This famous Canadian Opera Company production of Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung, with original direction by Robert Lepage, was restaged so powerfully by François Racine that he won Seattle Opera’s Artist of the Year Award. A Seattle Times review noted: “Bluebeard is one of the greatest productions of anything I have ever seen.” An onstage swimming pool made for spectacular entrances by Bluebeard’s former wives—and, in Erwartung, for an amazing exit by the woman’s naked lover. (After she killed him, he rolled down a steeply raked stage, fell into the pool, and managed to exit offstage without making a ripple.) The double bill also marked the conducting debut of Evan Rogister, and featured remarkable singing by John Relyea, Malgorzata Walewska, and Susan Marie Pierson.