Aria Code

Maybe you’ve heard this one before: a powerful man abuses his privilege and wealth to exploit the women in his life. When confronted with the fact that they’re not his playthings, he throws a fit and blames everyone but himself. Sound like your daily news alert? It’s Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro , but somehow the world of feudal Spain in the 1700s is still distressingly familiar today.  The ari...

Chances are, you know the overture to The Barber of Seville (maybe from Bugs Bunny?!) but Gioachino Rossini’s most famous opera is more than a comedic romp. Embedded in the topsy-turvy tale of young love and silly disguises, there is a story of forced marriage and a woman’s determination to live a life of her choosing.  We meet the heroine Rosina for the first time in the aria “Una voce poco fa,”...

They say you can’t go home again, and Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida knows it all too well. Captured from her homeland of Ethiopia and enslaved in Egypt, she falls in love with an Egyptian warrior. Aida is torn between her love for this man and her love for her home and, because it’s opera, she ultimately chooses the tenor. In “O Patria Mia,” Aida stands on the banks of the Nile and says goodbye to Ethiopi...

Sometimes, the only thing that gets us through the darkest moments is knowing that the sun will rise again on a new day. Puccini's final opera, Turandot , is about courage in the face of adversity, and love triumphing over fear. In other words, it is exactly what the world needs right now.  The aria “Nessun dorma” is Prince Calaf’s declaration of love and resounding victory cry. In this episode, h...

The third season of the critically-acclaimed podcast is more expansive than the previous two, with a total of 18 new episodes released bi-weekly, starting March 10, 2021. Just like a full season at the opera house, the podcast season will cover a staggering range of music, artists, and voices -- from early works by Handel all the way to the contemporary work of American composer and jazz trumpeter...

Gioachino Rossini’s operatic version of the Cinderella story may not have any enchanted mice or pumpkins, but there’s plenty of magic in the music. Cinderella (or La Cenerentola, in Italian) has silently suffered the abuse of her stepfather and stepsisters, but in true fairy tale fashion, her fate changes for the better and all is made right by the triumph of goodness over evil.  In the opera’s jo...

Love is intoxicating, but dating can be hard. In Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann , a love-obsessed poet tells fantastical stories of romance gone very, very wrong. Based on the works of 19th-century Gothic horror writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, the opera is a journey through desire and loss – a journey that just might make you feel better about your own dating disasters!  In the aria “Ô Dieu! de...

The pain and fear of trauma can have a dramatic effect on your desire for love and intimacy. This is true for Puccini’s Turandot, the titular ice princess who cuts off her feelings… and the heads of her suitors. In her first aria, “In questa reggia,” Turandot explains that she will avenge the rape and murder of her ancestress from thousands of years ago, and that she is determined never to be poss...

The most famous American opera opens with one of the most famous American songs: “Summertime.” The Gershwins’ haunting lullaby from Porgy and Bess is a simple tune with a complex story. In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests explore not just the lyrics and music, but how Porgy and Bess came into being and the way it draws on the culture of the Gullah Geechee, descendants of formerly...

It’s not easy to accept the changes that come with time and age. For Richard Strauss’s Marschallin, the trick is simply learning to let go. When the curtain comes up on  Der Rosenkavalier , she is having an affair with the young Count Octavian, but she quickly comes to realize that she will one day lose him to a woman his own age. Throughout Act I, she reflects on her lost youth, her desire to sto...

When someone you love dies, how far would you be willing to go to bring them back? Orpheus, the ancient Greek musician, goes to hell and back to have a love of his life, Eurydice, by his side again. The gods cut a deal with Orpheus: he can bring his love back from hell, but all throughout the journey, she has to follow behind him and he is not allowed to look back at her. Unable to resist, he turn...

When your spouse cheats, your mind starts racing with a million questions. For the Countess Almaviva, one of them is : What happened to the spark we had and how can we get it back? The Countess lives inside Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro ( Le Nozze di Figaro in Italian) and her philandering husband, the Count Almaviva, is due for a major comeuppance from his wife and her servant. But the Countess...

You may not have heard of the Egyptian king Akhnaten, but the young pharaoh helped shape modern religion as we know it. His revolutionary efforts to shift Egypt away from worshiping many gods to worshiping just one paved the way for monotheism and the major Judeo-Christian faiths. His desire to remake the world is the subject of Philip Glass's entrancing opera. In this episode, host Rhiannon Gidde...

Sometimes an illusion is the hardest thing to let go of. For Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, that illusion comes in the form of a distant ship on the horizon, carrying her long lost husband. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton abandoned Cio-Cio-San three years earlier, but she's absolutely sure that one fine day he'll sail over the horizon and return for her and their child.  The aria "Un bel di vedremo" capt...

Sometimes you get up in the middle of the night realizing that what is done can never be undone. For Lady Macbeth, no amount of handwringing (or hand-washing) can clear her conscience. She and her husband have done some really, really bad things in their pursuit of power, but it’s Lady Macbeth whose ambition drives her to midnight rantings about her crimes. In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens a...

Aria Code returns for Season 2 with 10 stunning arias and one big theme: desire. Opera singers and experts talk about the things we want the most – love, power and freedom. In its first season, Aria Code became a low-key hit for both longtime opera fans and folks discovering it for the first time. Each episode opens a window into one aria – a feature for a single singer – and explores how and why...

When the great American composer Carlisle Floyd wrote his first full-length opera,   Susannah , back in the 1950s, he had no way of knowing how the Biblical themes of shame, blame and lust would resonate today. In this special episode of Aria Code, host Rhiannon Giddens joins soprano Renée Fleming, writer and stage director Thomas Holliday, and feminist writer Leora Tanenbaum to consider the haunt...

You hear the message over and over in pop culture: love overcomes everything. But when Don José sings “The Flower Song” in Bizet's Carmen , you're reminded that love has a dark side, too. In the Season 1 finale, host Rhiannon Giddens welcomes tenor Roberto Alagna, critic Anne Midgette and psychologist Andrew G. Marshall to consider the crazy, possessive side of love and the importance of experienc...

A picture may paint a thousand words, but nothing compares to the intimacy and immediacy of a handwritten letter. Hearing the "Letter Aria" from Jules Massenet's Werther will prove it. From an opera based on the Goethe novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther , this scene finds the tortured heroine Charlotte re-reading the letters of the doomed poet. In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens welcomes sopr...

When the Voyager spacecraft set off to explore the galaxy in 1977, it carried a recording to represent the best of humanity. The “ Golden Record ” featured everyone from Bach to Chuck Berry, but there was only one opera aria: the rage-fest from Mozart ’ s The Magic Flute . In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens is joined by soprano Kathryn Lewek, musicologist Carolyn Abbate and author Jan Swafford...

You’ve probably been there: in love for the first time and enchanted by the very sound of your sweetheart’s name. The problem for Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto is that her new love isn’t who he says he is. The worst will come (it’s opera), but for a few brief moments in Act I, Gilda’s innocence sweeps you away. She’s young and head over heels and obsessing over the “caro nome,” the “dear name” of her...

Singing even one high C can be an event for the tenor and his audience. Everyone in the room knows how easily it could go wrong. Multiply that pressure by nine? You get “Ah, mes amis.” Gaetano Donizetti wrote this high-stakes aria for his opera La Fille du Régiment . The young hero Tonio has just enlisted in the army and received permission to marry the girl of his dreams. “Ah, mes amis” is his ce...

She seduces, she traps, she destroys. She's a femme fatale and her signature aria is the dangerously alluring “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns. " My heart opens to your voice,” sings Dalila, "like the flowers open to the kisses of the dawn." It sure sounds like a love song, but just below the surface it’s simmering with seduction and betrayal. In this epis...

When things go from bad to worse for Tosca, Puccini’s tragic heroine, she turns inward and prays. “I lived for art,” she tells God, “I lived for love.” What did I do to deserve all this? Tosca's despair and the moving way Puccini captures it musically speak so directly to artists, to audiences, to all of us, that "Vissi d'arte" has become one of the most famous arias in opera. In this episode, hos...

Love at first sight is not just a cliché of romantic comedies: more than half of all Americans say they’ve experienced it. Can this explain the timeless appeal of Puccini’s La Bohème ? In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests consider what love at first sight is really all about, sharing perspectives on the music, the history and, yes, the brain science. Plus, you'll hear tenor Vittor...