Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier is an opera about the passage of time — what it means to grow older, what we lose and what we gain as the years pas...
A Nose by Any Other Name: Franco Alfano's 'Cyrano de Bergerac'
According to soprano Jennifer Rowley, there’s a little bit of Cyrano in all of us. When it comes to pathos, Franco Alfano’s opera based on Cyrano de B...
'The Flying Dutchman': Wagner's Eternal Wanderer
For his fourth full opera, The Flying Dutchman, Wagner chose a popular maritime legend as the basis for an eerie and evocative work. In it, we meet an...
Aida: Verdi's Most Intimate Spectacle
Pharaohs. Mummies. Pyramids. Hieroglyphs. The mystique of ancient Egypt never fades. For more than 2,000 years, Europeans have wondered at her mysteri...
Love and Death in Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde'
Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is an extraordinary journey through the human psyche, and through the two most powerful forces guiding our lives: love and...
Into the Light With Beethoven's 'Fidelio'
Revolutionary times call for revolutionary music, and Beethoven was living in revolutionary times. At the beginning of the 19th century, he quickly be...
Fate and Forbidden Love in Mozart's 'Idomeneo'
Idomeneo is considered Mozart's first "mature" opera — the first in which he displays his incredible talent as a vocal and dramatic composer. "Mature"...
William Tell: Rossini's Grand Finale
Gioachino Rossini was only 37-years-old when he wrote his final opera, William Tell. Although he lived for another 40 years, this epic work would rema...
La Traviata: Verdi's Timeless Fallen Woman
On this week's episode of He Sang/She Sang, hosts Merrin Lazyan and Julian Fleisher are joined by dramaturg Cori Ellison to discuss Verdi's mythical a...
Werther: Massenet's Lovelorn Hero
When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther was published in 1774, it became an overnight sensation. Men wore yell...