Given the lively discussion here of Iain’s Bell’s recent opera Medusa, I heartily recommend giving a listen to a recent interview with the composer on the Podcast Sewers of Paris. This show, hosted by Matt Baume, is a podcast about “how queer people’s lives are shaped by our favorite books, movies, music, and shows.” This episode is quite fun and it is so much more interesting than the typical composer interview; the story of how he came to write his first vocal work is wild. It also introduced me to the best possible Icebreaker question, “Who is the diva you were assigned at birth?”

Since 6 August would have been our doyenne’s 72nd birthday, it’s a good time to listen to James Jorden’s episode of Sewers of Paris recorded back in 2017. It’s likewise a delightful and fascinating episode.

Lastly, I just discovered an opera podcast in German called Die Primadonnen. I’m enjoying it very much, even if I am relying heavily on the Transcript feature in Apple Podcasts to help resuscitate my rusty German. The hosts, Georg Kasch und Salif Nimaga, describe the show as Große Gefühle und kleine Gemeinheiten (Big emotions and petty meanness). What’s not to love about that? They also have a fun Instagram feed.

Dawn Fatale

Richard Lynn is a New York City based opera lover who writes at parterre box under the name Dawn Fatale. His love of opera started at a very young age when he used to listen to the Met broadcasts and obsessively read back issues of Opera News in lieu of socializing at family gatherings. In college, he majored in Chemistry while taking as many music and theater courses as possible. He worked at the Music Library to get access to the opera recordings that were off limits to undergraduates. Since the early 1990s he has been writing about opera at parterre box and other publications and is particularly interested the evolution of staging and performance practices.

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