The Indie Opera Podcast

Podcast 092: Turandot with Christopher Tin’s New Ending

No one is more suited to create a compelling ending to Puccini’s otherwise unfinished fantasy story than Christopher Tin, a two-time Grammy-winning composer of concert and media music. Time Magazine calls his music “rousing” and “anthemic,” while The Guardian calls it “an intelligent meeting of melody and theme.” In addition to premiering in some of today’s most popular video games, Christopher’s music has been performed in many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, the United Nations, and Carnegie Hall, where he had an entire concert devoted to his music.

Podcast 091: Roundtable, Opera and Community

Letters That You Will Not Get: Women’s Voices from the Great War at AOP and Quamino’s Map at Chicago Opera Theater are both operas that opened recently whose creators we have interviewed in previous episodes; Hamlet at the Met is also examined. We delve into diversity and inclusion efforts in the opera world, and why the word “outreach” is no longer helpful for opera companies and symphonies. Ashley Renee gives her perspective on how Lincoln Center is slowly becoming the open campus and community resource it was originally meant to be.

Podcast 090: 2020 OPERA America Discovery Grants Part 2

The show features all the composer/librettist teams to receive the 2020 OPERA America Discovery Grants which support composers who identify as women in the development of new operatic works and the advancement of their careers in the opera industry. Justine Chen, composer, and Stephanie Fleischman, librettist, talk about delving into Justine’s multifaceted Taiwanese family history for Seven Sisters, which follows the form of a formal Taiwanese funeral. Melissa Dunphy and Jacqueline Goldfinger, composer and librettist, share the macabre origin of Alice Tierney: an unsolved 1880 murder in Philadelphia on Melissa’s property, and discuss the novel way they are choosing to tell the story. Kirsten Volness, Susan Werbe, and Kate Holland, composer and librettists of Letters That You Will Not Get: Women’s Voices from the Great War, discuss the work’s fascinating journey from song cycle to opera, and how they set to music the real-life accounts of multiple women on all sides of the conflict who lived through World War I.

Podcast 089: 2020 OPERA America Discovery Grants Part 1

The Indie Opera Podcast is releasing an episode which was recorded in the Spring of 2020 that got derailed during the start of the pandemic, and features all the composer/librettist teams to receive the 2020 OPERA America Discovery Grants which support composers who identify as women in the development of new operatic works and the advancement of their careers in the opera industry. We are joined by composers Lisa Bielawa, Mary D. Watkins, Milica Paranosic, Johanny Novarro; librettists Claire Solomon, Cheri Magid, and Jose Felix Gomez; and producer Martha Richards. There are lots of music and video highlights in this long-delayed episode, and we include updates on all the projects that they have been creating since the start of the pandemic.

Podcast 088: Quamino's Map with Deborah Brevoort, Kimille Howard, Jeri Lynne Johnson and Cori Ellison

Joining us are Librettist and playwright Deborah Brevoort, conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson, dramaturg Cori Ellison, and director Kimille Howard discuss the origins and creative process of this unique production, which focuses on the Black Americans who fought for their liberty on the side of the British in the Revolutionary War and struggled to survive in London afterward. We also learn about the Black gentry in London at the time and how it may have intersected with the newly-arrived soldiers. Don’t miss this surprising look into the research, staging, and craft that went into bringing an important but little-known historical moment to light.