Tag: Puccini
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A friend called me the other day with a question we’re debating soon: What are the five essential classical albums everyone should own? No other constraints. Just five records that belong in your collection, whether they’re on a vinyl shelf or bookmarked in a streaming app. It’s a useful question because it forced me to…
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Central Iowa in July is not a place most people associate with opera. The corn and soybean fields south of Des Moines run flat and full beneath a wide sky, the heat presses down, and the towns along Highway 69 move at the pace of a long summer. Indianola has a grain elevator, a small…
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Opera in the 21st century is caught between two impulses: the push to say something new, and the pull to rely on what already works. New operas get commissioned and staged. Old standbys get revived, reimagined, and sometimes over-explained. Neither approach is wrong, but both carry risk. This spring, two productions running concurrently at Lyric…