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 enliv

Talking to an Influential Fairy

May 12th, 2023 1h 29m

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 Fa

Hoffmann and His Muse

May 16th, 2022 42m 16s

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 t

Giovanni and Kierkegaard

Jan 31st, 2022 1h 13m

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 jus

Canio and Corleone

Dec 31st, 2021 41m 5s

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, cover

Manrico and Azucena

Nov 10th, 2021 55m 25s

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,

Beelzebub and Galileo

Jul 18th, 2021 1h 26m

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 a

Nabucco and Ishmaele

Dec 31st, 2020 35m 57s

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 music

Mimi and Rodolfo

Oct 23rd, 2020 1h 12m

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

Don Quichotte and Dulcinee

Jun 30th, 2020 56m 5s

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

Figaro and Cherubino

Apr 30th, 2020 47m 58s

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'

A Mermaid and a Baguette

Mar 29th, 2020 1h 1m

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 Ameri

Figaro and Rosina

Feb 29th, 2020 41m 52s

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

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

Jan 9th, 2020 45m 19s

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

Fidelio and Napoleon

Jun 24th, 2019 41m 1s

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 Bee

Wotan and Brunnhilde

May 18th, 2019 1h 24m

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,

Orpheus and Eurydice

Mar 29th, 2019 1h 5m

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 gre

Fiordiligi and Nicola

Feb 7th, 2019 54m 1s

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 st

Otello and Desdemona

Jan 4th, 2019 37m 59s

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

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