opera

Jakob Beer is the featured composer on this week’s Sunday Opera (6/7 3:00 p.m.) and his forgotten 1824 work entitled “Il crociato in Egitto” (“The Crusader in Egypt”). Of course, the composer is Giacomo Meyerbeer who penned some 16 operas, and “Egitto” is his twelfth opera, the last of what is labeled his “Italian operas.”

Tchaikovsky is best known in operatic circles mostly for three of his eleven operas: “Eugene Onegin,” “Mazeppa,” and “The Queen of Spades.” You’ve heard “Cherevichki,” “Vakula the Smith,” and “The Enchantress” on the Sunday Opera, but on this week’s program (3/24 3:00 p.m.), we’re turning to his second existing opera, “The Oprichnik” from 1874, and it’s hopefully another work with which you aren’t that familiar.

We’re turning to two of Richard Strauss’ lesser-known one-act operas on this week’s Sunday Opera (5/10 3:00 p.m.): “Daphne” and “Feuersnot” (“The Need for Fire” or “Lack of Fire”).

We’re going for Baroque again on this week’s Sunday Opera (5/3 3:00 p.m.) with a forgotten opera that is finally getting some much deserved recognition: Leonard Vinci’s “Artaserse,” an opera that premiered in Rome in 1730.

Beethoven is probably the best known composer of one-and-done when it comes to operas. However, there were others, and on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/26 3:00 p.m.), we’re focusing on one of those: Robert Schumann’s 1850 work “Genoveva" based loosely on an event in the life of Genevieve de Brabant.

Franz Schreker was another composer whose work was censured because of the rise in anti-Semitism in Germany in the early 1930’s, and he went from being hailed as the future of German opera to obscurity. We’ll celebrate the music of Schreker which is said to be a lush mixture of Romanticism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Impressionism, and Expressionism on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/19 3:00 p.m.).

This week’s Sunday Opera (4/12 3:00 p.m.) is turning to the work of a mostly forgotten Czech composer, Pavel Haas through his only opera, written in 1936, “Sarlatan,” “The Charlatan.”

The source material for this week’s Sunday Opera (3/29 3:00 p.m.) has been used in well over 70 different projects. In the past, we heard one treatment by Giovanni Simone Mayr in his opera “Ginevra di Scozia,” but this time, we’re turning to one of Handel’s “Italian operas” that he wrote for London in 1735, “Ariodante.” Our recording comes from 1978 and features a stellar cast in this opera that is a tale of love, betrayal, and redemption, and it explores themes of jealousy, deception, and the triumph of good over evil.

We’re turning to a 19th century opera from the British Isles, and it’s not by Gilbert and Sullivan, on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/22 3:00 p.m.).This time, it’s by Irish composer William Vincent Wallace, and it’s the story of the water Nymph Lurline and her love for the mortal Count Rupert.

Desire versus reality on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/15 3:00 p.m.) as we look to a 1938 work by Bohuslav Martinu that was based on a French surrealist play by Georges Neveux entitled “Juliette, or the Key of Dreams.” “Julietta” is the object of desire of a travelling bookseller, and he travels to the world of dreams to find her, even though he’s never seen her. He’s just heard her singing.