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 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.
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This week's Sunday Opera is the 1813 Rossini work that looks at the "love triangle" surrounding Roman Emperor Aurelian, Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, and Persian Prince Arasce, Zenobia's love interest and protector. Rossini, the king of recycling, used quite a bit of the music found in this opera for later works like "The Barber of Seville."
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The Sunday Opera: Anton Urspruch's "Das Unmoglichste von Allem" ("The Most Impossible Thing of All")This week's program is a long-forgotten 1897 opera "Das Unmoglichste von Allem" ("The Most Impossible Thing of All") by a sadly forgotten late-Romantic era German composer, Anton Urspruch.
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Today's opera is Rameau's second "dance opera" which premiered in 1739. "Les fetes d'Hebe" begins with Cupid helping Hebe escape the machinations of Momus, and they travel to the banks of the Seine to witness three pageants based on Poetry, Music, and Dance. After the opera, we'll hear a performance of the first version of the second act of the opera as well as a ballet written by the 19 year old Vladimir Dukelsky whom Broadway audiences know as Vernon Duke.