Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, writer, and pianist, and a MacArthur Fellow. He has worked as a composer and conductor with the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, American Repertory Theater, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Music Academy of the West. He was the Los Angeles Opera's Artist in Residence from 2016 to 2020, and is a cofounder of the American Modern Opera Company.
Preface
1. A Field Guide to the Impossible
2. Primal Loss: Orpheus and Eurydice in Opera
A Guide to Four Hundred Years of Orphic Operas
The Impossible Moment: Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo
Music as Consolation: Marc-Antoine Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux
enfers
Supersaturation: Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus
3. The Firewood and the Fire: Words, Music, and Stravinsky's The Rake's
Progress
4. Verdi's Shakespeare Operas: Macbeth, Otello, Falstaff
Verdi's Warmth
Raw Material: Macbeth
The Overreacher: The Singular Career of Arrigo Boito
Expansion and Contraction: Otello
A Last Step, a First Step: Falstaff
5. Walt Whitman's Impossible Optimism
6. Inner Rooms: Two Recent Impossibilities
Thomas Adès's The Exterminating Angel
Chaya Czernowin's Heart Chamber
7. Finding Eurydice
A Conversation with Sarah Ruhl
8. Music as Forgiveness: Mozart's Le Nozze Di Figaro
Works Referenced
Recommended Recordings
Acknowledgments
