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.
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We've combined a bit of silliness with calendar art for this week's program as we scheduled fifteen marches from a variety of sources (Broadway, Hollywood, television) to celebrate the month of March - even though none of the marches really have anything to do with the month.
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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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We're looking at fourteen songs from shows that opened in New York in March that span 112 years of musical theatre history from "The Pink Lady" to the revival of "Sweeney Todd."
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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 program is looking at four cast recordings that we purchased over the past 30 years or so and put away for "safe keeping." They recently surfaced when we cleaned (a little), and we thought we'd share them with you while we still knew where they were.
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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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We're completing our celebration of the stage life of Chita Rivera with songs from some of her later Broadway outings including "Kiss of the Spider Woman," "The Rink," "The Visit," and revivals of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" and "Nine."
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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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We lost Chita Rivera in January of last year, and with her death, we've lost one of the last bright lights from the Golden Age of the Broadway musical. This is the first of two programs looking at her six decade long career with songs from as many musicals as we have on recording.
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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."