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Breaking Glass

The Glimmerglass Festival & WFMT Radio Network

Breaking Glass is a five-episode podcast that explores social justice through the lens of opera. Produced by the Glimmerglass Opera Festival and the WFMT Radio Network, 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.

Breaking Glass is a five-episode podcast that explores social justice through the lens of opera. Produced by the Glimmerglass Opera Festival and the WFMT Radio Network, 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.

2hr 57min
Thumbnail for "Ep. 5: Is The Glass Broken?".
Is the invisible barrier keeping artists of color away from opera really broken or have we just made a crack in it?
Thumbnail for "Coming Soon: Episode 5".
Coming up in episode five of Breaking Glass, we take a trip to Cooperstown, NY for the annual Glimmerglass Festival to explore how to make social change a bigger part of opera’s ongoing mission.
Thumbnail for "Ep. 4: The Art of Crisis: Migration, Refugees and the Creative Experience".
The idea of home looms large in the arts, popping up as a central theme in our favorite stories. But where does it fit into opera?
Thumbnail for "Coming Soon: Episode 4".
Listen in on how opera performers, composers, and innovators are creating works of art that grapple with, and respond to, the world around them.
Thumbnail for "Ep. 3: Taking it to the People: Breaking Glass as a Public Discourse".
Dive into the Glimmerglass public forums and hear how opera, race and social justice touches different cities around the US
Thumbnail for "Coming Soon: Episode 3".
Do you ever think of everyone behind the scenes of your favorite opera? Hear what they have to say from Breaking Glass forums around the country.
Thumbnail for "Ep 2: Behind the Scenes: Casting, Programming & Opera Leadership".
Paige and Tazewell crack open a ‘behind the scenes’ view of the opera business to explore who decides what we see and hear on stage.
Thumbnail for "Coming Soon: Episode 2".
Paige and Tazewell crack open a ‘behind the scenes’ view of the opera business to explore who decides what we see and hear on stage.
Thumbnail for "Ep. 1: Opera, Race and Social Justice: An Introduction to Breaking Glass".
Can opera rise out of its origins and touch communities of color with complex histories and relationships to those not of color?
Thumbnail for "Coming Soon: Episode 1".
Meet Paige Hernandez and Tazewell Thompson, two first-time librettist of color, ready to take down the societal barriers surrounding opera.
Thumbnail for "Coming Soon: Breaking Glass".
Let’s raise our voices to break some glass.
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