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Aria Code

WQXR & The Metropolitan Opera

Aria Code is a podcast that pulls back the curtain on some of the most famous arias in opera history, with insight from the biggest voices of our time, including Roberto Alagna, Diana Damrau, Sondra Radvanovsky, and many others. Hosted by Grammy Award-winner and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Rhiannon Giddens, Aria Code is produced in partnership with The Metropolitan Opera.

Each episode dives into one aria — a feature for a single singer — and explores how and why these brief musical moments have imprinted themselves in our collective consciousness and what it takes to stand on the Met stage and sing them.

A wealth of guests—from artists like Rufus Wainwright and Ruben Santiago-Hudson to non-musicians like Dame Judi Dench and Dr. Brooke Magnanti, author of The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl—join Rhiannon and the Met Opera’s singers to understand why these arias touch us at such a human level, well over a century after they were written. Each episode ends with the aria, uninterrupted and in full, recorded from the Met Opera stage.

Aria Code is produced in partnership with WQXR, The Metropolitan Opera and WNYC Studios.

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  • 20 episodes
  • Avg 39 min
  • English

Episodes 20

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  • S4 · E9
    March 25 · 3 min

    Introducing Classical Music Happy Hour with Emanuel Ax

    Hello Aria Code fans, pianist Emanuel Ax is dropping into the feed to introduce Classical Music Happy Hour, a new podcast he hosts that you might enjoy. The show is all about the joy in chatting about music with all sorts of people, including some of Manny’s dearest friends like pianist Yuja Wang, composer John Adams, actor David Hyde Pierce, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. So grab a drink and join Manny Ax for music, merriment and conversation.

  • Nov 12, 2025 · 43 min

    Introducing Our Common Nature with Yo-Yo Ma

    Ana González is here to introduce you to her new podcast, Our Common Nature, a musical journey with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. When the world stopped in 2020, Yo-Yo Ma started thinking about how music can reconnect people to the natural world. In this limited podcast series, Yo-Yo goes around the country to places where people have deep connections to the earth.

  • S4 · E8
    Jan 17, 2024 · 54 min

    Love and Other Drugs: Gounod's Roméo et Juliette

    Gounod’s “poison aria” is so difficult, it’s often cut from productions. But it’s a pivotal moment in the opera — and a testament to Juliette’s courage.

  • S4 · E5
    Nov 29, 2023 · 52 min

    Love Takes Flight: Catán's Florencia en el Amazonas

    It’s the early 1900s, and the steamship El Dorado makes its way along the Amazon River towards Manaus, a city in the heart of the Brazilian rainforest. Onboard is the world-famous opera singer Florencia Grimaldi. She’s got a gig at the opera house in Manaus, but that’s just a cover. She’s actually hoping for a reunion with her long-lost love, the butterfly catcher Cristóbal. But on the journey, Florencia learns that Cristóbal went missing in the rainforest while in pursuit of a rare butterfly. From the deck of the ship — and now in quarantine due to a cholera outbreak — she delivers her final aria, calling out to him, the river and the rainforest that surround her: “Escúchame.” Hear me, listen to me. “From you my song was born,” she affirms — and in embracing her love for him, she is released and reborn. Daniel Catán’s lush and lyrical score has become a staple of contemporary operas, and its staging marks the Metropolitan Opera’s first Spanish-language production in nearly 100 years. In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests take us on a journey through natural wonder, transcendent love, and self-discovery. THE GUESTS Soprano Ailyn Pérez makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in her native language of Spanish as Florencia Grimaldi. She identifies with Florencia and the sacrifices that are sometimes necessary to pursue an artistic career. Andrea Puente-Catán is a harpist, director of development at Ballet Hispánico, and the widow of “Florencia” composer Daniel Catán. She met Catán when she was 17 years old. Decades later, playing harp in that opera’s production at Palacia de Bellas Artes brought them back together. Author, filmmaker, and fearless traveler Alycin Hayes knows a thing or two about Amazonian adventures. When she was 21, she hitchhiked from her home in Canada to South America, where she met up with other roving internationals to paddle along the Amazon River in a dugout canoe. She describes her adventures in her recent memoir "Amazon Hitchhiker." Paul Rosolie is conservationist, writer, and wildlife filmmaker whose memoir “Mother of God” details his extensive work in the Amazon. He’s the founder and field director of Junglekeepers, a conservation outfit based in Peru, and he joins the show via a remote interview taped in the jungle. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  • Sep 28, 2023 · 2 min

    Aria Code Returns for Season 4!

    ​​Aria Code is back! At long last, Rhiannon Giddens returns to guide listeners through highlights from the Met’s ‘23-’24 season. Our first episode drops October 4th. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts!

  • S1 · E40
    Dec 1, 2021 · 51 min

    P.S. I Love You: Renée Fleming Sings Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin

    Saying “I love you” for the first time takes courage, especially when you don’t know the response you'll get. But being open with your emotions and putting yourself out there can change you in unexpected ways. In Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, it’s the 16-year-old Tatyana who pins her heart on her sleeve. Young and naive, but also fiercely confident, she pours out her feelings for the visiting Eugene Onegin in one night of impassioned love-letter-making. His answer defines the rest of

  • S3 · E17
    Nov 17, 2021 · 41 min

    To Be Or Not To Be: Dean's Hamlet

    “To be or not to be, that is the question.” It’s hard to think of a more famous line from a more famous play. In this iconic speech from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the troubled Danish prince asks whether this whole life thing is even worth it. But “to be or not to be'' is not the only question we’re asking this week.  When everyone knows this line so well, how do you make it fresh again? How does adapting Shakespeare’s play into an opera change our understanding of the text? In this episode, host Rhi

  • S3 · E16
    Nov 3, 2021 · 39 min

    Potion, Emotion, Devotion: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

    When we talk about “falling in love,” we talk about it like it is something that just happens. Suddenly the ground opens up and we are falling for somebody, as if there is no choice in the matter. This is everywhere -- in movies, TV shows, novels, and of course, in opera. Take Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde - while Tristan is bringing her across the Irish sea to marry his uncle Marke, King of Cornwall, they both drink a love potion and fall instantly, madly in love with each other. But Isolde is st

  • S3 · E15
    Oct 13, 2021 · 42 min

    Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones: A Boy of Peculiar Grace

    This week we’re decoding with the man who wrote the code - Terence Blanchard, composer of Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Not only is it the work that reopened the Met after its 18-month pandemic shutdown, but it’s also the first opera by a Black composer ever to be performed there. Based on the 2014 memoir of the same name by New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a coming-of-age story about his childhood in a tiny town in northwest Louisiana.  From a young age, Charles

  • S3 · E14
    Sep 29, 2021 · 44 min

    Verdi's Nabucco: By the Rivers of Babylon

    Psalm 137 depicts the ancient Hebrews, enslaved and weeping “by the rivers of Babylon,” as they remember their homeland, Jerusalem. Those words have inspired songwriters of reggae, Broadway, disco, folk and more, but one of the most memorable versions is featured in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Nabucco. The opera retells the story of the Babylonian captivity when Nebuchadnezzar (or Nabucco, in Italian) seizes Jerusalem, destroys the temple, and enslaves the Israelites in his kingdom. At the heart of t

  • S3 · E13
    Sep 15, 2021 · 32 min

    Once More Into the Breeches: Joyce DiDonato Sings Strauss

    The young Composer in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos is one of opera’s great trouser roles -- a female singer playing the part of a young man.  He is set to premiere his new opera at the home of the richest man in Vienna, only to learn moments before the performance that a bawdy comedy troupe will be performing at the same time.  As his plans collapse around him, the Composer falls in love with Zerbinetta, the leader of the commedia dell'arte troupe, and his whole world changes in a flash. In his a

  • S3 · E12
    Aug 25, 2021 · 1 hr 4 min

    Breaking Mad: Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor

    People who go to see Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor spend the entire evening waiting for the famous Mad Scene, to hear the soprano’s incredible acrobatics, and to feel her intense emotional changes over the course of the lengthy showstopper. But the Mad Scene is more than a vocal showpiece: it’s a window into what it means to lose touch with reality and the ways women’s real-life challenges can go ignored or, even worse, pathologized as illness. In the opera, Lucia has no control of her

  • S3 · E11
    Aug 11, 2021 · 33 min

    Crisis in the Kremlin: Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov

    Perhaps no opera better reflects the questions and contradictions at the heart of Russian history than Modest Mussorgsky’s historical epic Boris Godunov. Based on the play by Alexander Pushkin (considered by many to be one of Russia’s greatest writers), it’s a meditation on power and legitimacy, and a portrayal of a pivotal period in Russian history -- The Time of Troubles.  When Tsar Ivan the Terrible dies without an heir, Boris Godunov is elected tsar, casting doubt on his legitimacy. He rules

  • S3 · E10
    Jul 21, 2021 · 37 min

    Only the Good Die Young: Verdi's La Traviata

    One of opera’s great heroines is based on one of history’s extraordinary women. The 19th century French courtesan Marie Duplessis was elegant, successful, famous, and gone before her time, dying of tuberculosis at the age of 23. One of her lovers, Alexandre Dumas fils, was so inspired by her that he wrote a novel and a play about her life called The Lady of the Camellias, which in turn inspired Giuseppe Verdi to compose La Traviata. Verdi immortalized Marie Duplessis in the character of Violetta

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