(Photo Credit : Jonathan-Tichler)

“La Damnation de Faust.” “La Rondine.” “Die Schöpfung.” “In a Grove.” “St. Matthew Passion.” “Antony and Cleopatra.” These are just a few of the many projects that tenor Paul Appleby took on this past season. What stands out in this list is how wide-ranging it is in its artistic exploration. There are several contemporary works, sacred pieces, a operatic rarity, and a French masterwork that may or may not be an opera (depending on who you ask). If you were to dig deeper into Appleby’s past performances, you will find an equally unique collection of diverse artistic endeavors. This alone makes the tenor one of the most exciting artists working in opera and one of the reasons that many contemporary composers are trusting him with their major projects.

Among those projects is the New York premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s “Music for New Bodies” and Anthony Cheung’s “the echoing of tenses,” and “Rome is Falling.” All of them will be presented at Lincoln Center as part of the Run AMOC* Festival. OperaWire recently corresponded with Appleby about these upcoming projects in New York, politics in art, his favorite moments from the past season, and what excites him most in 2025-26.

OperaWire: What excites you most about taking on the New York premiere of “Music for New Bodies.” What does this piece mean for you personally? What kind of impact do you hope that this piece has on audiences experiencing it for the first time?

Paul Appleby: Matt Aucoin’s new piece is a breakthrough of sorts. I’ve had the privilege of working with Matt and singing his music for a decade now and have been able to witness his compositional development up close. “Music for New Bodies” feels to me like an arrival point for Matt that excites me tremendously. The dizzying array of skills and techniques he has absorbed and honed are joined with his distinctly original musical language to create something genuinely new. What I particularly admire about Matt’s writing is that I hear a broad range of seemingly incompatible influences — Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti, and Olivier Messiaen alongside John Williams, John Coltrane, and Radiohead. His open-mindedness and facility with all these styles and techniques allows for music that contains bracing intellectual rigor and immediately accessible emotional valence all at once.

And all of Matt’s skill and imagination matter so much in MFNB (“Music for New Bodies”) because it serves to express the remarkable poetry of Jorie Graham. Matt selected texts from poems speaking to the poet’s personal experiences with cancer and treatment while nesting big ideas on suffering, death, society, and nature in them through her powerfully honest and vulnerable voice. All the abstractions of ‘new music’ become specific, illustrative, and descriptive. The music and text enrich and heighten one another’s emotional and intellectual power.

OW: What is the experience of singing music by Matthew Aucoin? What makes him one of the most renowned contemporary composers for the voice?

PA: I believe Matt has always been a singer’s composer because his deep engagement with literary texts grounds and guides his wild musical imagination. He is a diligent student of the voice and understands how useful knowledgeable vocal writing is to make the most of the gifts of the singers he writes for. I find him to be an essentially lyrical composer and that he cherishes and utilizes the beauty of the human voice as a primary vector of expression.

I like singing Matt’s music because he brings forth such a clear vision in his scores and provides singers with the material to realize that vision successfully. He articulates text brilliantly and enfolds it in precise color and expressivity. He invites you to use your vocal imagination and welcomes in all the performer can bring to his music. Also, Matt is blessedly not dogmatic. To singers he is always approachable, open-minded, and flexible. It’s always a pleasure to sing his music.

OW: What excites you most about working with Peter Sellars? Who are some of the best directors you have worked with and what are the qualities that make them great?

PA: Peter Sellars is a role model for me because his art-making always engages in questions of morality. Throughout my life, music-making has remained the space in my life where I express and explore my own spirituality and dwell on meaning and morals. Peter’s example of art-making has been a gift in helping me find paths to exploring this part of myself in my own work. In the rehearsal room he pushes everyone to confront things such as suffering, violence, heartbreak, and despair with compassion and honesty because it is precisely in these dark patches of human experience where seeds of immoral acts are planted. Peter is all about trying to get to the root of the problem.

The opera directors whom I admire — Peter fervently among them — share a deep knowledge of music to complement and inform their interpretive and dramaturgical choices. Opera is a complex of art forms and any successful production of an opera requires attention to all its aspects. Barrie Kosky stands out in my experience as another director who engages with the musical material of an opera with great insight and imagination. Stephen Wadsworth (a mentor of mine) is similarly a musician’s director as well as a singer’s director because the music and singing are always front and center of his productions and always supported by his staging, no matter the conceptual approach.

OW: You will also headline another unique project — “Rome is Falling” — with AMOC* at Lincoln Center. Tell me about your involvement in this project and what excites you about being a part of this work. What excites you most about this project and how does this kind of project help you grow as an artist?

PA: The genius Doug Balliett has written one of my all-time favorite theater pieces with “Rome is Falling.” Doug is kind of like a millennial gentleman scholar: composer, poet, bassist, early music scholar, classicist, among other things. He co-founded a Baroque continuo band, Ruckus, but for RiF (“Rome is Falling”), the theorist puts down his lute and picks up an electric guitar; the harpsichordist plays a synthesizer; and Doug leads the show as both narrator and electric bassist. Imagine secco recitative with a drum kit and distorted guitar. The opera surveys dozens of characters: insane emperors, gladiators, ironic slaves, loyalty-challenged soldiers, passive-aggressive Visigoths, disputatious monks, St. Augustine, Atilla the Hun, and so on. And I get to play a number of these colorful characters over the course of the show. It all unfolds in a shade of irony and humor that I’ve never seen before but which seems so right at the moment and so funny. The idiomatically American musical style of the piece mixed with remarkably well-researched Roman subject matter might just hint at some parallels between the two empires (at the risk of being political!). It is so fun.

My other appearances with the Run AMOC* Festival involve more esoteric and technically challenging pieces which I find incredibly stimulating and rewarding. For example, Anthony Cheung’s brilliant work “the echoing of tenses,” which I will perform at the festival with the composer and AMOC* violinist Miranda Cuckson, is one of the most difficult pieces I’ve had to learn and one of the most rewarding. I’m really proud to be a part of AMOC* because we make room for such a wide spectrum of music.

OW: “Rome is Falling” explores why empires fall through a unique lens. You also recently portrayed Augustus Caesar in “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Met. I often find myself being told that politics and political themes do not belong in the arts. How do you feel that these projects you are a part of introduce this topic and allow for exploration and discussion on what is often a complex topic for many?

PA: First let me say up front and loudly that art can and should encompass any and all aspects of human experience. Politics is a big and universal part of human life, so to categorically rule that out from ‘the arts’ is incompatible with my view of art. I find that such a rejection of politics in the arts is usually just a poorly disguised complaint about a specific political opinion or a specific artist. Not all art is expressly political, but all art exists inside a political context and is as such unavoidably political. Even rejecting politics is a political choice — it is not something you can opt out of. It describes how a group of people manage resources, relationships, and conflicts among themselves. Art in general — especially opera — necessarily involves both an artist and an audience. It is inseparable from relationships and communities and therefore inherently political.

In the case of “Antony and Cleopatra,” John Adams is writing an opera in 2022 America based on a play from 1607 England telling a story about Egyptian and Roman political leaders from 30 BC (in a production set in the 1930s). The opera asks the audience to examine parallels between all these moments in history. The points of political comparison are simply there. How could you approach this play without considering its current political valence? Was Shakespeare crossing a line by writing about heads of state? I certainly don’t think so. It would be crazy not to engage with politics in this opera. 

Don’t get me wrong: a lot — maybe even a majority — of politically bent art is bad. Advocacy through art can indeed muddy the waters between truth-seeking and propaganda, but that doesn’t mean it is disqualified. Where would you draw the line? And who gets to draw that line? These are questions about political power and cultural control, not about the nature and function of art.

OW: Looking back at the 2024-25 season, what are some of the most memorable performances that you were a part of? What made those special?

PA: I was pleased that this last season struck a good balance of opera, concert, and song, with a nice blend of new and old music. I was thrilled to add Berlioz’s “La Damnation de Faust” to my repertoire as well as singing my first Evangelist in Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.” In New York, I got to perform John Corigliano’s gorgeous chamber piece “Poem in October” with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Chris Cerrone’s darkly beautiful opera “In a Grove” with the Prototype Festival; and, as we’ve discussed, John Adams at the Met. It’s a lot of disparate kinds of singing and it is a lot of music to learn, but I find the challenges of this interesting mix of composers and venues is invigorating and forces me to keep growing as a singer. All were meaningful projects for me, but singing the Evangelist is something I have dreamed of doing forever as a Bach superfan, and I am so happy that I discovered I can sing the role comfortably and successfully. I hope to sing it for many years to come.

OW: What are you most excited about in the coming season?

PA: I am blessed with so many amazing musical projects this season that it’s hard to pick one, so I will offer you three. Firstly, my Americanness notwithstanding, the two tenors whose careers I most emulate are Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Philip Langridge, so it’s a big deal to me to step into a major Britten role for my first Captain Vere in Lyon this coming season. Secondly, I’m looking forward to performing “Winterreise“ for the first time in New York with my mentor and long-time collaborator, Ken Noda with BASS, or the Brooklyn Art Song Society. Thirdly, I can’t wait to sing Tamino in the Met’s family “Magic Flute“ over the holidays because my kids will get to see me perform there for the first time. What fun that will be!