Merrin Lazyan

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Merrin Lazyan (Ricardo Quinones)

Merrin Lazyan is the co-creator and Executive Producer of Aria Code. She works at The Metropolitan Opera, where she produces the creative content for the intermissions of the Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning Live in HD series, taken in thousands of theaters in more than 50 countries around the world. Her work on the series includes producing live backstage interviews with world class artists, behind-the-scenes segments with the Met’s extraordinary creative and technical teams, and documentary-style videos to deepen audience appreciation for the productions.  

Previously, Merrin was the Director of Content Development at WQXR, where she first pitched and created Aria Code, and shepherded other podcast and radio series through development. She co-hosted and produced He Sang/She Sang, a podcast turned into a series of Facebook Live conversations with opera stars. She produced weekly shows and features for WQXR, including a summer series with conductor and Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, as well as documentaries about Lang Lang’s Goldberg Variations and the opera Inside Blue. 

Before joining WQXR, Merrin worked in arts administration at Juilliard and in book publicity at Random House. She studied psychology at Harvard and classical voice performance at the Royal College of Music in London, where she spent five years working as an operatic soprano as well as a freelance writer and editor. She co-wrote The Psychology Book and How Psychology Works, and won the British Psychological Society Book Award for her contributions to the former title.

• Aria Code