“But for the opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass,” Walt Whitman said late in life. That line is the opening salvo in Matthew Aucoin’s program notes to “Crossing,” an opera that he ...

Had it not been for classical music, and opera in particular, Walt Whitman‘s poetry would probably never have been written. It sounds a ridiculously bold, even nonsensical claim to make, yet Whitman ...

Matthew Aucoin wrote the music and libretto for "Crossing," an opera inspired by the diary Walt Whitman kept as a nurse during the Civil War. The work was commissioned by the A.R.T.'s Diane Paulus, ...

Walt Whitman heard America singing. Carpenter, boatman, mother, washerwoman. Young fellows “Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.” In Matthew Aucoin’s troublingly perceptive opera, ...

“But for the opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass.” —Walt Whitman From “Proud Music of the Storm” to “Italian Music in Dakota,” the influence of opera on Whitman’s work is more than ...