We’ve spent four episodes talking about how new operatic shows are pushing the form forward. But is the invisible barrier keeping artists of color away from opera really broken or have we just made a crack in it? Paige gets Tazewell back in the studio to talk and we hear more from librettists and administrators from the Glimmerglass panels.

Featuring:

• Naomi Andre, Associate Professor in Women’s Studies, Afroamerican and African Studies and the Residential College at University of Michigan

• Matthew Morrison, forum moderator and Assistant Professor in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts

• Jeanine Tesori, composer of Blue

• Victor Simonson, composer of Stomping Grounds

Find Us Online:

• Website: https://glimmerglass.org/breaking-glass/

• Twitter: @GOpera

• Paige Hernandez: @PaigeInFull, http://paigehernandez.com/

• Tazewell Thompson: http://tazewellthompson.com/

• Naomi Andre: https://irwg.umich.edu/people/naomi-andre

• Matthew Morrison: https://tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/clive-davis-institute/918859097

• Jeanine Tesori: https://www.samuelfrench.com/a/103158/jeanine-tesori

• Victor Simonson: http://victorsimonson.com/victor-simonson/

About Us:

Breaking Glass is produced by Stacia Brown and edited by Ali Post of Rise of Charm City LLC. Music and sound design by Elisheba Ittoop. Stacy Gerard is our production and distribution manager. Marketing and promotional support is provided by Multitude Productions. Christopher Powell and Heather McDougall are the executive producers. Our thanks to Francesca Zambello, Artistic & General Director and Joel Morain, Resident Sound Designer of the Glimmerglass Festival.  Additional thanks to Tony Macaluso, former director of the WFMT Radio Network.

Breaking Glass and the development of Stomping Grounds and Blue are funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Glimmerglass's commissioning fees for Blue are funded in part by an OPERA America Female Composers Grant. Further development of Blue is made possible by a Repertoire Development Grant from the Opera Fund. The Breaking Glass podcast is a co-production of The Glimmerglass Festival and the WFMT Radio Network, a Chicago-based producer and distributor of radio programs and podcasts about the arts. The podcast is made possible by an OPERA America Innovation Grant supported by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.

Breaking Glass is a five-episode podcast that explores social justice through the lens of opera. Produced by The Glimmerglass Festival and WFMT, this show challenges ideas of who opera is for and who should create it. Host Paige Hernandez and contributor Tazewell Thompson discuss, question, and challenge what stories are told in the world of opera and how they may look in the future. They engage creatives from across the opera community and draw from their own experiences as artists of color in a conversation steeped in creativity, humanity, honesty. Let’s raise our voices and break some glass.