“I had to think about the Roaring Twenties and music like Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, and so on, that Ida B. Wells [would have been] hearing.”

A Verdi and bel canto expert, Lyric’s new music director Enrique Mazzola will open the season with Verdi’s Macbeth and Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, while also conducting contemporary opera Proving Up by Missy Mazzoli later in the season.

Louis Armstrong’s jazzy “When the Saints Go Marching In” is another of the 25 recordings being inducted to the National Recording Registry.

Denyce Graves was the perfect guest to launch WFMT’s new digital series! The celebrated mezzo-soprano discusses her career, her relationship with the late Justice Ginsburg, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the opera world.

Terrence Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, plays drums on a forthcoming album of protest anthems, fulfilling a dream of his late brother, who once dabbled in music in Houston’s hip-hop scene.