WWFM Sunday Opera with Michael Kownacky
Sundays at 3 pm
Enjoy world-class productions from the world of opera featuring the great singers past and present performing in the world's great opera houses.
Paul Moravec & Mark Campbell's "Light Shall Lift Us"
Here is the link to the video presentation of "Light Shall Lift Us: Opera Singers Unite in Song"
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Today's piece comes form the Music of the Baroque and features Handel's oratorio about the biblical general "Jephtha" who leads the Israelites to freedom from the Ammonites, but promises a sacrifice to God of the first living creature he sees if he's victorious, Unfortunately, that turns out to be his loving daughter Iphis who happily runs out to greet her father as soon as she sees him.
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This weeks' Sunday Opera is actually two one-act operas by George Benjamin followed by a grand ballet, We'll begin with "Picture a Day Like This" followed by a retelling of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" entitled "Into the Little Hill." After the opera, we turn to Prokofiev and his delightful ballet "Cinderella."
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We're staying at Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts this week for Puccini's "Wild West" opera, "La Fanciulla del West." After the opera, we'll fill the afternoon with more music inspired by "the west" from composers like Meredith Willson and Antonin Dvorak.
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We're back at the NCPA again this week for Gaetano Donizetti's wonderful romantic comedy "La Fille du Regiment." After the opera, we'll have more music of Donizetti including the first opera he wrote, "Il Pigmalione."
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This next installment from the NCPA is the first Chinese opera written in the style of a western opera. Based on the interactions of the lives of four people traveling on China's Grand Canal including a variety of styles like bel canto, singspiel, traditional Chinese opera performances, and more.
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We're in Beijing for this week's Sunday Opera and Richard Wagner's fabled battle of sacred and profane love, "Tannhauser." After the opera, we'll have music by Siegfried Wagner to fill out the afternoon.
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This week's opera once again comes to us from Barcelona and the Gran Teatre del Liceau Opera. Very loosely based on fact, the opera charts the rise of Poppea to the position of Nero's wife and Empress.
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This week's Sunday Opera comes from Barcelona and features a production from 2016 of Massenet's "Manon" about the naive young woman who goes astray which results in her untimely death.
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The Sunday Opera is off to Belgium and the Opera Royal de Wallonie's production of Bellini's "La Sonnambula" where the sleepwalking of a young mountain girl causes a series of problems that happily get worked out in the end.
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This week's opera is a production of Benjamin Britten's adaptation of Henry James' "Turn of the Screw" where a British Governess fights two malicious spirits who have come back for the souls of her charges.