Time, nostalgia, and very fancy lesbians? It must be Der Rosenkavalier. Writer, historian, and co-host of Bad Gays Ben Miller joins us for a discussion of Richard Strauss’s four-and-a-half hour work of where both nothing happens and everything happens.

Topics include: whether Rosenkavalier is a comedy or tragedy, the Viennese aristocracy, opera queens and mezzosexuals, the “German she-devil” who sued the Met (and won), and one of opera’s most problematic characters.

Show page (including a playlist, recommended reading, opera synopsis and more): https://www.decanonized.com/episodes/strauss-der-rosenkavalier
More info: https://www.decanonized.com
Follow Decanonized on Instagram at @decanonized

Follow Ben at: https://benwritesthings.com, on Instagram at @benwritesthings and on Bluesky at benwritesthings.bsky.social

On Episode 1 of Decanonized, mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz joins us to discuss what many consider to be the greatest opera: Georges Bizet's Carmen (1875). Topics include fate, othering, hating cops, whether Carmen really has to die, why Don José would make the worst camping partner, and the dream blunt rotation of Alexander Chee, Tank Girl, and Susan McClary.

For this episode, we saw Carmen live in Berlin via an organ trafficking-coded production by Ole Anders Tandberg at the Deutsche Oper, so bonus digressions on kidney harvesting and bull testicles!

Show page (including a playlist, recommended reading, opera synopsis and more): https://www.decanonized.com/episodes/bizet-carmen
More info: https://www.decanonized.com
Follow Decanonized on Instagram at @decanonized

Follow Nikola at: https://www.nikolaprintz.com and on Instagram at @itisnika