André De Shields is singing the role of Hermes, again, this time on the long-running podcast series Live From Mount Olympus, which returns in May for a musical season. De Shields will play Hermes, a character he is no stranger to, having won a 2019 Tony for a similar singing god role in Hadestown. The seventh season of Live From Mount Olympus will also be directed by Hadestown director Rachel Chavkin and Josiah Davis (Mary Gets Hers).
It will also feature the voice of another Hadestown alum, Kimberly Marable as Greek Goddess Leto, with Ato Blankson-Wood as Apollo. Two songs from this season have been released on YouTube for a sneak peek—listen to Ato Blankson-Wood perform “Dragon Slayer” as Apollo and Kimberly Marable perform “I’ll Find a Place” as Leto in the videos below.
The first episode of Live from Mount Olympus: Apollo & Artemis will be released on streaming on May 5, with a new episode every week until June 16, with original songs in each episode.
The first season of the audio drama, Live from Mount Olympus: Perseus (2021), brought to life the perilous quest of Perseus to save his mother from an evil king. This seventh season will follow Apollo, god of music, who has just dropped his latest single, “Dragon Slayer.” Apollo is also the brother of Artemis and like most brothers and sisters, these divine twins love each other and also drive each other crazy. But when Apollo’s jealousy makes him commit an act of terrible cruelty against his sister, he must seek her forgiveness—or risk the destruction of all of Olympus.
Season seven will also feature Christina Liberus as Artemis, Zhailon Levingston as Announcer, Libby King as Athena, Marcel Isaiah Martinez as Hyacinthus, Jill Frutkin as Aphrodite, Eric Berryman as Pan, Dionysus, and Zephyrus, Jake Margolin as Orion, Modesto Flako Jimenez as Otus, Xavier Pacheco as Ephialtes and Paris, Nehemiah Luckett as Midas, Joanne Hernandez as Daphne, Kristen Sieh as Python, Gaea, and Fury 1, Ching Valdes-Aran as Delos, James Harrison Monaco as Marsyas, Divine Garland as Ganymede, Nedra Marie Taylor as Hera. Daniel J. Watts as Eros and Silenus, and Ian Lassiter as Zeus, Caroline Hopkins as Midas’s daughter, Natalie Hopkins as Nymph and Adrienne Hopkins as Nymph.
The podcast is a production of the Onassis Foundation and distributed by Pulitzer-winning public media organization PRX. The audio drama is created and produced by Peabody Award-winning showrunner Julie Burstein, co-produced by Brooklyn-based theatre ensemble The TEAM. The original songs and score composed by Magdalini Giannikou, the book is written by Nathan Yungerberg. New Yorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein creates original illustrations for each episode. John Melillo is the audio producer. Karen Brooks Hopkins, president emerita of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is executive producer
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