WWFM Sunday Opera with Michael Kownacky
Sundays at 3 pm
Enjoy world-class productions from the world of opera featuring the great singers past and present performing in the world's great opera houses.
Paul Moravec & Mark Campbell's "Light Shall Lift Us"
Here is the link to the video presentation of "Light Shall Lift Us: Opera Singers Unite in Song"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8A8fIGbYyY.
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Our final production from the Vienna State Opera is the feature on this week’s Sunday Opera (12/14 3:00 p.m.) as we turn to Richard Strauss’ gentle comedy, “Arabella.” The opera is set in Vienna in the 1860s even though it didn’t premiere until 1933.It centers on the Waldner family who are facing bankruptcy because of the father’s (Wolfgang Bankl) gambling. The mother’s (Margaret Plummer) only hope is that one of their daughters, Arabella (Camilla Nylund), will marry a wealthy man.
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We’re heading to the Vienna State Opera for Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” on this week’s Sunday Opera (12/7 3:00 p.m.) for a story awakening love and sight gained that takes place in the 15th century in the mountains of southern France.
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Germanic paganism mixed with some Early Middle Age Christianity and a splash of Greek tragedy is the recipe for this week’s Sunday Opera (11/30 3:00 p.m.) and the Bayreuth Festival’s production of Richard Wagner’s “Lohengrin.”
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We’re back at the Bayreuth Festival for the second of three Wagnerian operas on this week’s Sunday Opera (11/23 3:00 p.m.).This time it’s Wagner’s last opera, one that took him 25 years to complete, “Parsifal” which premiered at the second Bayreuth Festival in 1882 and will fill this week’s program.
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We’re off to the Bayreuth Festival on this week’s Sunday Opera (11/16 3:00 p.m.) for the first of three works by Wagner: “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg" which is about a 16th-century singing contest in Nuremberg where young knight Walther von Stolzing (Michael Spyres) hopes to win the hand of Eva Pogner (Christina Nilsson).
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The Sunday Opera will be traveling to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) this week (11/09 3:00 p.m.) with George Bizet’s “Les pecheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers)” in a production from the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
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We’re showcasing another relatively forgotten opera on this week’s Sunday Opera (11/2 7:00 p.m.) but one that was incredibly popular when it premiered in 1900. About the only thing that’s remembered about Gustav Charpentier’s “Louise” is one aria for the title character titled “Depuis le jour” that appears on many operatic collections and concerts. This production comes from the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
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We’re off to the Salzburg Festival for this week’s Sunday Opera (10/26 3:00 p.m.) and their presentation of George Frideric Handel’s “Giulio Cesare in Egitto” which was originally staged by London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1724.
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It’s a comic battle of the sexes on this week’s Sunday Opera (6/21 3:00 p.m.) with a bit of fiancée swapping from the minds of Lorenzo Da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte, ossia la scuola degli amanti” which translates with some care to “Women Are Like That or The School for Lovers”
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The tragic tale of a headstrong child and an overprotective father who angers the wrong people is the subject of this week’s Sunday Opera (10/12 3:00 p.m.) in the LA Opera’s production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto" starring Quinn Kelsey in the title role.