The Notes Session

We couldn’t release a book called Monsters on any day but Halloween. This is the first of three parts on Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, the best answer we’ve read to a question we think every opera lover eventually gets asked: how do you justify liking the beautiful things made by monstrous people, and do you even need to?

In Part 1 of this three-part series, we walk through the structure Dederer builds in her first fifty pages. Stop asking about the monster and ask about the audience. Admit that your reaction is a moral feeling, not an ethical argument. Accept that the stain doesn’t wash out: “separate the art from the artist” isn’t wrong, it’s impossible. And then, the release: how you consume art doesn’t make you a good person or a bad one. Along the way: Polanski, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, Wagner, a confession about David Foster Wallace, and the extra step we think performers owe that audiences don’t.

Part 2 ("The Fan and the Critic") comes in November, followed by Part 3 ("The Maestro as a Product of His Time") in December.

Content note: this episode discusses the sexual abuse of a child, as described in Dederer's text.

We'd love for you to read along with us. Find the book at your library or here on ⁠bookshop.org⁠. (Amazon is not TNS-approved.)

It’s draft day. Welcome to the league.

Neither of us has ever played fantasy football, but we’re pretty sure this is how it works. In our new series, we draft a dream production of an opera we love: cast, conductor, director, designers and venue. First up is Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which we think might be the best operatic setting of Shakespeare. It has fifteen principal roles across three worlds: the fairies, the Athenians, and the Mechanicals.

Here are the rules: no casting ourselves or anyone we’ve sung this opera with. Living artists only, but legends get their own episodes. We’re after debuts we’re dying to hear, and every pick is a compliment.

Thanks to Isla Mundell-Perkins, Director of Artistic Administration at Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and Casting Consulting for Malmö Opera, whose dream-casting habit inspired this segment.

The episode also has a time-traveling children’s quartet and a shout-out to Robert Carsen’s iconic production of this show.

There are way more great singers than roles. If someone you love isn’t here, it’s not a snub. So, send us your draft: the blank board is in our Instagram stories at @thenotessession. Tap "Add Yours" and tag us.

In July, Theo dragged Jackie (decidedly not a Wagner fan) to the Bayerische Staatsoper's Oper für Alle to watch Tobias Kratzer's new production of Die Walküre on the big screen in the plaza outside the opera house. Nearly five hours of Wagner later, she was profoundly moved, and we recorded this the next morning.

Our conversation is grounded in this production, but we used it as a jumping-off point for a wide-ranging conversation about period pitch, Jungian archetypes, and the ethics of liking work made by horrible people.

This is the start of our coverage of Kratzer's Ring in Munich. More when Siegfried opens in November.

Mentioned: Claire Dederer's MONSTERS: A Fan's Dilemma
https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=Monsters+Claire+Dederer
More on this book is coming soon.

Watch on YouTube: [YOUTUBE LINK]
Listen on Apple Podcasts: [APPLE LINK]
Listen on Spotify: [SPOTIFY LINK]

Hosted by Jackie Stucker and Theo Hoffman · Instagram @thenotessession
We love opera. We have some notes. New episodes (most) Thursdays.

NB: frank discussion of onstage nudity.

When is nudity onstage the only way to tell the story?

Jacquelyn Stucker and Theo Hoffman have both done it: Jackie in a love scene in L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, and Theo in a mad scene in Iphigénie en Tauride at the Opéra-Comique. We both thought it was the right call. In our first Consensus Punditry episode, we try to work out what made it right, and why the answer turned out to be the same both times.

In this episode:

• Two reviews, two productions: what critics see, and what they can't
• The four conditions: necessity, authorship, consensus and conviction, and why nudity reads as story rather than shock only when all four are true at once
• What the audience sees: why the fourth condition is the only one visible from the house, and what "gratuitous" usually means
• From the inside: how each of us got there, with a caveat up front: we both had good experiences, and we know that isn't universal

Next up, 22 October: Field Notes, our reaction to Tobias Kratzer's Die Walküre at the Bayerische Staatsoper.

New episodes (most) Thursdays. We're glad you're here.

We are Jacquelyn Stucker and Theo Hoffman, the creators and co-hosts of The Notes Session. Despite having similar artistic sensibilities and lots of friends in common, we somewhere were almost never in the same city at the same time, so we traded messages about whatever was exciting, frustrating or inspiring us in opera.

When those voice notes finally left the chat, they became The Notes Session.

In this episode, we cover:

- Who we are: mid-career American soloists working in opera and concert in the US and Europe;

- How this podcast started and why we're launching it now;

- What we're doing that's different;

- Our values: curiosity over criticism, positive language (but not positivity for its own sake), knowing that our preferences aren't objective fact, and sticky ideas over gossip;

- And, what you can expect: "consensus punditry," live-show reports, conversations with very smart guests, close listening to great singing, and longer research-driven deep dives.

Next week, we're releasing our first "Consensus Punditry" episode, titled No Better Way. We're asking the question of when is nudity onstage the only way to tell the story, and we think we've got a working hypothesis.

New episodes (most) Thursdays. We're glad you're here.