We’re taking a look at two versions of the Orpheus legend that were written about 100 years but stylistically lightyears apart on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/27 3:00 p.m.) with Franz Joseph Haydn’s “L’anima del filosofo ossia Orfeo ed Euridice” and Jacque Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld.”

We’re dusting off some English history on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/20 3:00 p.m.) through a work by Camille Saint-Saens, a live 1991 recording of his rarely performed “Henry VIII.” The libretto by Armand Silvestre and Leonce Detroyat looks at a small section of the infamous life of a man driven by ego, a thirst for power, and the overpowering need to have a male heir.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is the featured composer on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/13 3:00 p.m.) and his 1881 work based on a Russian folk legend. “The Snow Maiden” is an allegorical story dealing with the conflict of “eternal forces of nature” involving the interactions of humans, mythological characters, and those who are a combination of the two. It was said to have been Rimsky-Korsakov’s favorite opera.

Many don’t realize that Franz Joseph Haydn wrote operas because they all seemed to disappear when he died. However, on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/4 3:00 p.m.), we’ll hear one of them, number 11 of 13, in a lovely recording from 2009. “La fedleta premiata” (“Fidelity Rewarded”) was first performed in Hungary in 1781 to celebrating the reopening of the Eszterhaza theatre after it was destroyed by fire. The cast was reduced and most of the low comedy removed, and its new version was performed in 1782. It was a miracle of its day having been written for a “state-of-the-art” theatre that had the latest innovations in stage machinery which it fully used.

Families are wonderful things, until they’re not, and many of the most dysfunctional families have made to the stage. We’re looking at the beginnings of one of them on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/30 3:00 p.m.) with Gaetano Donizetti’s “Rosmonda D’ Inghilterra.”

Antonin Dvorak is the featured composer on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/23 3:00 p.m.), and it’s not “Rusalka”! Instead, we’re turning to his “pastoral comedy” entitled “Die Jakobiner” (“The Jacobin”). This intimate look at the relationship between a father and son which has been soured by false information and innuendo.

We’re featuring an American opera on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/16 3:00 p.m.) in Lori Laitman’s 2016 treatment of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” featuring a libretto by David Mason. Hawthorne’s 1850 novel is a moral allegory centering on Hester Prynne’s affair with the Reverend Dimmesdale, the birth of her illegitimate daughter, Pearl, and her strength and determination to make a life for them in the face of hatred and prejudice.

Join us for an afternoon of the music of Richard Strauss on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/9 3:00 p.m.) and his opera completed in 1940, “Die Liebe der Danae” (“The Love of Danae”). The opera is in three acts with the final act containing what Strauss considered to be some of his finest music.

“La Juive,” a tragic tale of religious intolerance by Fromental Halevy, will air on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/2 3:00 p.m.). Eugene Scribe wrote the libretto for this opera which became one of the most popular of the 19th century after its premier in Paris on 23 February 1835. It deals with the plight of Jews in Switzerland in the 15th century, particularly Rachel and her adoptive father Eleazar who are persecuted by the Catholic Church and are arrested after it is found that Rachel’s love Samuel is actually a Christian.

The name Ottorino Respighi probably brings to mind his three “Roman” pieces: Fountains of… (1916), Pines of… (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928). His nine operas are often overlooked, but on this week’s Sunday Opera (2/23 3:00 p.m.), we’re turning to one of his lush “late-Romantic” pieces that was completed in 1914 but not premiered until 2004 because of the intervention of the First World War. The work is “Marie Victoire” and follows the life of title character who narrowly escapes execution during the French Revolution only to have to fight for the life of her falsely accused husband.