Somehow, Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo had a son, and he’s the central figure in this week’s Sunday Opera (3/31 3:00 p.m.) in Nancy Van De Vate’s “Nemo Beyond Vulcania.” With a libretto by Van De Vate and Alan Cortes, the story uses Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” as a starting point where Nemo’s grown son is torn between his loyalty to his father’s ideals of living in a world of men to do good works or to share his life with a woman. The cast includes Zoltan Korda, Marek Oldbrzmek, Adriana Hlavsova, Andrea Kotulanova, Jiri Klecker, and Tomas Badura. Toshiuki Shimada conducts the Ars Brunensis Chorus and the Moravian Philharmonic.
After “Nemo,” host Michael Kownacky continues the theme of problematic relationships with Daniel Catan’s operatic version of the Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” about a student who falls in love with a young lady who is the poisonous product of her father’s experiments. To round out the program, we’ll hear a bit more music of Van De Vate’s, her “Songs for the Four Parts of the Night.”
