Opera on WRTI

What's the news about Opera Philadelphia’s just-announced 2015-2016 season? As the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns reports, the season is the company’s most far-reaching yet.

Radio script:

New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert walks across Lincoln Center Plaza to conduct the Metropolitan Opera in this perennial favorite of Mozart's, Don Giovanni. Peter Mattei is the rakish Don, Elza van den Heever is Donna Anna, Luca Pisaroni as Leporello declaims his catalog aria, and James Morris takes Don Giovanni to his judgment as The Commendatore.

The East Coast premiere of an opera about the 19th-century, Anglo-Irish writer Oscar Wilde is from Feb. 6th t0 15th at the Academy of Music. As WRTI’s Jim Cotter reports, Wilde's life story is as compelling as his work.

Oscar Wilde came to America early in his career, even before he’d written anything of any consequence. He was already a gifted raconteur.

Historian John Cooper is an authority on Wilde in America. He says many of Wilde’s most-quoted phrases, like much of his writings, have a timeless quality.

Tenor Vittorio Grigolo sings the title role of Hoffmann, the tortured poet and unwitting adventurer who is looking for love in Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, a fantasy opera based on three short stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann. The libretto was written by Jules Barber; the opera was first performed in 1881 in Paris. Saturday, January 31, 1 to 4:30 pm on WRTI.

One of the most-beloved opera arias is The Tales of Hoffmann's Barcarolle, Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour:

Opera star Deborah Voigt has always been a straight-shooting diva, openly discussing her weight problems, the surgery she underwent to address them, and the possible effects that had on her voice. Yet as The Philadelphia Inquirer's David Patrick Stearns reports, the singer goes well beyond that in her new autobiography, Call Me Debbie.

Franco Zeffirelli’s classic take on Puccini’s most popular opera, the immortal tale of tragic young love, is set among the rooftops of bohemian Paris. Soprano Kristine Opolais sings the role of the fragile Mimì, with Jean-François Borras as the love-sick poet Rodolfo. Riccardo Frizza conducts. Puccini's La Boheme, Saturday, January 24, 1 to 4 pm.

Do you know the astonishing story about how Kristine Opolais made history at The Met? Read about it here!

The great Renée Fleming stars as the beguiling femme fatale who captivates all of Paris in Franz Lehár’s enchanting operetta, The Merry Widow. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play, L'attaché d'ambassade (The Embassy Attaché) by Henri Meilhac. Saturday, January 17, 1 to 4 pm on WRTI 90.1 FM.

This is grand opera at its grandest! Verdi’s mythic love triangle features soprano Tamara Wilson, who makes her network broadcast debut as the Ethiopian princess Aida, opposite tenor Marcello Giordani as the Egyptian warrior Radamès. Soprano Violeta Urmana sings Amneris.  Marco Armiliato conducts. Mary Jo Heath is sitting in for Margaret Juntwait. The Metropolitan Opera, Saturday, January 10, 1 to 4 pm on WRTI 90.1 FM or online at wrti.org