For years, Lindy Hume, stage director of Seattle Opera's August production of Rigoletto, has been frustrated by the way opera celebrates misogyny through its "bad boy" characters. In beloved works such as Don Giovanni, Carmen, and Tosca, sopranos must rehearse how to fall, how to be stabbed, brutalized, and thrown across the room, behaviors they would never accept in real life.

"In 2019, if opera aspires to be a future-focused art form, then it must evolve and be responsive to a changing society," Hume says. "This history of telling stories about women being raped, murdered, and abused in opera is right there in front of us, either to explore, or to ignore."