A romantic comedy is just what is needed now, and we have one on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/22 3:00 p.m.) with Carl Nielsen’s “Maskarade” in a recording from 1996. Leander (Gert-Henning Jensen) and Leonora (Henriette Bonde-Hansen) fall in love at a masquerade ball, swear their undying love, and exchange rings forgetting that they have each been promised in marriage to others whom they’ve never met. Of course, as often happens in these things, they are really betrothed to each other. When their fathers, Jeronimous (Aage Haugland) and Leonard (Kurt Ravn) find out that their children have fallen in love not knowing that it’s actually what the fathers wanted, it only adds to the confusion.
The cast also includes Bo Skovhus, Susanne Resmark, Michael Kristensen, and Marianne Rorholm, and Ulf Schirmer conducts the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. We’ll conclude the afternoon with a piece that’s “back by popular demand,” Nielsen’s incidental music for a five-act fantasy production of “Aladdin” with vocal solos by Mette Ejsing and Guido Paevatalu who are joined by the Danish National Radio Chamber Choir and Symphony Orchestra with Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducting.
