We're off to Bavaria for a performance of Mozart's "Idomeneo" which features love, heroism, sacrifice, and a happy ending!

We’re off to Liege for this week’s Sunday Opera (9/1 3:00 p.m.) and the Opera Royal de Wallonie production of Antonin Dvorak’s “Rusalka.” This opera about the second most famous water nymph will be followed by more music of Dvorak including his "almost lost" Symphony No, 2.

We’re featuring one of the most often augmented operas on this week’s Sunday Opera (8/25 3:00 p.m.) when we turn to the La Scala production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Don Carlo.”

We're back in Paris this week for the Orchestre National de Paris' production of "Damnation of Faust" by Hector Berlioz. After the opera, we'll hear two more works by Berlioz, his autobiographical Symphonie Fantastique as well as its "sequel" "Lelio, or The Return to Life."

We're heading off to the Paris Opera for Marc Antoine Charpentier's tragic revenge opera "Medee" featuring Lea Desandre in the title role. We'll follow the opera with the ballet suite "The Sea" by Nikos Skalkottas.

We're concluding our time at the Royal Opera House with Strauss' revenge tragedy "Elektra" with Ausrine Stundyte in the title role. After the opera, we'll have two more Strauss works: "Ein Heldenleben" and the ballet score, "Schlagobers."

This week's opera comes from London's Royal Opera House and features the first opera in Wagner's "Ring Cycle," "Das Rheingold" featuring Christopher Purves as Alberich and Christopher Maltman as Wotan. The opera, performed in one 150 minute act, will be followed by more music featuring "northern" heroes (and an anti-hero) from Uumo Kalmi, Jean Sibelius, and Edvard Grieg,.

The Sunday Opera heads off to France for the Lille Opera production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" featuring Timothy Murray in the title role. After the opera, we'll sample three more treatments of the Don Juan legend.

This week's Sunday Opera begins with Purcell's setting of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as "The Fairy Queen" and is followed by three (and a bit) treatments of Shakespeare's "The Tempest finishing with Paul Moravec's Pulitzer Prize winning Tempest Fantasy.

This week's opera comes from Vienna once again and features Strauss' metaphysical opera about the otherworldly Empress who must achieve a shadow (a child) or she will die and her husband will turn to stone.