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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,.
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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.
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It took 80 years for Zemlinsky's fairy tale opera to be performed after it was suppressed by an unscrupulous conductor. Gorge is a dreamer who dreams of a better life that comes true for a happy ending.
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This week's opera is Humperdinck's 1875 "fairytale" opera about a Goose-Girl who is in the control of a witch, but when that spell is broken, she doesn't live happily ever after even though she has found the love of a prince.
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Most people associate Dvorak with his opera "Rusalka," but he wrote nine other operas, and on this week's program, we'll be listening to the third opera he wrote about the 8th century Polish princess named Vanda who saved Poland from a German invasion.
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This week's program features two English operas by one of Michael's favorite composers, Edward German. They are "Merrie England" which is a historical fantasy surrounding Elizabeth I of England, and the second is "Tom Jones" which is based on the novel by Henry Fielding.
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Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt each only wrote one opera, and we're showcasing excellent recordings of each on this week's Sunday Opera. Schumann's "Genoveva" is based on the life of Genevieve of Brabant, and Liszt's "Don Sanche, ou Le chateau de l'amour" ("Don Sanche, or The Castle of Love") was reportedly written by Liszt when he was 13 and features Don Sanche's love for Elzire and how a wizard named Alidor who lives in the "Castle of Love" helps him win hers.
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This week's wonderful comedy from Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari is based on a play by Italian genius Carlo Goldoni and comes to us from a live 2007 recording made at La Fenice in Venice.
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This week's Sunday Opera features two lesser-known works by Sergei Prokofiev. The first is a comic opera entitled "Betrothal in a Monastery," and the second is the short "Maddalena."
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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."