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 episode, host Rhiannon Giddens welcomes mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, writer James Jorden of Parterre Box and scholar Caroline Blyth. Her guests reflect on the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah, the trope of the femme fatale and how Saint-Saëns created this unforgettable moment that sounds as if Dalila’s slowly removing her clothing, one note at a time. Plus, you'll hear Garanča sing the complete aria from the Metropolitan Opera stage.
Love and Other Drugs: Gounod's Roméo et Juliette
You Don't Own Me: The Myth and Magic of Bizet's Carmen
Revisiting Mozart’s Queen of the Night: Outrage Out of This World
Love Takes Flight: Catán's Florencia en el Amazonas
Davis’s X: The Life and Legacy of Malcolm X
Revisiting Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice: Don’t Look Back in Ardor
Good Things Come to Those Who Weep: Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore
Death, Faith, and Redemption: Heggie’s Dead Man Walking
Aria Code Returns for Season 4!
P.S. I Love You: Renée Fleming Sings Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
To Be Or Not To Be: Dean's Hamlet
Potion, Emotion, Devotion: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones: A Boy of Peculiar Grace
Verdi's Nabucco: By the Rivers of Babylon
Once More Into the Breeches: Joyce DiDonato Sings Strauss
Breaking Mad: Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
Crisis in the Kremlin: Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov
Only the Good Die Young: Verdi's La Traviata
Guys and Dolls: Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann
Strauss's Elektra: Waltzing With a Vengeance
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