Welcome back to Between the Barlines! I am your host, Dr. Maeve Berry! Today, we’re discussing the changes happening in the late 19th century. This was the era of French lyricism, Italian verismo, and the beginnings of Russian opera. By the 1870s and 1880s, audiences wanted something new. The grandeur of earlier Romantic opera was there, but people yearned for realism and emotional immediacy. The result was an operatic world more intimate, visceral, and recognizably human than ever before.

Buy me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/betweenthebarlines

Operas mentioned in this episode:

Gounod - Faust

Bizet - Carmen

Massenet - Manon

Massenet - Werther

Saint-Saëns - Samson et Dalila

Delibes - Lakmé

Mascagni - Cavalleria rusticana

Leoncavallo - Pagliacci

Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin

Tchaikovsky - The Queen of Spades

Mussorgsky - Boris Godunov