Grand Opera

“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.

This week's opera is Meyerbeer's 1856 Work that looks at Peter the Great as he tries to win Catherine for his wife and includes all sorts of trials that are overcome for a happy ending.

This week's program features a "dream" cast for Ponchielli's "Gioconda" in a live recording from 1967. Renata Tebaldi is the street singer Giaconda, Carlo Bergonzi is the man she loves, Enzo, Marilyn Horne is the woman who is loved by Enzo, Laura, and Robert Merrill is the treacherous spy for the Inquisition, Barnaba.

This week's Sunday Opera is the 1813 Rossini work that looks at the "love triangle" surrounding Roman Emperor Aurelian, Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, and Persian Prince Arasce, Zenobia's love interest and protector. Rossini, the king of recycling, used quite a bit of the music found in this opera for later works like "The Barber of Seville."

Meyerbeer's 1836 grand opera is performed here by a stellar cast headed by Martina Arroyo, Joan Sutherland, and Anastasios Vrenios.

This program features a 2004 recording of one of the 39 operas of Rossini that has been pretty much forgotten. "Matilde di Shabran" is a love story of sorts which is filled with some wonderful music by Rossini and a complicated libretto that is an excellent example of its time.

Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” is better known in its versions by Rimsky-Korsakov (1896 & 1908) and the final version (for now) by Dmitriy Shostakovich (1940), but this week’s version is that of the original piece finished by Mussorgsky in 1869 which is closest to the drama by Pushkin, contains recitatives, a few scenes that have been highly altered, and is performed in one act.

Siegfried Wagner’s opera, “Die Heilige Linde,” a 1927 rarity, is the featured work on this week’s Sunday Opera (1/20 3:00 p.m.). His fourteenth of…

Ancient Babylon is the setting for this week’s Sunday Opera from OperaDelaware (12/2 3:00 p.m.) with Gioachiono Rossini’s last Italian opera, “Semiramide”…

The Lyric Opera of Chicago returns to the Sunday Opera (8/19 3:00 p.m.) with Hector Berlioz’s epic work “Les Troyens” for which he wrote the libretto…