Ahead of Independence Day in the USA, 4 July, we bring you this evening’s performance direct from New York.

Composed specifically for Meagan, Thomas Cipullo wrote ‘Crickets’ for her to premiere at a 2001 concert commemorating the millennium. The song, which Meagan describes as one of the most meaningful pieces in her repertoire, explores the power of art in the world today, as well as the survival of artists. An Aria A Day is inspired by that very idea and celebrates the resilience and strength of our global artistic community.

Meagan Miller makes her debut as Isolde in Opera Queensland’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’ this October.

‘Crickets’ is the first song in Tom Cipullo’s song cycle ‘Late Summer’. Words: William Heyen.

Evenings, where lawns are not sprayed with poisons,
you can still hear the crickets,
you can still see lightening bugs signaling,
look, a yellowgreen strobe under the trees,
but gone, but there again, sometimes
in the same spot, and sometimes not,
as the tiny purveyors of phosphor
drift past our houses, looking
for one another, and the crickets,
crickets, crickets, the ones that still
have their legs, keep scraping them together,
listen maybe for the last time on earth, listen…