75th Metropolitan Opera Broadcast Season...and all the rest

It's been a very busy week here in the land of streaming opera. It always is the week before the Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts begin again.

For us, the changeover on the operacast site can seem overwhelming. We still aren't quite finished, so please be patient. And if you are aware of a station that is streaming these broadcasts that we do not currently list, please let us know about it. We are grateful that this year the Met finally got around to updating the list of stations in their network (a task that had been neglected once they lost Chevron/Texaco's support), even though it appears to mean that there are several new stations that we will be vetting and then adding to our Met listings in the next few days.

It seems that even fewer stations than in the past have decided to stick with the NPR World of Opera this year. The NPR website is not very useful for finding out which stations are broadcasting this program.

If I get a second wind I may post further highlights for this Saturday, but probably not....

Happy listening,

Saturday, Dec. 10th, 2005

The most exciting items on offer today:

NPR WORLD OF OPERA - From Houston Grand Opera, Verdi's Il Trovatore, with what looks to be an exciting threesome, Marcello Giordani, Irina Mishura and Sondra Radvanovsky.

BBC RADIO 3 - From English National Opera, a performance of Britten's Billy Budd with Simon Keenlyside and John Tomlinson.

WETA- a performance from Washington National Opera, of Saint-Saens's Samson et Dalila, starring Olga Borodina.

Happy listening!

Vocal Record Collectors' Society Annual CDs Available

Recently we have put a banner ad up on the OperaCast site advertising the availability of back issues of the Vocal Record Collectors' Society Annual CDs. The VRCS is a group of diehard vocal record mavens that meets once a month in a church hall here in Manhattan to hear a program of 20-25 vocal records, often rarities you couldn't find, let alone hear, anywhere else. Since it was started in the 1950's, the Society has issued an annual record (since the early 90's, it's been a CD) containing old 78rpm recordings that have never been released on either LP or CD. There are some pretty weird and wonderful things on these CDs. I hope you'll take a moment to look at the list of singers and the contents of each disc.

Happy listening!