Apr 29, 2020
In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Opéra comique, a native French form of lower-brow musical theater, features spoken dialogue, catchy tunes with easy-to-sing refrains, and middle-class values. Many of...
Apr 22, 2020
In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Opera buffa, the beloved old Italian tradition of opera comedy, is what you get by adding music to the even older Italian tradition of improvised (artisanal) comedy,...
Apr 15, 2020
In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Verismo was a late nineteenth-century reaction against the excesses of the great tradition. The aim was immediate, powerful, realistic opera, with post-Wagnerian music of...
Apr 10, 2020
Dacia Clay, KING FM Creative Director and host of the Classical Classroom Podcast, chats with Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean about Pushkin, the great Russian poet, novelist, and playwright. Pushkin’s brilliant works have almost all been transformed into operas, composed by generations of Russian composers. In...
Apr 8, 2020
In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Music Drama was the personal solution to the problems of presenting opera in nineteenth-century Europe developed by composer/librettist Richard Wagner, opera’s ultimate mad...