Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera

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, Strauss, "Der Rosenkavalier", "La Mere Coupable", "Porkys", and Marc Eliot Stein's theory that a Stephen Foster folk song and Leadbelly blues song are inspired by Mozart's operatic masterpiece.

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, Stephen Sondheim and Meredith Monk. A fascinating look at opera as a living form!

Featuring “Wild Beast of the Bungalow” music by Rachel J. Peters, libretto by Royce Vavrek inspired by “Mermaid in a Jar” by Sheila Heti, sung by Erica Thelen and Colin Anderson at Oberlin Conservatory and “Companionship” by Rachel J. Peters inspired by the Arthur Phillips short story, sung by Maren Weinberger and Kate Tombaugh at Fort Worth Frontiers Festival.

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'arte, Pierre-Augustin Caron Pierre de Beaumarchais, Freddie Mercury, Groucho Marx, Bugs Bunny, Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza, Harley Quinn, the Joker, beautiful melodies and crescendoes and whether or not comic opera is funny (it's not).

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 revolutionary politics. We talk about the French Revolution, Tolstoy's "War and Peace", David Lang's "Prisoner of the State", Schroeder's toy piano and much more. The final episode of Season 1 of "Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera"!

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, mad scenes, Ian McKellen, Italian nationalism, the Scottish people, Verdi's "Nabucco", Verdi's "Otello" and Tchaikovsky's "Queen of Spades".