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Thursday February 9, 2012 at 10:00 AM
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera takes over the Radio 2 schedule from 12 noon through 6:00 (1:00-7:00 AT, 1:30-7:30 NT) as the Met's new Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage, reaches its cataclysmic climax. Will it be the One Ring to Rule Them All? Deborah Voigt stars as Brünnhilde and Jay Hunter Morris is Siegfried, the star-crossed lovers doomed by fate. Fabio Luisi conducts his first Met performances of Wagner's epic conclusion to the Ring tetralogy. Lepage's Ring production features a unique, technologically groundbreaking single set that can assume countless configurations and transform through video projections into the mythic locations specified by Wagner's stage directions. The premiere of the first opera, Das Rheingold, opened the Met's 2010-11 season; the new productions of Die Walküre and Siegfried followed in April and October 2011.
The distinguished company of Wagnerians also includes Hans-Peter König as Hagen, Waltraud Meier as Waltraute, Wendy Bryn Harmer as Gutrune, Iain Paterson as Gunther, and Eric Owens as Alberich; all singers but Paterson are making their house role debuts. Götterdämmerung will be heard live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network and will also be transmitted worldwide to more than 1,700 movie theaters in 54 countries as part of The Met: Live in HD series. The Met has published a synopsis as an online pdf if you'd like to catch up on the storyline. Some photos of the production can be found below.
The intermissions will include live backstage interviews, as well as the popular Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera Quiz, featuring soprano Angela Meade.
Oddly, it was Henry VIII who was head over heels in love with Anne Boleyn...but it was she who lost her head to him!
Gaetano Donizetti based his bel canto opera Anna Bolena around romantic entanglements in the English court. Anne Boleyn was the second wife of King Henry VIII, (called Enrico in the opera) and served as England's queen for just three years before being executed in May of 1536 on trumped up charges of treason and adultery. Though Anne lost the King's love to her handmaiden, Jane Seymour, her daughter would go on to become one of England's most powerful monarchs, Queen Elizabeth I.
The 2011-2012 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues with a live broadcast of Donizetti's Anna Bolena, starring Anna Netrebko in the tour-de-force title role. Marco Armiliato conducts the opera, a thrilling dramatization of Boleyn's final days (synopsis here) , which had its Met premiere on opening night of this season in a production by David McVicar. (The video below is excerpted from the Met's Live in HD broadcast seen earlier this season). The opera also stars Ekaterina Gubanova as Anna's romantic rival, Giovanna (Jane Seymour); Ildar Abdrazakov as the cruel Enrico (Henry VIII); Stephen Costello as Anna's first love, Lord Percy; and Tamara Mumford, (the pride of Taber, Alberta) who portrays the queen's devoted page Smeaton. Mumford is a graduate of the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and will also be heard next week in the role of the Rhinemaiden Flosshilde in this season's production of Wagner's Götterdämmerung.
The single intermission of Saturday's broadcast will include backstage interviews with the stars and a look ahead at the new production of Götterdämmerung.
And following the Met's broadcast, Saturday Afternoon at the Opera's host Bill Richardson will have more on all things operatic, including the Canadian Opera Company's production of Love from Afar, by Kaija Saariaho.
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, with host Bill Richardson, Saturday February 4, 2012, 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. (2:00 - 6:00 AT, 2:30 - 6:30 NT) on CBC Radio 2
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Thursday January 26, 2012 at 3:00 AM
"A shabby little shocker" is how the opera Tosca has been described. One French critic called it "...coarsely puerile, pretentious and vapid." Even the New York Times felt compelled to comment that "Puccini will do better with a better story." It's a tale that features torture, attempted assault and murder, and to this day audiences can't seem to get enough of it. Before there was C.S.I. or Law and Order SVU, there was Puccini's Tosca!
The 2011-2012 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues with a live broadcast of Puccini's Tosca, starring Patricia Racette as the fiery title character, Marcelo Álvarez as her lover, the idealistic Cavaradossi, and James Morris as the villain Scarpia. Finnish conductor Mikko Franck makes his Met debut with this season's performances of Tosca, and veteran bass Paul Plishka, whose distinguished Met career spans more than 40 years, sings the role of the Sacristan in his final Met performance.
Earlier this season, Plishka decided that this performance would be his farewell to the Met. Since his debut as a monk in Ponchielli's La Gioconda on September 21, 1967, he has sung more than 1,600 Met performances in 88 roles, including the title roles in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Verdi's Falstaff, Philip II in Don Carlo, and Leporello in Don Giovanni. During the first intermission, an onstage presentation will mark his final performance. The radio broadcast will carry this special moment as part of its intermission. You can find an online synopsis for Tosca courtesy of The Met.
The intermissions will also include backstage interviews with the stars and the popular Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera Quiz.
Following the Met opera broadcast, Bill Richardson has more on all things operatic, including the opening of Jake Heggie's Moby Dick with Calgary Opera, and how the latest members of COC's Ensemble Studio program were chosen.
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera with host Bill Richardson, Saturday January 28, 2012 - 1:00-5:00 p.m. (2:00-6:00 AT, 2:30 6:30 NT) on CBC Radio 2
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Thursday January 19, 2012 at 1:00 PM
Imagine spending your time surfing for music on iTunes and YouTube, seeking out hidden gems from the world of baroque opera. Now take the 24 hours worth of material you've found and reduce it to three hours in length. Add a storyline rooted in Shakespeare, cast your dream team of operatic stars and you have...The Enchanted Island. The 2011-2012 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues this week with a live broadcast of The Enchanted Island, a world premiere written and devised by theatre director and composer.
The Enchanted Island is the Met's contemporary take on the 18th-century tradition of operatic "pasticcios" (pastiches), in which music from various existing compositions was combined with a fresh libretto to create a new theatrical work. The tradition was particularly popular in London, where Handel was a prominent practitioner. The score for The Enchanted Island is pulled from a variety of Baroque operas, cantatas, and oratorios, including some by composers whose work has never been heard at the Met, such as Campra, Leclair, and Ferrandini.
Early music specialist William Christie conducts an extraordinary cast, in a story drawn from William Shakespeare's plays The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Joyce Di Donato stars as the sorceress Sycorax and David Daniels is her foe, the sorcerer Prospero. Plácido Domingo, on his 71st birthday, sings the role of Neptune, god of the seas. Danielle de Niese sings as the spirit Ariel and Luca Pisaroni portrays Sycorax's son, the wildman Caliban. The innovative stage production is by director Phelim McDermott, with associate director and set designer Julian Crouch. A synopsis (as a pdf) is also being distributed in conjunction with the Met's Live in HD broadcasts. The intermission will include backstage interviews with the stars, led by soprano Deborah Voigt, who hosts the Met's Live in HD transmission of the performance.
Following the Met's broadcast, host Bill Richardson speaks with Marc Abrahams, the father and master of ceremonies of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative - and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology - by recognizing achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. Along with the accolades the winners may be comically immortalized in a fleeting verse in a pastiche opera (much as we heard today from The Met. Read on for some photos from the production of The Enchanted Island.
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, with host Bill Richardson Saturday January 21, 2012, 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. (2:00-6:00 AT, 2:30 - 6:30 NT) on CBC Radio 2
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Thursday January 12, 2012 at 7:00 AM
She was nicknamed "La Stupenda" by the audiences at La Fenice, and the Australian-born Soprano Joan Sutherland certainly lived up to that moniker. Her voice had remarkable agility and beauty - a perfect fit to help lead the bel canto revival that took place in the mid-20th century. After her retirement from the operatic stage in 1990, Joan Sutherland's sunset years were spent relatively quietly at her home in the Swiss countryside, where she recounted her operatic life for biographer Norma Major (the wife of the former UK Prime Minister, John Major).
The 2011-2012 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season pays tribute this week to Joan Sutherland (who passed away October 10, 2010) with an archival broadcast of Vincenzo Bellini's opera Norma. The role of the Druid priestess Norma, one of the most difficult and rewarding in the soprano repertory, was a specialty of Sutherland's and one of her most acclaimed interpretations. The 1969-70 season, when this performance took place, was her first time singing the role at the Met. Mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne made her Met debut in this run of performances as Adalgisa, Norma's romantic rival. The collaboration between these two legendary artists was admired on opera stages around the globe - but this was the only production they performed together at the Metropolitan Opera. The run also featured tenor Carlo Bergonzi's first Met performances as Pollione, Norma's faithless lover, and the great Cesare Siepi in the role of Norma's father, the Druid chieftain Oroveso, The performance heard was originally broadcast live on April 4, 1970, and was conducted by Joan Sutherland's husband, Richard Bonynge.
During intermission we'll hear reminiscences from Richard Bonynge and Marilyn Horne, who were both interviewed in recent months, about the great partnership with Joan Sutherland and the excitement of performing Norma together at the Met.
And following the Met Opera, we'll examine Donna Leon's police commissioner Guido Brunneti and Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse as we take a look at how some authors incorporate opera into crime fiction.
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, with host Bill Richardson Saturday, January 14, 2011 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. (2:00 - 6:00 AT, 2:30 - 6:30 NT) on CBC Radio 2
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Thursday January 5, 2012 at 3:00 AM
You are wandering the woods with your sister, and you are frightened, tired and hungry. As you lay your head down to sleep, what do dream of? A banquet of course, delivered by fourteen portly chefs!
Humperdinck's opera Hansel and Gretel is based on the tale by the Brothers Grimm, and as the siblings wander into the forest in search of strawberries, they narrowly escape the clutches of an evil witch.
The folk-inspired score includes the famous "Evening Prayer," in which the children, alone in the forest, ask for fourteen angels to guard them as they sleep. The opera has been associated with the holiday season ever since its premiere on December 23, 1893. In 1931, a live Christmas Day broadcast of Hansel and Gretel inaugurated the series of Met matinee radio broadcasts that continues to this day.
The Met's Hansel and Gretel (here's a link to the synopsis) will be heard live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network starring Alice Coote and Aleksandra Kurzak as the adventurous siblings. Tenor Robert Brubaker is the witch who plots to turn the children into gingerbread, and Michaela Martens and Dwayne Croft are their parents. Rising British conductor Robin Ticciati, who will become music director of the Glyndebourne Festival in 2014, makes his Met debut with this production.
Earlier this year, Bill Richardson spoke with the British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote (who has said she'll hang up Hansel's Lederhosen after this performance), when she was in Toronto to perform with the COC in Ariadne auf Naxos.
Earlier this season Bill Richardson had a chance to speak with mezzo soprano Alice Coote when she appeared with the COC in Ariadne auf Naxos, by Richard Strauss. You can listen to the Alice Coote interview here.
And following the Met's broadcast, we'll feature some other fairytale-inspired works including The Juniper Tree, by Philip Glass.
Please continue reading to see a few photos from this week's production, Hansel and Gretel.
Posted by Matthew Baird on
Thursday December 29, 2011 at 12:10 PM
1951 was quite a year, as this news reel of world events from 1951 shows. In 1951 the average cost of a new car was $1500.00. Bacon sold for 53 cents a pound and gasoline went for 19 cents a gallon. I Love Lucy was the top show on television, and at the Metropolitan Opera Risë Stevens (seen right), Marguerite Piazza and Patrice Munsel were the leading "ladies" in the comic operetta Die Fledermaus. For this New Year's Eve, the Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network turns the clock back 60 years for a matinee broadcast from January 20, 1951.
DIE FLEDERMAUS was written by The Waltz King, Johann Strauss II, and its story of a masquerade ball and philandering husbands make this popular Operetta appropriate as a New Year's tradition. It abounds with melodies (including Adele's "Laughing Song") and plentiful comic encounters. There's even a cameo by Jack Gilford (of Cracker Jack fame) as Frosch the jailer.
Following the Met performance, Saturday Afternoon at the Opera host Bill Richardson has more on all things operatic, including a look at opera as depicted in crime fiction.
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, with host Bill Richardson Saturday December 31, 2011, 11:00 - 5:00 p.m. ET ( 6:00-6:00 AT, 2:30-6:30 NT) on CBC Radio 2
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Thursday December 22, 2011 at 10:05 AM
Marie just might be the original army brat. Orphaned as an infant, she was raised by Sergeant Sulpice and his fellow French soldiers of the "Glorious 21st Regiment."
Though she loves them all with patriotic fervour, her heart has fallen for a civilian, Tonio, instead of a soldier. Not only that, but he's a Tyrolean, and therefore an enemy of France! As other facts filter in about Marie's real parents, her life is turned topsy-turvy!
Gaetano Donizetti's comic opera La Fille du Régiment is full of surprises, loads of laughter, some very athletic bel canto singing, including the show-stopping tenor aria "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!," with its nine high Cs.
The 2011-2012 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues with this live production (note the early start time of 12:00 ET), starring the Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze as the tomboy Marie, and American tenor Lawrence Brownlee as her love, Tonio. Canadian conductor Yves Abel will lead the comedy, seen in Laurent Pelly's light-hearted staging. Mezzo-soprano Ann Murray will make her Met role debut as the befuddled Marquise of Berkenfield, with Maurizio Muraro as Sergeant Sulpice, and Kiri Te Kanawa reprises her cameo turn as the Duchess of Krakenthorp.
The single intermission will include backstage interviews with the stars. Visit the Met Opera site for a detailed synopsis, as well as cast lists and features. Below is a taste of Laurent Pelly's production, as seen with Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez from The Met's Live in HD series, followed by photos of the stars of the current production
Following the Met's broadcast, Saturday Afternoon at the Opera host Bill Richardson shares some operatic choices for the Twelve Days of Christmas, in the form of favourite recordings.
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, with host Bill Richardson Saturday December 24, 2011, 12:00 - 4:00 p.m. ET ( 1:00-5:00 AT, 1:30 5:30 NT) on CBC Radio 2 (pre-empting "In Tune" and followed by the 2-hour special "A Very Deep Roots Christmas")
Posted by Matthew Baird on
Thursday December 15, 2011 at 3:11 AM
Puccini's much-loved opera Madama Butterfly is a guaranteed three-hanky tearjerker. If it doesn't move your emotions, you'd be a fine candidate to portray Scrooge or The Grinch in a local theatrical production. The score contains some of opera's most poignant music, including Butterfly's famous aria Un bel di (One Fine Day), the flower duet (with her maid Suzuki) and a soaring Act 1 love scene (with Lt. Pinkerton) that is the embodiment of bliss. It all unravels in the second half of course, but I don't think that's giving away too much of the plot!
The 2011-2012 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues this week with a live broadcast of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, starring the Chinese-Canadian soprano Liping Zhang, in her network broadcast debut. Zhang sings the title role of Cio-Cio San (aka Madama Butterfly), the young Japanese bride whose marriage to an American naval officer leads to devastating tragedy. Tenor Robert Dean Smith stars opposite her as Lieutenant Pinkerton, with Luca Salsi as the American consul, Sharpless, and Maria Zifchak as Suzuki; Plácido Domingo conducts the performance, which is presented in the late Anthony Minghella's critically acclaimed staging.
You'll find a synopsis for Madama Butterfly and further details at The Metropolitan Opera website. The intermissions will include backstage interviews and the popular Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera Quiz featuring special guest, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who will sing the role of Sycorax in The Enchanted Island.
The visually stunning Anthony Minghella production of Madama Butterfly has previously been broadcast in the Met's Live in HD series. View the trailer from that earlier performance (starring Patricia Racette and Marcello Giordano) to see some of the Michael Levine's sets, Han Fang's costumes and Blind Summit Theater's puppetry as featured in the performances.
Following the Met's broadcast, SAATO host Bill Richardson speaks with violinist Les Dreyer, a retired 46-season veteran of the Met Opera Orchestra, who has performed Madama Butterfly countless times. He speaks amusingly about life in the pit and on the road, and about playing chess with Luciano Pavrotti.
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, with host Bill Richardson Saturday December 17, 2011, 1:00 - 5:00 p.m., on CBC Radio 2
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Wednesday December 7, 2011 at 12:31 PM
An aging scientist who has it all - wealth, knowledge and power - trades it for a chance to revisit his youth, and a love he lost. But at what cost? The Devil is the dealer in a high stakes game involving souls in the 19th-century French opera Faust, by Charles Gounod.
This Saturday, tenor Jonas Kaufmann stars in the Metropolitan Opera production, alongside bass René Pape as Méphistophélès and soprano Marina Poplavskaya as the enchanting object of Faust's affections, Marguerite. Gounod's opera has been a staple of the Met's repertory since 1883, when it was the first opera ever presented at the old Metropolitan Opera House. There is plenty of Canadian content too, with Yannick Nézéet Séguin conducting the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, French-Canadian mezzo-soprano Michèle Losier singing the role of student Siébel and Russell Braun portraying Marguerite's soldier brother, Valentin.
Home to the famous "Live at The Met" broadcasts, plus fine opera productions from opera houses and festivals in Canada and around the world. Includes artist interviews and the latest opera recordings, presented by host Bill Richardson.
CBC is the broadcast partner of the Canadian Opera Company. The presentation of the Canadian Opera Company's 2010-2011 season on Saturday Afternoon at the Opera is a production of the Canadian Opera Company.
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera takes over the Radio 2 schedule from 12 noon through 6:00 (1:00-7:00 AT, 1:30-7:30 NT) as the Met's new Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage, reaches its cataclysmic climax. Will it be the One Ring to Rule Them All? Deborah Voigt stars as Brünnhilde and Jay Hunter Morris is Siegfried, the star-crossed lovers doomed by fate. Fabio Luisi conducts his first Met performances of Wagner's epic conclusion to the Ring tetralogy. Lepage's Ring production features a unique, technologically groundbreaking single set that can assume countless configurations and transform through video projections into the mythic locations specified by Wagner's stage directions. The premiere of the first opera, Das Rheingold, opened the Met's 2010-11 season; the new productions of Die Walküre and Siegfried followed in April and October 2011.
