There’s a lot of established traditional history to be learned, and unlearned, in opera. But this weekend at Tanglewood, a one-night program will reframe the way we look at not just vocal music, but a continent that western documentation has largely ignored or misrepresented.
“African Queens” is a newly commissioned song and spoken word cycle that highlights the lives of 7 Afro-diasporic figures of femme royalty, and that’s only a fraction of the figures that creative producer and soprano Karen Slack found while researching the program. We speak with the visionary about assembling the collective behind this production, the events that led to this idea and some of the disparities that she and others like her have experienced in the world of classical music.
And Word Nerd Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam-Webster, is pretty good at language. So much so that a pretty big question from a listener has us tracing the origins of using “pretty” as an adverb much further than expected.
