• SUNDAY FEBRUARY 6TH Rossini, Matilde di Shabran Gioacchino Rossini is known to posterity through only one opera, his immortal "Barber of Seville," which has remained in the international standard repertoire ever since its premiere in 1816. Il Barbiere di Sivigilia is a comic opera- an opera buffa the Italians call it- and it's the finest example of the genre. Akin to the opera buffa was the subgenre of opera semiseria, which combined comic elements with a serious plot leading up to a happy ending. Rossini was a master of the opera semiseria. He wrote several such works, The best known one he composed immediately after he finished the score of his "Barber:" La Gazza Ladra or "The Thieving Magpie"(1817). It has occasionally been recorded. I have presented "The Magpie" in two different recordings on several Sundays going as far back as 1991 and as recently as 2015. There are yearly Rossini festivals in Pesaro, the composer's birthplace, and Wildbad in Southwestern Germany. The world premiere recording of the opera semiseria Matilde di Shabran (1821) was made at the 31st Rossini in Wildbad Festival in 2019. The Naxos label issued it on three CD's in 2020. Jose Perez-Sierra conducts the Passionart Orchestra of Cracow and the Gorecki Chamber Choir, both distinguished Polish musical organizations. The solo singing cast is truly international. Matilde di Shabran is more comic than serious because its plot is frankly ridiculous. Rossini was hard pressed to finish the score of Matilde in time for its premiere in Rome, so he got his young colleague Giovanni Pacini (1796-1867) to fill in five numbers in act two. Pacini's music is interpolated perfectly into Rossini's overall operatic fabric. Matilde di Shabran was recorded live in performance with some audible audience and stage noise. By the sound of the applause, the audience was delighted with this opera, and I hope you will be ,too. Listen carefully to Isidoro's cavatina in act one for melodic echoes of Figaro.
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• SUNDAY FEBRUARY 13TH Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, Acts One and Two The problem with broadcasting the operas of Richard Wagner is that so many of them are too long in duration to fit my three-and-a-half hour timeslot. Although I hate to violate the integrity of a complete recorded performance, the only wayI can accommodate Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (1865) is to break up my presentation into two parts over two consecutive Sundays. So this Sunday you will hear the first two of the three acts of this monumental music drama. The story of the illicit love of the warrior Tristan for the princess Isolde is one of the alltime great stories of tragic passion, the tale derived from medieval courtly romance and ultimately from ancient Celtic legend. As with all his other operas, Wagner wrote his own libretto for Tristan und Isolde; his take on the story is underlain with music that expresses uninhibited erotic desire so intense it borders on an ecstasy of pain. The opera climaxes with the mortally wounded Tristan's Liebestod or "love death," which amounts to coitus interruptus. Wagner's nuanced handling of the lovers' emotions makes this opera an enduring, iconic work of musical art. This work requires singers of enormous stamina and skill to carry it off convincingly. In recorded operatic history there is a cadre of famous sopranos who successfully essayed the role of Isolde. One of them was the Norwegian Kirsten Flagstad. Her legendary voice was captured opposite Heldentenor Ludwig Suthaus as Tristan in a landmark 1952 monaural recording with Wilhelm Furtwangler conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra of London and the chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. I have broadcast the now historic EMI recording on two occasions, way back in 1986 and again in 2017, making use of the old 4 LP Angel/Seraphim boxed set preserved in our WWUH classical record library. Our station has in recent years acquired the German Pentatone label's series of Wagner's operas recorded in state-of-the-art stereo sound live in radio broadcast from the Philharmonie concert hall in Berlin. In all these recorded interpretations it was Marek Janowski who conducted the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Radio Chorus. Tristan und Isolde was recorded in 2012 with tenor Stephen Gould as Tristan and soprano Nina Stemme as Isolde. The first two acts come on two of three Pentatone compact discs I draw upon for today's broadcast. 
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• SUNDAY FEBRUARY 20TH Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, Act Three, Telemann, Michaelis-Oratorium Wagner may have been the German musical colossus of the mid nineteenth century, but in the mid eighteenth century it was Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) who really was the towering figure among composers of his time. He long outlived J. S. Bach, that cranky organ virtuoso in Leipzig, and out-composed him,too. Telemann's catalog of compositions is absolutely gigantic. Bach wrote two Passions: Telemann wrote at least 47, plus maybe a thousand cantatas. Bach never wrote any opera at all: Telemann wrote at least six in both German and Italian language. Then there's his enormous output of instrumental music, which is still not completely cataloged. And there's the long list of civic compositions he wrote for the city of Hamburg. In 1750 the St. Michaelis Lutheran church in the center of town burned to the ground. It took a dozen years to rebuild this city landmark, and for its re-dedication in 1762 Telemann wrote his Michaelis-Oratorium. A huge crowd of citizens witnessed the ceremonies. You get to hear what the dignitaries inside the church heard as performed in authentic baroque fashion by the singers and players of the Kolner Akademie, directed by Alexander Willens. The oratorio was recorded in Cologne in 2018 for release through the German cpo label on a single silver disc. This recording was favorably reviewed for Fanfare magazine (Nov/Dec, 2019 issue) by James A. Altena, who says, "The 81-year old Telemann, a resident of Hamburg since 1721 and indisputably the greatest living composer of his day, employed his skills to produce one of his finest and most expressive works. I never cease to be amazed at both his fecund genius and his seemingly inexhaustible powers of invention... This is a masterpiece not far behind the Bach Passions and 
•  Handel's Messiah in quality."  
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• SUNDAY FEBRUARY 27TH Salieri, Armida In the eighteenth century there were so many operas that bore this name about the beautiful sorceress/princess, or named after the noble knight Rinaldo who loved her. Over a span of decades I have devoted at least thirteen shows to different Armida/Armide operas. There's also the Rinaldo opera by Handel and Rossini's Armida in the early 19th century and Lully's tragedie en musique going back to the seventeenth, which was reworked in the 18th century by Francoeur. Most recently, on Sunday, October 24th of last year I broadcast the Teldec CD reissue of Haydn's Armida (1784), a 21st century recording that has supplanted the Philips LP release, with Antal Dorati conducting, from 1979. Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) tackled the subject early on in his career as an opera composer. His Armida premiered with success in 1771 at Vienna's Burgtheater. Opera librettists spun off so many variants of the original story derived from the epic poem by Tasso. In Marco Coltellini's libretto the story ends in the usual way: enraged over how Rinaldo has abandoned her and gone back to the ranks of the Crusaders, she wrecks her magic pleasure palace and rides off into the sky in a chariot drawn by winged monsters. On Sunday, February 11, 2018 I broadcast the Lully Armide (original 1686 version) as interpreted by the period instrument players of Les Talens Lyriques and the Chamber Choir of Namur under the direction of Christophe Rousset. Rousset leads the same musical forces, with four vocal soloists, in the 2020 world premiere recording of the Salieri Armida. The French Aparte label issued it in 2021 in a deluxe book-type CD package: a numbered limited edition. Talk about rave reviews! Fanfare magazine's Bertil Van Boer states flatly: "There is nothing to say about the performance other than that it is uniformly excellent." (Fanfare, Sept/Oct, 2021.)
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