Mozart's Queen of the Night: Outrage Out of This World

Aria Code

WQXR & The Metropolitan Opera

Arts, Wnyc, Music Interviews, Music, Wqxr, Performing Arts, Code, Studios, Aria, Opera, Music Commentary, Metropolitan

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the Voyager spacecraft set off to explore the galaxy in 1977, it carried a recording to represent the best of humanity. The “Golden Record” featured everyone from Bach to Chuck Berry, but there was only one opera aria: the rage-fest from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens is joined by soprano Kathryn Lewek, musicologist Carolyn Abbate and author Jan Swafford. Together they consider why the Queen of the Night’s big moment – “Der Hölle Rache” – is an out-of-this-world achievement, how Mozart created a profound fairy tale for adults and what it takes for a soprano to reach the stratosphere. You’ll hear Kathryn Lewek hit all those high notes onstage at the Metropolitan Opera and talk to Timothy Ferris, the man who produced NASA’s “Golden Record.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	I always talk about how singing Queen of the Night is like throwing darts with your eyes closed.
0:11.7	You have that darting your hand.
0:14.5	You know exactly where the bulls eye is.
0:17.2	You shut your eyes and you toss it.
0:23.4	From WQXR in the Metropolitan Opera, this is Ariya Kuh.
0:27.0	I'm Rianning kittens.
0:28.6	She's murderous, she's vengeful, she's got a knife that she gives to her daughter and
0:34.0	she's trying to incite her daughter to murder.
0:37.0	Every episode, we take apart one Ariya and then put it back together so you can hear it
0:41.2	in a whole new way.
0:42.9	Today, we're going into the stratosphere with De Heule Rache from Mozart's Ditzalberflöte
0:48.9	or The Magic Flute.
0:51.2	There's something almost supernatural about the register she's singing in.
0:57.7	That in itself reaches out and grabs us in our kind of innate sense of fascination with
1:03.6	evil.
1:13.4	The year I was born, do I have to say it?
1:16.7	Okay, 1977.
1:19.5	NASA sent two probes into space to take a look around.
1:24.1	Just in case they ran into anyone or anything, yes, I'm talking about aliens now, they put
1:30.9	a golden record in each probe.
1:33.6	These records are like time capsules.
1:35.5	They've got pictures, sounds, and music representing the best of life on Earth as we knew it in 1977.
	...

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