Upcoming and Noteworthy

LA Opera on Air begins a three opera series featuring Beaumarchais’ best-known character, Figaro, on this week’s Sunday Opera (8/20 3:00 p.m.) with Gioachino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.”  Our Figaro in this production is Rodion Pogossov, and the couple he helps to find true love (for now), Count Almaviva and Rosina, are performed by Rene Barbera and Elizabeth DeShong.  Rosina’s peevish and somewhat lascivious guardian, Doctor Bartolo, is sung by LA favorite, Kristinn Sigmundsson.  After the opera, please join host Michael Kownacky for more music by Rossini, his Cantata in Honor of Pop

The Dress Circle will be taking a second look at the Smithsonian American Songbook CD series on this week’s program (8/20 7:00 p.m.).  This time, our composers include Duke Ellington, Kurt Weill, Richard Whiting, and Harold Arlen and will include performances by Rosemary Clooney, Dick Powell, Mildred Bailey, Bobby Short, Alice Faye, Nat King Cole, Ethel Merman, and Pearl Bailey along with several others.  Join us for an hour of delightfully nostalgic songs performed by some of the best singers of the 20th century.  

Jacques Offenbach’s charming setting of stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann will be on air for this week’s Sunday Opera (8/13 – 3:00 p.m.).  This performance from the Los Angeles Opera stars Vittorio Grigolo in as Hoffmann and Kate Lindsey as Nicklausse and The Muse of Poetry.  Nicolas Teste appears as the four foils in Hoffmann’s life, Lindorf, Coppelius,  Dapertutto, and Dr.

A ”songbook” of the Broadway works by Frank Wildhorn will air this Sunday (8/13 - 7:oo p.m.) on The Dress Circle.  Broadway audiences first heard the music of Wildhorn in 1997 when he added three songs, with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, to the stage version of “Victor/Victoria” after the death of Henry Mancini.  Within two years, his first complete show and biggest hit “Jekyll & Hyde,” with book and lyrics by Bricusse, would be the talk of Broadway and go on to run for 1543 performances.

To borrow a few lines from the musicals, “It’s too darn hot,” “We’re having a heat wave,” and “Ain’t it awful the heat; ain’t it awful?” which is why there are so few Broadway openings in the months of July and August: It was simply too hot for both cast and audience.  Shows closed for the summer or moved to a “summer home” somewhere in the country until the heat broke.  Shows were even performed in mostly open-air spaces on rooftops to “beat the heat.”  Because there were fewer shows during the sumer, we combine the openings from July and August so that we can still feature a varied menu o

Our Sunday Opera continues from LA Opera on Air this week (8/6 – 3:00 p.m.) with Giuseppe Verdi’s tenth opera from 1847 “Macbeth.”  With a libretto based on the Shakespeare original by Francesco Maria Piave and Andrea Maffei, the tale of unbridled ambition features Placido Domingo in the title role.  As his Lady, you’ll hear Ekaterina Semenchuk, and the Banquo, Macduff, and Malcolm are Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, Arturo Chacon-Cruz, and Josh Wheeker.  James Conlon conducts the Los Angeles Opera Chorus and Orchestra.  The afternoon continues with more Macbeths when Michael Kownacky will include

The late South African tenor Johan Bohta excels in the title role in Wagner’s “Tannhauser” in this week’s Sunday Opera (7/30 3:00 p.m.).  This 2015 performance from the Lyric Opera of Chicago which follows the poet / knight Tannhauser’s struggle between the love of the worldly pleasures in abundance in Venusberg and the emotional love he finds with Elisabeth also includes Amber Wagner as Elisabeth, Michaela Schuster as the jealous Venus, Gerald Finley as another poet Wolfram, and John Relyea as Elisabeth’s uncle Landgraf.  Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Lyric Opera of Chicago Chorus and Orch