CRINGE: Part 1

On today's episode, we are THRILLED and HONORED to chat with the star 1-of-1 soprano Ariadne Greif! She has premiered over 100 new works all around the world with the coolest of the cool in classical music. We pick her brain about her early internet memories, social media posting theory, the gameification of auditioning, and feeling envy. AND all of her cool performing. AND all of her cool clothes. AND the horrors of posting your singing online. Come one, come all, join Ariadne Greif's Troubadour Troupe!!

Welcome to Classical Music Social Media Anthropology 101. Please take out your syllabus and have a seat.We take a magnifying glass, and microscope, a thoughtful gaze and point it to the strange, silly, and occasionally harrowing landscape of opera singer Instagram. Do we create our internet content, or does our internet content create us? What will we find in our search for truth in the quagmire of the algorithm? Does the internet even matter? Does the internet even care? Much like opera, the internet is living, the internet is dying over and over and over forever.

We dissect the idea of a fixed, unchanging past and futures colored by the deaths we experience through Handel arias, Lynch's death, Yuval Sharon's 'A New Philosophy of Opera', Nosferatu 2024, the anniversary of Perri's father's death, 'Die Wise' by Stephen Jenkinson, and the opera singer who sang at the inauguration.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! In this episode we discuss: - Being maximalists - Braiding our hair - This Peter Gelb op-ed - This Alex Ross article - This it girl article - The operatic it girl (does she exist) - Opera sounds alien and weird, let's lean in - SO MUCH MORE!

Is opera cringe? Are you cringe? Let's find out together :) Charlotte & Perri discuss the cringe inherent in performance through the theories of Jean-Paul Sartre, Jia Tolentino, and their own little brains! They share stories, compare notes, and commune with cringe. The only way out is through - let's have a seance with uncomfortable emotions.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!! A few weeks ago we asked you guys to tell us all about your paranormal operatic experiences, and this episode is full of those stories!!! Haunted homestays, ghost cats who hate singing, vengeful on-stage spirits, prophetic pre-audition dreams, and MORE!!  We’re all haunted by specters of singers past, possessed by them every time we steal ornaments from old recordings… this art form is a way of communicating w spirit; one hand holding onto the memory of all the beautiful shit we’ve made in the past, the other swimming through the murky waters of the present towards an uncharted, glimmering future...

Sylvia's Don Giovanni review!! We are SO excited to share our convo with THEE Sylvia Korman!! They are an opera critic for Parterre Box, owner of @peoplemadatopera on twitter, and a phd student genius!! We followed Sylvia to the met’s production of don Giovanni like two little puppy dogs to get an inside look at the critic’s PROCESS: what are they thinking about when they sit down to watch a production they plan on reviewing? Do they take notes? Should a reviewer lean into The Dunk, or resist it with all their might? Are we all addicted to the dunk, or can we stomach sincerity and nuance? Should we ask that woman who had an org*sm at Tchaik V to come on the pod??? We discuss all of this and more on this, our most Sylvia-filled episode yet! 

Welcome to our MET COMPETITION EPISODE!!!! We snuck our gigantic microphones into the metropolitan opera HOUSE to chit chat with friends old and new, share our observations, and read poems to each other lol. We mediate on loss, growth, and bearing witness to joy. We had a lot of fun free associating, connecting our favorite thinkers and tarot card archetypes to our emotional landscapes. How can we incorporate thee fool into our self concepts???? How does the met exist within all of us, a looming and threatening and powerful dream? Is the met our shadow? Finally, We asked YOU GUYS what words and phrases you associate with the met competition and giggled about them. Love u!!

We giggle at the bad reviews we’ve gotten over the years and read some of the haunting reviews you all sent us on insta. Then we start to flesh out a theory about fluctuating and flexible identity, both in rehearsal and in life. It’s so deliciously easy to form our self-understanding around a stiff and rigid self-concept… what changes when we soften our idea of ourselves?  THEN, in a new segment called TTA Hits the Streets, We TRAVEL to a real LIVE rehearsal of ‘the smallest sound in the smallest space’, a piece by Bryce McClendon, produced by The Why Collective, and premiering at The Cell Theater TONIGHT omg!!! Lovingly referred to as a “plopera” (play + opera), we ran around one of their dress rehearsals, interviewing the cast, crew, and production team. We truly had a blast!! Behind the scenes at the Plopera starts at 49:01!

Hi everyone :) we are so thrilled and pumped to share our gorgeous convo w James aka hausofshmizzay on instagram. We connected close to a year ago and met irl this past fall. We’ve wanted to have them on the pod for a long long time, and we’re so excited that we finally made it happen. For those few who may not know James, they have blown up over the past year because of their posts detailing in depth discussions around vocal technique across the ages and ongoing issues in the opera industry, especially around young artists collective power. They are a voice teacher and a cultural critic. ( The Joan Rivers of opera discourse?). They have an interesting way of blending technical discussion, social critiques of the industry, and humor in their posts. We had a blast chit chatting about the role of the critic, the radical act of ENJOYING your own singing, swinging big, taking risks, honing your aesthetic ear and moral compass, working against the assumption that the singer is a perpetual student, and of course the sopranos. We hope u enjoy love u lots!!