(Photo: Marty Sohl / Met Opera) What do you do when grief is heavy, when your heart is breaking, and when remembering memories is the only joy that keeps you connected to lost loved ones? One way, particularly those of Latin American descent, to process death is through Dia de los Muertos. Celebrated across Mexico, the United States, and other {…}
Ask an opera audience to name composers working in the 1820s and 1830s, and the answers will come readily: Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer. Ask the audience to name a woman writing opera in those same decades, and the conversation may become quieter. Carolina Uccelli belongs in that conversation. In 1835, her “Anna di Resburgo” reached the stage in Naples {…}
Photo Credit: Scott Rowed In this new four-part series, we’ll be taking a look at four significant, and greatly underperformed, operas within opera history from early-mid 20th century but outside America and Central Europe. The normal Opera Film reader may be acquainted with a breadth of opera’s expressive diversity. In part one, we explored Miguel Bernal Jiménez‘s only opera, ‘Tata Vasco‘ {…}
Long before people spoke of culture wars in political terms, they were already fighting over what counted as legitimate culture and who had the authority to define it. In 1752, an argument broke out in Paris over an Italian comic opera – and it didn’t stay contained for long. Within months, it had drawn in composers, philosophers, critics and the {…}
IN Series’ 2026-27 season is titled “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” a season that will cover a breadth of styles and forms, and almost 1,000 years of music history. This year of theater is intended to lift up the unique power of art, music, and theater, to unmask tyrants and tyranny, and to do so with beauty, joy, transformation, and even laughter. {…}
There are certain films which have received considerable cinematic attention by directors. While beloved operas like Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ are among the most popular choices—its first silver-screen presence being the silent film, ‘Gypsy Blood‘ (1920), others are equally as beloved. Leoncavallo’s ‘I Pagliacci’ had its first cinematic presence in 1915, Offenbach’s ‘The Tales of Hoffman’ had its in 1923, and Verdi’s {…}
Celebrate Hispanic and Latino Heritage Month by getting to know these composers whose mark on classical music has continued to shape the industry and push the art form to represent citizens of the world. Some of the greatest orchestras and opera houses of our time are led by notable Latino musicians who are our modern icons in the industry. Before {…}
In this new four-part series, we’ll be taking a look at four significant, and greatly underperformed, operas within opera history from early-mid 20th century but outside America and Central Europe. The normal Opera Film reader may be acquainted with a breadth of opera’s expressive diversity. From Cage’s ‘Europera V’ and Stockhausen’s ‘Dienstag aus Licht’ (1991) to Shirokov’s ‘Marevo’ and Vustin’s {…}
Throughout the Opera Meets Film series, we’ve explored a great deal of opera/film relationships. From stage adaptations of films, experimental works, documentaries, controversial stories and plots, and even dialogues on academic research, the opera-film relationship is complex. The very term, opera, can mean many things, from a metaphor to a psychology of struggle. But practically, when opera is used in {…}
