Opera
The Song of the Autocrat
The opera “Boris Godunov” — first performed in St. Petersburg in 1874 — has, in recent years, become a lightning rod for clashing interpretations of Putin’s regime and, by extension, the question of Russians’ complicity in the bloodshed in Ukraine.
Edward Said’s Cultural Symphony
Edward Said’s writings on opera show a side of the famous Palestinian academic and activist little appreciated today — his enduring belief in cultural universalism. His legacy cannot be captured without taking into account what his lifelong passion for classical music meant to his broader corpus.