Decanonized

It’s all fun and games until the guillotine gets weird. In honor of Bastille Day, critic Carmen Paddock joins us to talk about Umberto Giordano’s verismo (?) opera about a poet who negs a debutante at a party, and her subsequent ability to take ride-or-die to new extremes during the French Revolution.  We also discuss the real hero or Andrea Chénier, who is (as in so many operas) actually the bari...

Happy Pride and World Cup month, here’s an unlikely football (soccer) anthem and the sapphic story behind it. Unfortunately, the composer who got ahold of this story doesn’t believe in lesbians, so the soprano marries the tenor at the end. Music and culture writer Kevin Ng joins us to dive head-first into Puccini’s final — and famously unfinishable — opera, Turandot, which had its posthumous premi...

Is Iago one of opera’s greatest villains? Or just someone who listened to Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work” one too many times and decided to make it everyone’s problem. Bassist, lecturer, and writer Jerrell Jackson joins us to discuss Verdi’s penultimate opera, in which a storm wrecks Cyprus for five minutes and male insecurity wrecks everything else for the next three hours. Additional topics include: C...

The Bridal March from Lohengrin is a bold wedding choice once you know the rest of the opera. But considering the divorce rate, maybe it’s the most honest one. Critic Benjamin Poore joins us to talk about Wagner’s Swan King opera and ask the important questions: Is Lohengrin really the hero? Is Ortrud the only sane person? And what if Elsa did kill her brother? Additional topics include: Nazis, do...

Is Peter Grimes the villain, or just his town’s biggest HR violation? Musicologist and Britten scholar Dr. Imani Mosley joins us to discuss the original problematic Grimes. And since Peter Grimes is the only Britten opera on this list, it’s a jam-packed episode as we navigate the seas of judgment in Suffolk, the work’s 1945 premiere, and the lasting influence of Britten on opera. Follow Imani on I...

Is Salome a victim of circumstance, or the destroyer of empire? Mezzo-soprano and one opera’s philosophical fug girls Perri DiChristina joins us to dive head-first into Strauss’s fin-de-siècle shocker. Additional topics include: Greta Thunberg and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Oscar Wilde’s moodboard, and why John Pierpont Morgan sucked. Follow Perri via Thrilled to Announce (also on Substack and Ins...

Does Don Giovanni ever actually end? Or are we just living in a constant state of deferral with a final boss that will never be defeated? Critic Sylvia Korman joins us to delve into this question and more, including why this is your favorite philosopher's opera, whether Donna Anna is a Horse Girl, Leporello in the Manosphere, and recent productions of Don Giovanni at the Met and Berlin's Komische...

Sometimes, we can have nice things. Like a bel canto opera where, despite the mad scene stretching across all three acts, the stakes are low, the Fs are high, and everyone is happy at the end.  Musicologist and critic Aksel Tollåli joins us to discuss a lovely opera about a lovely soprano and her lovely mental breakdown. Topics include Risorgimento chauvinism, opera's girlhood era, Lee Pace as Vin...

Time, nostalgia, and very fancy lesbians? It must be Der Rosenkavalier. Writer, historian, and co-host of Bad Gays Ben Miller joins us for a discussion of Richard Strauss’s four-and-a-half hour work of where both nothing happens and everything happens. Topics include: whether Rosenkavalier is a comedy or tragedy, the Viennese aristocracy, opera queens and mezzosexuals, the “German she-devil” who s...

On Episode 1 of Decanonized, mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz joins us to discuss what many consider to be the greatest opera: Georges Bizet's Carmen (1875). Topics include fate, othering, hating cops, whether Carmen really has to die, why Don José would make the worst camping partner, and the dream blunt rotation of Alexander Chee, Tank Girl, and Susan McClary. For this episode, we saw Carmen live in...