Dec 31, 2020
A discussion of Giuseppe Verdi's breakthrough opera "Nabucco" and its Biblical origin story of Nebuchadnezzar and the neo-Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem. We also talk about Boney M, the Melodians "By the Rivers of Babylon", the Broadway musical "Godspell", Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", and why some of us hate Verdi's...
Oct 23, 2020
Vicki Zunitch joins Marc Eliot Stein for a fresh in-depth examination of Puccini's great opera "La Boheme". We talk about the existential choices the characters make, the original comic stories by Henri Murger, the lifestyle of starving artists in 19th Century Paris and today, morning music at the Gate of Hell,...
Jun 30, 2020
Jules Massenet is best known for "Manon" and "Werther", and his "Don Quichotte" hasn't played at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City for nearly a hundred years. Why not, and was it actually killed in 1926 by a single bad review? Marc Eliot Stein rediscovers this forgotten classic and finds a beautiful...
Apr 30, 2020
We continue our look at the two great Figaro operas with a deep dive into Mozart's dark sexual comedy "Le Nozze di Figaro". We talk about Soren Kierkegaard, "Either/Or", trouser roles, gender ambiguity, castratos, Peter Pan, Harpo Marx, Prince's "Purple Rain", Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Rossini,...
Mar 29, 2020
We zoom into today’s literary scene with composer and librettist Rachel J. Peters, who turns short stories from authors like Sheila Heti and Arthur Phillips into contemporary operas. Her work spans from absurdist postmodernism back to the American tradition of Carl Sandburg, and her influences include Nina Simone,...