On today’s merry episode of Stateside, Yuval Sharon, opera director of the Detroit Opera, talked about what must change in order for opera to survive. Sharon is transforming how Michigan audiences listen to the art, and is now trying to do the same for the rest of North America. He recently wrote a book about it.
Then, writer, editor, translator, and Michigan native, Aaron Robertson, has published a new book about Black thinkers and their manifestation of Black utopias amid deprivation and repression. He spoke about how the book explores utopias throughout American history through the lens of Detroit’s Shrine of the Black Madonna, and Robertson’s ancestral home in Promise Land, Tennessee.
Additionally, Ann Arbor novelist A.H. Kim published her second novel earlier this year. The book, titled Relative Strangers, is a contemporary riff on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and focuses on two sisters as they navigate family drama, money problems, and their entwined histories.
Hear the full conversation on the Stateside podcast.
[Get Stateside on your phone: subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or YouTube Music today.]
GUESTS ON TODAY’S SHOW:
- Yuval Sharon, artist director at the Detroit Opera
- Aaron Robertson, Writer, editor, translator and Michigan native
- A.H. (Ann) Kim, Ann Arbor novelist
