Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is the most famous love story in the Western canon. It’s a tale so embedded in our culture — one that has seen so many iterations and retellings — it might feel hard to appreciate its original pathos, and the way it perfectly distills the intersections of young romance, idealism, and rebellion. 

In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens and guests take a fresh look at this classic by focusing on the character of Juliet and her pivotal decision to take the friar’s draught, a concoction that will help her feign death long enough to escape an arranged marriage and run away with Romeo. It’s both an act of tremendous courage and one that sets their tragedy in motion. 

In Charles Gounod’s operatic retelling, the aria Juliet delivers as she wrestles away her fear is so difficult that it’s often cut from productions. But it’s a pivotal moment, and a testament to Juiet’s agency. Soprano Diana Damrau is up to the task, and delivers a rendition of “Amour, ranime mon courage” — otherwise known as the “poison aria” — from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. 

THE GUESTS 

Soprano Diana Damrau is among the most celebrated opera singers of her generation. She’s graced the stages of opera houses all over the world, and sung the role of Juliette at both The Metropolitan Opera and La Scala. After her debut as Juliette in 2016, it quickly became a favorite. For her, Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” is “one of the most beautiful operas ever written.” 

Yannick Nézet-Séguin serves as music director for the Met Opera orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Montreal’s Orchestre Metropolitain, among many other appointments and collaborations with esteemed orchestras. In his opinion, “Roméo et Juliette” beats out “Faust” as Gounod’s best opera. 

Emma Smith is a Shakespeare scholar and critic at the University of Oxford. Among her publications is the book “This Is Shakespeare,” which was a Sunday Times bestseller and has been translated into several languages. Smith frequently works with theater companies on their productions of Shakespeare plays and consults for film and television.

Acclaimed British author and theater director Neil Bartlett, whose novels include “The Disappearance Boy” and “Address Book,” directed “Romeo and Juliet” for the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. He says the experience leaves him feeling “wrung dry with admiration.”

Carmen is maybe the most famous heroine in all of opera. She’s a woman of Romani descent living in 19th century Spain, sensual and self-confident, aware of the power she wields over men — and she enjoys it. In her signature aria, popularly known as the “Habanera,” she describes herself as a bird who can’t be captured. True to her own word, Carmen — and what she represents — is hard to pin down.  

When “Carmen” premiered in Paris in 1875, it was deemed wildly immoral. Carmen becomes intrigued by a soldier, Don José, who initially pays her no attention. She seduces him, Don José abandons his fiancée to run away with her, and one thing leads to another (this is opera, after all) — he winds up murdering Carmen in a fit of jealous rage. One interpretation is that this is the story of a man giving into temptation and meeting his downfall. A more modern view would position Carmen as a proto-feminist. She’s a woman who refuses to be controlled, and that puts her life in danger.

But perhaps Carmen’s greatest irony is that she is both a complex character and a full-blown stereotype of Romani women. In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens and guests unpack the myth and the magic of Georges Bizet’s "Carmen," and Clémentine Margaine brings it home with a performance of “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” from the Met stage.

THE GUESTS

French mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine first performed in “Carmen” as a member of the children’s chorus. Shortly after graduating from the Paris Conservatory, she joined the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she sang her first performances in the title role. Since then, she’s performed Carmen at opera houses all over the world. 

Susan McClary is a pioneer in feminist music criticism. She’s a musicologist at Case Western Reserve University whose research focuses on the cultural analysis of music, both the European canon and contemporary popular genres. She’s authored 11 books, including "Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality" and the Cambridge Opera Handbook on “Carmen.”

Ioanida Costache is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology and an affiliate of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. She is of Romanian-Roma descent, and her work explores the legacies of historical trauma inscribed in Romani music, sound, and art. Her family likes to pass on the story of the time her great-grandfather performed the cimbalom for President Roosevelt at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. 

Rosamaria Kostic Cisneros wears many hats. She is a professional dancer, dance historian and critic, Romani studies scholar, Flamenco historian, as well as a sociologist, curator and peace activist. A research-artist at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research, she works to bring arts and culture to vulnerable groups. She was introduced to flamenco by her Spanish-Roma mother during their frequent trips to Seville.

When the Voyager spacecraft set off to explore the galaxy in 1977, it carried a recording to represent the best of humanity. The “Golden Record” featured everyone from Bach to Chuck Berry, but there was only one opera aria: the rage-fest and coloratura masterpiece from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.”

As Kathryn Lewek reprises her role as Queen of the Night in this season’s holiday presentation of “The Magic Flute” at The Metropolitan Opera, we’re revisiting this episode. Host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests consider why the Queen of the Night’s big moment – “Der Hölle Rache” – is an out-of-this-world achievement, how Mozart created a profound fairy tale for adults and what it takes for a soprano to reach the stratosphere. You’ll witness Kathryn Lewek hit all those high notes onstage at the Met Opera and hear from Timothy Ferris, the man who produced NASA’s “Golden Record.”

The Guests

Soprano Kathryn Lewek describes singing “Der Hölle Rache” as throwing darts with your eyes closed. But after performing the part more than 200 times, she certainly knows how to hit the bullseye.

Harvard University professor Carolyn Abbate once took her son to see The Magic Flute and he declared it to be “bad, but not in the way I expected it to be bad.” Her latest book is A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years.

Composer and author Jan Swafford was a graduate student when he spent his last $50 to buy a copy of The Magic Flute and immediately regretted it: He hated the opera. To say he’s warmed to Mozart over the years would be a wild understatement.

Timothy Ferris produced the Golden Record that went up with NASA’s Voyager space probes in 1977. It was the only record he ever produced, but he's written many books including Coming of Age in the Milky Way, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.