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"
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This week's program features a "dream" cast for Ponchielli's "Gioconda" in a live recording from 1967. Renata Tebaldi is the street singer Giaconda, Carlo Bergonzi is the man she loves, Enzo, Marilyn Horne is the woman who is loved by Enzo, Laura, and Robert Merrill is the treacherous spy for the Inquisition, Barnaba.
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This week's Sunday Opera feature Thomas' adaptation of Shakespeare's masterwork, but this one has a moderately happy ending. The opera features Thomas Hampson, June Anderson, and Samuel Ramey. After the opera, we'll hear Thomas' String Quartet No. 1 in E.
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This week's wonderful comedy from Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari is based on a play by Italian genius Carlo Goldoni and comes to us from a live 2007 recording made at La Fenice in Venice.
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Hans Pfitzner is all but forgotten in the United States, but his operas are still performed in Europe, and you've already heard one of his works on the Sunday Opera during Christmases past - "Das Christ-Elflein." This week, we're looking at his most successful opera, "Palestrina" which is loosely based on the life and musical importance of the 16th century Italian composer who ensured the use of polyphonic music in the Catholic church.
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This week's opera is one of the finest representatives of French Baroque, Charpentier's "Medee" with a stellar cast headed by Lorraine Hunt and Mark Padmore. The recording is from 1994 & 1995.
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This week's program is about two tricksters. The first is from Haydn's forgotten 1777 comedy "The World on the Moon," and the second is the ballet by Sibelius about Scaramouche which has a tragic ending.
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Most people know Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots," but today's opera is another based on historical 'fact" in his 1849 work "Les Prophete" which centers on the Dutch Anabaptist revolt and the turmoil surrounding John of Leiden and his power grab in declaring himself "Emperor" of Munster with all of the tragedy that follows.
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This week's Sunday Opera features two lesser-known works by Sergei Prokofiev. The first is a comic opera entitled "Betrothal in a Monastery," and the second is the short "Maddalena."
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This week's opera is Korngold's 1927 allegorical opera about Heliane, the wife of a tyrant who finds a love that magically overthrows her husband and teleports her to a new life.