Puccini's Tosca: Death is But a Dream

It’s not easy to talk about death. We associate dying with so much suffering and loss. But for many people, the end of life is full of peaceful remembrance of the moments and relationships that have meant the most. For the leading man in Puccini’s Tosca, that’s the sweetness and beauty of his beloved.  Caught up in the messy politics of his time, Mario Cavaradossi has been arrested, interrogated, and tortured. And then, he’s sentenced to death. “E lucevan le stelle” finds Cavaradossi in his prison cell one hour before his execution. He knows his life is over, and what does he do? He gets lost in a daydream about a passionate night spent with Tosca. Host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests explore the memories and dreams that give us meaning at the end of our lives. Joseph Calleja, A.K.A. The Maltese Tenor, sees a lot of himself in Cavaradossi - they’re both men of intensity and passion. He says that if the spectrum of human emotion were a harp, Puccini knew exactly the right string to pluck at just the right moment to convey the emotion the character is feeling. Carolyn Abbate teaches music at Harvard University and writes about opera, including the book A History of Opera. One of the memories that she holds most dear is of an afternoon spent in a meadow with her son when he was young. Dr. Christopher Kerr is the CEO and Chief Medical Officer at Buffalo Hospice and Palliative Care. Chris recently wrote a book called Death is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at LIfe’s End, about the dreams and visions that many people experience at the end of their lives. This work was later turned into a film, which became the basis of a Netflix production and a PBS World documentary.  

Om Podcasten

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 Dame Judi Dench 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.