WETA-FM (Arlington, VA)

Oct 7, 2024 | weta.org | Jim Allison

Editor's Note: This is a listening guide ahead of our broadcast of Tristan und Isolde from the 2024 Bayreuth Festival on October 19 at 1PM on Opera Matinee. When listening to opera broadcasts, you might have heard a sentence like this from the presenter: “...She has appeared on the world’s leading opera stages, including Vienna, Munich, Paris, Bayreuth, London, Berlin, and New York.” What is this locale that’s included among a litany of world-renowned cities?

May 6, 2024 | weta.org | David Martosko

On music history’s broad timeline, Ludwig van Beethoven and Igor Stravinsky have very little in common. They were born 112 years and 2,300 miles apart. (A trek from Bonn to St. Petersburg is roughly the same distance as New York City to Phoenix.) Their music occupied vastly different places along the trip from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s folksy and intuitive classicism to Arnold Schoenberg’s math-inspired and often listener-unfriendly “twelve tone” or “serial” music.

Dec 13, 2023 | weta.org | David Martosko

“Whaddya mean it’s not a Christmas opera? The first two acts happen on Christmas Eve!”These fighting words poured out of the Peabody Conservatory’s opera studio in Baltimore one day, many moons ago, as I walked past an open door. It was John Lehmeyer, the high-spirited (and legendary) costume designer who Peabody had convinced to direct the staging of entire productions. He was jawing with a conducting student — a man who today has a sprawling international career.

Apr 27, 2023 | weta.org | John Banther

Feb 7, 2023 | weta.org | John Banther