Upcoming and Noteworthy

Pianist Steven Spooner in music and conversation this Friday (11/14, rebroadcast Saturday 11/15).

We’re off to the Bayreuth Festival on this week’s Sunday Opera (11/16 3:00 p.m.) for the first of three works by Wagner: “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg" which is about a 16th-century singing contest in Nuremberg where young knight Walther von Stolzing (Michael Spyres) hopes to win the hand of Eva Pogner (Christina Nilsson).

BECAUSE OF THE LENGTH OF THIS WEEK’S SUNDAY OPERA, THE DRESS CIRCLE WILL BEGIN ONE HOUR LATER THAN USUAL AT 8:00 P.M. (ET). As promised, we’re back with more Literary Based Musicals on this week’s Dress Circle (11/16 8:00 p.m.), Once again, we’ve focused on four novels as source material realized in fourteen songs from six different recordings.

The final episode in seven programs devoted to the complete Chopin Mazurkas, this Friday (11/7 at 3 pm, rebroadcast Saturday 11/8 at 6 pm).

The Sunday Opera will be traveling to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) this week (11/09 3:00 p.m.) with George Bizet’s “Les pecheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers)” in a production from the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

We’re starting a series on this week’s Dress Circle (11/9 7:00 p.m.). (We hope.) with four musicals that were based on literary originals. Three novels and a play are the basis for this week’s playlist that begins with songs from “The Color Purple" and includes songs from a variety of sources for "Little Women," "Mary Poppins," and "Peter Pan."

The sixth of seven programs devoted to the complete Chopin Mazurkas, this Friday (10/31 at 3 pm, rebroadcast Saturday 11/1 at 6 pm).

We’re showcasing another relatively forgotten opera on this week’s Sunday Opera (11/2 7:00 p.m.) but one that was incredibly popular when it premiered in 1900. About the only thing that’s remembered about Gustav Charpentier’s “Louise” is one aria for the title character titled “Depuis le jour” that appears on many operatic collections and concerts. This production comes from the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

We did our best to catalogue musicals that opened in New York for which some sort of recordings are available. November’s list has over 200 openings, and on this week’s Dress Circle (11/2 7:00 p.m.), we’re going to be sampling selections from a dozen of those shows spanning 131 years of Broadway history.

The fifth of seven programs devoted to the complete Chopin Mazurkas, this Friday (10/24 at 3 pm, rebroadcast Saturday 10/25 at 6 pm).