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.
-
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.
-
Tchaikovsky is best known in operatic circles mostly for three of his eleven operas: “Eugene Onegin,” “Mazeppa,” and “The Queen of Spades.” You’ve heard “Cherevichki,” “Vakula the Smith,” and “The Enchantress” on the Sunday Opera, but on this week’s program (3/24 3:00 p.m.), we’re turning to his second existing opera, “The Oprichnik” from 1874, and it’s hopefully another work with which you aren’t that familiar.
-
Everyone needs a little fantasy from time to time, and on this week’s Sunday Opera (5/17 2026), we’ve got some in the guise of a libretto by Siegfried Wagner for his opera “an allem ist Hutchen Schuld!” (“Everything Is Little-Hat’s Fault!”). This fairytale opera about an invisible, mischievous goblin named “Little-Hat” or “Hattie,” was cobbled together from a number of the stories of The Brothers Grimm with a little Hans Christian Anderson thrown in.
-
We’re turning to two of Richard Strauss’ lesser-known one-act operas on this week’s Sunday Opera (5/10 3:00 p.m.): “Daphne” and “Feuersnot” (“The Need for Fire” or “Lack of Fire”).
-
We’re going for Baroque again on this week’s Sunday Opera (5/3 3:00 p.m.) with a forgotten opera that is finally getting some much deserved recognition: Leonard Vinci’s “Artaserse,” an opera that premiered in Rome in 1730.
-
Beethoven is probably the best known composer of one-and-done when it comes to operas. However, there were others, and on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/26 3:00 p.m.), we’re focusing on one of those: Robert Schumann’s 1850 work “Genoveva" based loosely on an event in the life of Genevieve de Brabant.
-
Franz Schreker was another composer whose work was censured because of the rise in anti-Semitism in Germany in the early 1930’s, and he went from being hailed as the future of German opera to obscurity. We’ll celebrate the music of Schreker which is said to be a lush mixture of Romanticism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Impressionism, and Expressionism on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/19 3:00 p.m.).