Expect the Spanish Inquisition at Heroic Opera's Don Carlo

Interview

"The characters are flawed, but some take those flaws and make their world better, and others use it to the detriment of others. Power doesn't have to be evil, but the intersection of power, greed, and relentless injustice is terrifying."

David Lang: high art in lowercase

Interview

"When I started giving my pieces silly titles and putting them all in lowercase, it took the pressure off me to be a genius, and then I could concentrate on just writing my music."

Marina Costa-Jackson: "You just have to do it, a lot."

Interview

"Puccini really captured the raw emotionality of a mother. He always wrote his ladies so well but specifically, with Suor Angelica, there's a deep sorrow there that makes it very interesting to portray. Being a mother now, it gives me a new perspective on it. It connects on a deeper level. Frankly it's a very hard aria to get through with dry eyes."

"A very original genius": playing Frida Kahlo at San Diego Opera

Interview

"Frida is very well portrayed in this music, which is fabulous," says Paz. "The music reflects the pain that she was suffering. It reflects the great courage that she had in life. She was a kind of mischievous, rebel woman. That's very clear in the score and musically."

Calgary Concert Opera returns with regal love triangle

Interview

"This production of Roberto Devereux will be a really intimate performance for the audience," says King. "In this format, you'll really feel the emotions Donizetti has woven so brilliantly in his music."

Talking with drag queens: Rosé

Interview

“When you think of the voice as having, like, the sound of an emotion instead of just sounding pretty, that's a really exciting thing to do. It makes it more like a mime performance than just lip syncing.”

Magic everywhere in SDO's Aging Magician

Interview

"After years of creating work after work, it becomes your life," he says about why he is an artist. "Initially, I was drawn to things just because I was fascinated by ideas. The traditional world was not where I belonged. I knew I wanted to be in the arts and I had an impulse to perform."

Boston Baroque's Louisa Muller on Amadigi di Gaula

Interview

"I think the way that I've approached it has been a little bit more of thinking about time expanding and thinking about the things that happen, not happening in real time, so that we take and use da capo arias, we just take a real dive into people's emotional states."

Talking with singers: Étienne Dupuis

Interview

“My answer was always the same, and I think confinement has just strengthened it,” Dupuis says. “It's because, emotionally, we need to share something communally.”

Talking with singers: Pene Pati

Interview

"I like having the feeling that I can bring a poster home from the Wiener Staatsoper or from the Met or from the San Francisco Opera and it has his name on it rather than mine. I feel like it's a good tribute to the man who’s raised me. I also sing for my island of Samoa and I sing for the Pacific people who don't really have this opportunity."