Join us at the Glyndebourne Festival this week on the Sunday Opera (8/2 3:00 p.m.) for a perennial favorite, Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” which is subtitled “the Mad Day” or “the Day of Follies.”

We’re back at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden for this week’s Sunday Opera (7/26 3:00 p.m.) and Modest Mussorgsky’s only completed opera “Boris Godunov” which had its world premiere in 1871 after being rejected in 1870 because it had no female roles. Mussorgsky rewrote the opera, and when it was staged, it used the recycled sets and costumes from Pushkin’s play (written in blank verse) which had premiered in 1870.

We’re off to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden on this week’s Sunday Opera (7/19 3:00 p.m.) and their 2025 production of Leos Janacek’s “The Makropulos Affair” or “The Makropulos Case” or “The Makropulos Case,” or “The Makropulos Thing” (a direct translation from the play by Karel Capek on which it is based). It was composed between 1923 and 1925 and had its world premiere at the National Theatre in Brno in 1926.

This week’s Sunday Opera (7/12 3:00 p.m.) heads off to the Paris Opera for one of the world’s favorite operas, “Aida” by Giuseppe Verdi. With a libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, it was initially commissioned by the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo for an 1871 premiere. Quickly becoming an audience favorite, the opera has played around the world and has even played over 1,100 performances at the Metropolitan Opera since its debut in 1886.

We’re off to the Paris Opera for this week’s Sunday Opera (7/5 3:00 p.m.) and a production of one of Handel’s Italian operas “Ariodante” from September of 2025. The source material for “Ariodante” has been used in well over 70 different projects. In the past, we heard one treatment by Giovanni Simone Mayr on the Sunday Opera in his opera “Ginevra di Scozia.” “Ariodante” is a tale of love, betrayal, and redemption, and it explores themes of jealousy, deception, and the triumph of good over evil.

Milan’s La Scala is our destination for this week’s Sunday Opera (6/28 3:00 p.m.) and their recent production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” a 1934 opera based on the 1865 novella “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District: by Nikolai Leskov with a libretto by the composer and Alexander Preis.

Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio,” is the centerpiece of this week’s all-Beethoven Sunday Opera (6/21 3:00 p.m.) in a production from the Vienna State Opera with Maylim Bystrom in the titular role.

Most people have heard selections form Bedrich Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride,” but this week’s Sunday Opera (6/14 3:00 p.m.) will give listeners the change to enjoy the entire work in a live performance from the Vienna State Opera.

Jakob Beer is the featured composer on this week’s Sunday Opera (6/7 3:00 p.m.) and his forgotten 1824 work entitled “Il crociato in Egitto” (“The Crusader in Egypt”). Of course, the composer is Giacomo Meyerbeer who penned some 16 operas, and “Egitto” is his twelfth opera, the last of what is labeled his “Italian operas.”

We’re featuring the music of Jules Massenet on this week’s Sunday Opera (5/31 3:00 p.m.) with two of his operas: the beautifully atmospheric “Thais,” and the dramatic “Therese,” both with stellar casts.