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Aria Code

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Recent Episodes

Introducing Classical Music Happy Hour with Emanuel Ax

Hello Aria Code fans, pianist Emanuel Ax is dropping into the feed to introduce Classical Music Happy Hour, a new podcast he hosts that you might enjoy. The show is all about the joy in chatting about music with all sorts of people, including some of Manny’s dearest friends like pianist Yuja Wang, composer John Adams, actor David Hyde Pierce, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. So grab a drink and join Manny Ax for music, merriment and conversation.
Aria Code |

Introducing Our Common Nature with Yo-Yo Ma

Ana González is here to introduce you to her new podcast, Our Common Nature, a musical journey with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. When the world stopped in 2020, Yo-Yo Ma started thinking about how music can reconnect people to the natural world. In this limited podcast series, Yo-Yo goes around the country to places where people have deep connections to the earth.
Aria Code |

Love and Other Drugs: Gounod's Roméo et Juliette

Gounod’s “poison aria” is so difficult, it’s often cut from productions. But it’s a pivotal moment in the opera — and a testament to Juliette’s courage.
Aria Code |

You Don't Own Me: The Myth and Magic of Bizet's Carmen

Carmen is perhaps the most famous heroine in all of opera: an icon of sensuality and self-determination — and a full-blown stereotype of Romani culture.
Aria Code |

Revisiting Mozart’s Queen of the Night: Outrage Out of This World

When the Voyager spacecraft set off to explore the galaxy, it carried recordings to represent the best of humanity. There was only one aria: the rage-fest from Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Aria Code |

About

Aria Code is a podcast that pulls back the curtain on some of the most famous arias in opera history, with insight from the biggest voices of our time, including Roberto Alagna, Diana Damrau, Sondra Radvanovsky, and many others. Hosted by Grammy Award-winner and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Rhiannon Giddens, Aria Code is produced in partnership with The Metropolitan Opera.

Each episode dives into one aria — a feature for a single singer — and explores how and why these brief musical moments have imprinted themselves in our collective consciousness and what it takes to stand on the Met stage and sing them.

A wealth of guests—from artists like Rufus Wainwright and Ruben Santiago-Hudson to non-musicians like biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher and Dr. Brooke Magnanti, author of The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl—join Rhiannon and the Met Opera’s singers to understand why these arias touch us at such a human level, well over a century after they were written. Each episode ends with the aria, uninterrupted and in full, recorded from the Met Opera stage.

Aria Code is produced in partnership with WQXR, The Metropolitan Opera and WNYC Studios.

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.

Aria Code show image

Aria Code

The magic of opera revealed, one song at a time.

Transcripts are posted to individual episode pages as they become available.

WNYC is funded by sponsors and member donations

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