About philipoftheopera

Hi! 👋 I'm Philip, and I've loved opera all my life. For me, opera is not a museum piece. It’s a living art form that—when taken seriously—can speak more urgently to our world than most modern media ever could.

In an era of dwindling attention spans, streaming fatigue, and corporate-controlled narratives, opera remains one of the few spaces where complexity thrives. Its mix of music, text, and visual storytelling can tackle power, identity, love, and loss with a depth no algorithm-curated feed can replicate.

I’m less interested in vocal perfection or orchestral precision (there are plenty of places for that) and more in what opera productions mean. How do they mirror our social dynamics, challenge our norms, or reimagine who we are and what we value?

Viewed through this lens, opera becomes more than entertainment—it’s a cultural artifact, a way to confront who we are and what we believe. We live in a time of dominant and polarizing narratives about the society we live in, the future we envision, and who gets to decide it all. Opera, with its unique blend of emotional force and intellectual depth, has an artistic advantage in processing these tensions and sharing them with a wide audience.

At its best, opera is political. It's social. And it's not just about preserving tradition—it’s about confronting the world we live in, one production at a time. That’s what I explore here: not just how opera sounds, but how it speaks—to us, about us, right now.

philipoftheopera is an independent publication launched in March 2025 by Philip Zuschke. If you subscribe today, you'll receive email newsletters about new content when it's available. Your subscription makes this site possible, and allows philipoftheopera to continue to exist. Thank you!

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