific MusicWorks, Total Eclipse: Music for Handel’s Tenor, featuring tenor Aaron Sheehan, was issued by Naxos in 2019. In 2023 he again supported countertenor Randall Scotting on the album Lovesick.