• SUNDAY JUNE 5TH Gluck, Demofoonte This was the third opera of the many others to follow from the great reformer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-87). At this early stage in his career he was writing works in the gallant style- progressive, to be sure, but not overtly reformist. Demofoonte (1743) premiered in Milan with much success and continued to be performed around Italy for several years thereafter. It really launched Gluck's career as an opera composer, leading to international recognition. The libretto of Demofoonte was set by at least 73(!) composers during the course of the eighteenth century. The poet Pietro Metastasio wrote a batch of very durable and adaptable stock Italian language libretti. Gluck met Metastasio in Vienna; their cordial artistic relationship is documented in Metastasio's correspondence. The poet personally approved of the young composer's settings of his verse. The British conductor/musicologist Alan Curtis has been praised for his recorded restorations of the Italian opere serie of Handel. Curtis and his period instrument group Il Complesso Barocco did the best they could with their restoration of Gluck's Demofoonte. Sure enough, the Brilliant Classics release of this opera seria in 2020 again won praise from reviewer Bertil van Boer in the pages of Fanfare magazine. There will never be a verifiably complete recording of an opera seria like this because of the way composers reworked their music so much in those days, But on three Brilliant CD's we get as much of Gluck's opera as we're ever likely to get, beautifully sung and played.
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• SUNDAY JUNE 12TH Lully, Cadmus et Hermione This tragedie en musique was the first collaboration of the composer Jean Baptiste Lully with librettist Philippe Quinault. Starting in 1673 with Cadmus et Hermione, Lully and Quinault created thirteen such works, their partnership ending only with Lully's strange death in 1686 from a foot infection. Together they furthermore created French baroque opera, establishing a model for this genre that lasted nigh on a century afterwards. All the elements of the genre are in place in Cadmus et Hermione, including the ballet sequences that Lully's patron King Louis XIV insisted upon. Cadmus et Hermione remained so popular with the public that in various adaptations it continued to be revived at least until 1737. There's a brand new and definitive recording of this, the very first great French opera, made in the splendid 250 year old opera house in the royal palace at Versailles. It was made in November of 2019 for release on CD in a deluxe package in 2021 through Chateau de Versailles Spectacles. Vincent Dumestre is the leader of the period instrumentalists of Le Poeme Harmonique and the choral Ensemble Aedes.
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• SUNDAY JUNE 19TH Rossini, La Cenerentola The Cinderella 
• fairy tale has always appealed to opera composers. The French composer Jules Massenet was one. I have broadcast Massenet's Cendrillon (1899), as she's called in French, twice in times long past: Sundays in 1989 and '95. There's also Rodgers and Hammerstein's made-for-TV American musical version of Cinderella (1957). The CD reissue of the original cast recording (Columbia Broadway Masterworks LP) went over the air on Sunday, July 15, 2001. The finest operatic interpretation of the Cinderella story has got to be the work of Gioacchino Rossini. His Italian language La Cenerentola (1817) I have presented several times before in various recordings, under different directorial hands: Sunday, July 29, 1984 (Fabritis), Sunday, December 27,1998 (Chailly, with mezzo Cecilia Bartoli) and most recently Sunday, July 31,2016 (Abbado). The 2007 production of La Cenerentola at Glyndebourne was recorded live in performance, but that recording was not issued on silver disc until 2013, when it appeared under the proprietary label of the opera house: Glyndebourne Enterprises, Ltd. For the first time in its long history (founded 1934) the Glyndebourne opera house invited a period instrument orchestra to take part in their La Cenerentola staging. Vladimir Jurowski lead the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment along with the Glyndebourne Chorus. Starring in the title role was mezzo Ruxandra Donose. Jurowski's conducting of this Rossini masterpiece is spirited and propels things right along the way Rossini's lighthearted music requires. However, only now after so many years of opera broadcasting do I fully understand that La Cenerentola is not a comic work, an opera buffa. Rossini styled it a dramma giocoso,ie. a serious romantic melodramma with a happy ending and some humorous touches. Also, this lyric theatrical version of the Cinderella story does away with the magic elements, ie. no fairy godmother.
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• SUNDAY JUNE 26TH Midsummer Eve on the 23rd of this month marks the Summer Solstice, around which many old pagan European customs circulate. There's the custom of the trial marriage, for instance, which provided the springboard for an opera by British composer Sir Michael Tippett about the archetypal marriage of the opposites: The Midsummer Marriage (1955). In terms of the psychology of dreams, it's the most Jungian of all operas. I broadcast two different recordings of Tippett's dream opera around this time of year in 2000 and 2013. Of course, there's Shakespeare's famous fairy comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595). I've broadcast recordings of the complete spoken-word play on Sundays in June of 1985 and 2004. On Sunday, June 21, 2015 came A Midsummer Night's Dream (2011), the a capella opera by Michael Ching in its original cast recording from Albany Records. But the landmark operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's play is by England's greatest composer of the mid twentieth century, Benjamin Britten. According to my opera programming listings, I broadcast our station's Decca/London LP recording of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960) one time only, way WAY back on Sunday, June 12, 1984. In this early stereo taping, the world premiere recording of the work, it's the composer himself directing the London Symphony Orchestra and a stellar cast of British singers of the period, among them Britten's lifelong lover tenor Peter Pears. Pears and Britten prepared the libretto, which retains about half of Shakespeare's original verse. Also in the singing cast is pioneering countertenor Alfred Deller as the fairy king Oberon. The three vintage vinyl LP's I made use of in 1984 have remained in pristine condition and are serviceable for broadcast today.
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