Just as we did last week with Faust, here are some stellar examples of great tenors who made Don Jose in Carmen a signature role.  What could be more challenging for a singing actor than to trace the deterioration of a character both musically and dramatically in an exciting evening of opera?  Listen in!

There is no dearth of great tenors who have recorded portions or all of the role of Faust in Gounod's opera.  Let's listen to a few of them: Caruso, Gigli, Bjoerling, Corelli and Gedda.  What fun!

Something common to many operas composed after the death of Richard Wagner is the use of the leitmotif, a musical idea, tune or melodic "germ" used by a composer to unify a complicated score.   Richard Strauss was one of the earliest inheritors of the leitmotif system and he uses it with abandon in Der Rosenkavalier.  Let's explore some of the leitmotifs used in that opera.

Thanks to an Italian diplomat who'd spent some time in China and gave a Chinese music box to the composer, Puccini was able to discover and then use actual folk tunes within the fabric of his score for the opera Turandot.  This podcast will introduce you to those tunes as they are utilized by Puccini in order to help you get to know more about the opera.  Have fun!

Some of you might be familiar with the name, some of you may not.  But there was a time when, especially in Europe, mezzo-soprano Conchita Supervia was considered the greatest Carmen of all time.  Luckily for us, she left some brilliant recordings behind, dating from the 1930s.  Take a listen and see if you agree that this singer might just have left a standard of performance that has yet to be surpassed!