Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera

Episodes

1. 20

   A Passage Into Singing

   Five years ago, Marc Eliot Stein stepped through the looking glass from opera listener to opera performer by joining the chorus of a Long Island light opera company. This began his "passaggio" - a journey of discovery and surprise into the art of singing and the camaraderie of regional theater....

   Oct 8, 2026

   37m
2. 19

   About A Flute

   Gaby Kogut joins Marc Eliot Stein to take a deep psychological dive into the meaning of Mozart's masterpiece "The Magic Flute". We talk about many things: problems this opera has in 2024, the idea of "Die Zauberflote" as a time capsule of freemasonry, the male gaze, the great Ingmar Bergman…

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   Sep 16, 2024

   1h 32m
3. 18

   A Chorus in Brooklyn

   There's nothing like singing in an opera chorus. Marc Eliot Stein and Ted Shulman talk about their participation in Regina Opera's production of Verdi's "Rigoletto" in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and the special ways a chorus can illuminate or enliven a classic opera. We chat about "Nabucco",...

   Dec 27, 2023

   1h 21m
4. 17

   Talking to an Influential Fairy

   In Gilbert and Sullivan's fairy opera "Iolanthe" empowered magical women crash into toxic privileged masculinity in 19th century London. Marc Eliot Stein interviews New York City singer and actress Casey Keeler about her role as the powerful Fairy Queen in a recent Village Light Opera Group...

   May 12, 2023

   1h 29m
5. 16

   Hoffmann and His Muse

   Jacques Offenbach's masterpiece "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" is an existential psychological comic opera, a morality tale about an aesthete who destroys himself over a fanciful love of three women. In the last episode of Season 3, Marc Eliot Stein talks about Jewish composers in Paris, "Faust"…

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   May 16, 2022

   42m
6. 15

   Giovanni and Kierkegaard

   What should we do with Mozart's problematic masterpiece "Don Giovanni" in the 21st century? Vicki Zunitch joins Marc Eliot Stein to talk about the moral situations portrayed in the famous story of a sociopathic charmer and rapist brought to justice by a stone statue, with a focus on all the...

   Jan 31, 2022

   1h 13m
7. 14

   Canio and Corleone

   Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana kicked off the verismo craze in Italian opera in 1890. Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci followed two years later. We talk about the ripple effects of the verismo movement in this wide-ranging episode, covering everything from Francis Ford Coppola and Martin...

   Dec 31, 2021

   41m
8. 13

   Manrico and Azucena

   Verdi's "Il Trovatore" is one of the most popular operas of all time, and also one of the hardest to follow. What is going on with this crazy plot? There's a lot under the surface, and it's all spelled out in this explainer by Marc Eliot Stein, who shows how a thrilling but nakedly horrible...

   Nov 10, 2021

   55m
9. 12

   Beelzebub and Galileo

   Season 3 kicks off with a visit from poet and professor Daniel Nester, librettist for "The Summer King" by Daniel Sonenberg and author of "God Save My Queen". We talk about slam poetry, karaoke and New York City's Bowery Poetry Club, and then attempt a deep dive into the operatic context of the...

   Jul 18, 2021

   1h 26m
10. 11

    Nabucco and Ishmaele

    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...

    Dec 31, 2020

    35m
11. 10

    Mimi and Rodolfo

    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…

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    Oct 23, 2020

    1h 12m
12. 9

    Don Quichotte and Dulcinee

    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...

    Jun 30, 2020

    56m
13. 8

    Figaro and Cherubino

    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…

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    Apr 30, 2020

    47m
14. 7

    A Mermaid and a Baguette

    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...

    Mar 29, 2020

    1h 01m
15. 6

    Figaro and Rosina

    Figaro and Rosina are beloved characters in two masterpieces by two different composers: "Le Nozze di Figaro" by Mozart and "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" by Rossini. This episode is about Rossini's comic opera, and we also talk about commedia dell'arte, Pierre-Augustin Caron Pierre de Beaumarchais,...

    Feb 29, 2020

    41m
16. 5

    Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

    What happens when two lifelong Shakespeareans attend Verdi's "Macbeth" at the Met? Marc Eliot Stein examines Giuseppe Verdi's earliest Shakespeare opera with Meg Wise-Lawrence, who teaches English at Hunter College and City College in New York City. We talk about witches, prophecies, banquets…

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    Jan 9, 2020

    45m
17. 4

    Fidelio and Napoleon

    Beethoven's politically charged "Fidelio" is an opera for today, with messages of resistance, defiance, #MeToo and prisoner awareness. It premiered during the Napoleonic Wars that brought revolutionary tumult all over Europe, and Ludwig van Beethoven was deeply involved in progressive…

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    Jun 24, 2019

    41m
18. 3

    Wotan and Brunhilde

    Marc Eliot Stein and Bud Parr, two software developers and literary bloggers from New York City, sat through all 18.5 hours of Richard Wagner's "Ring des Nibuleng" cycle at the Metropolitan Opera this year, and lived to tell the tale. Actually, we were both very impressed. In our latest…

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    May 18, 2019

    1h 24m
19. 2

    Orpheus and Eurydice

    Opera was born during the Renaissance as an attempt to recreate the experience of an ancient Greek play as it would have been performed in the Theater of Dionysus in Athens. In this episode, Marc Eliot Stein and Lisa Geraghty talk about the greatest of several operas about one particular Greek...

    Mar 29, 2019

    1h 05m
20. 1

    Fiordiligi and Nicola

    After a lifetime of not understanding opera, I attempted to transform myself into an aficionado by pledging to listening to the same 100 arias repeatedly for months, hoping that musical "osmosis" would eventually take effect and that I would start enjoying myself. The experiment succeeded beyond…

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    Feb 7, 2019

    54m
21. Otello and Desdemona

    An exciting new podcast by Marc Eliot Stein of Literary Kicks. Why is opera relevant in 2019? This sometimes-lost art form hides a fascinating, vibrant world. In our first episode, we discuss whether Verdi's Otello is better than Shakespeare's Othello, whether Othello had PTSD, and what it means...

    Jan 4, 2019

    37m