Michael Kownacky
Program HostMichael is program host and host of the WWFM Sunday Opera, Sundays at 3 pm, and co-host of The Dress Circle, Sundays at 7 pm.
You can also hear Michael, along with his The Dress Circle co-host, on JazzOn2, every Wednesday evening from 7pm, eastern, for Strike Up the Band, a program celebrating the big bands and dance bands of jazz.
-
We're surveying 116 years, between 1998 & 2024, of Broadway musical history as we look at a dozen of the shows that opened on Broadway this month.
-
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.
-
"Hello, Dolly!" was 60-years old on 1/16/24, so to celebrate it, we're playing most of the songs in the score from a variety of Broadway and foreign cast recordings.
-
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."
-
Since winters have been so strange for us in the east, we decided to revisit a program we've done in the past looking at winter weather through the musicals, so we'll hear songs about cold, ice, snow, and other things "winter" from sixteen musicals.
-
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.
-
We're celebrating the incredible talents of lyricist E.Y. Harburg through six of his Broadway musicals: "Finian's Rainbow," "Bloomer Girl," "Jamaica," "The Happiest Girl in the World," "Flahooley," and "Darling of the Day."
-
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.
-
We're spanning 137 years of Broadway musical history as we look at some of the shows that opened in New York in January. From 1887's "The Old Homestead" to this year's "Days of Wine and Roses," we've got 14 songs from a variety of wonderful sources.
-
We've scheduled a classic recording of Strauss' "Die Fledermaus" for our annual New Year's production. If features a stellar cast lead by Hilde Guden, Regina Resnik, and Waldemar Kmentt with special guests at Count Orlafsky's ball included Renata Tebaldi, Mario del Monaco, Theresa Berganza, Joan Sutherland, and many more,.