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Wednesday Night Classics with Wally Breitman

Wednesday Nights 9pm to 2am

"Wednesday Night Classics," every Wednesday evening beginning at 9:00 pm, is featuring Richard Wagner's epic cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" during August 2006.  This "festival stage play" comprises three operas and a prologue, and is considered by many critics the grandest and greatest work in the history of Western music.  Wagner began the prose sketches in 1848, but the full 4-opera cycle was not performed in its entirety until 1876, when the premiere was given at the Bayreuth theater that Wagner had specially built for its performances.
 
The work concerns itself with, to quote William Faulkner, "the eternal verities of the human heart -- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."  It also contains, deceit and treachery, incest, gods and goddesses, heroes and villains, dwarfs and gnomes, and a formidable dragon.  Wagner wrote hundreds of "leitmotifs" (musical examples) by which the orchestra tells the story as the action unfolds and the singers frequently "speech-sing" their lines.  The orchestral writing contains some of the most complex and beautiful music ever written, as well as some of the most passionate and erotic music one will ever hear. 
 
Wally Breitman, host of "Wednesday Night Classics" will provide a synopsis of each story before and during each performance.

"Wednesday Night Classics" continues its 7-program homage to the legendary
Argentinian pianist, Martha Argerich, with Bach, Hadyn, and Mozart on
January 24, Chopin on January 31, the Romantics on February 6, the Russians
on February 13, and Rachmaninov and Ravel on February 20. Beginning on
February 27, Wednesday Night Classics will begin an extended series of
programs devoted to Sacred Music, beginning with Monteverdi's "Vespers for
the Blessed Virgin," and continuing through the greatest baroque, classical,
romantic, and contemporary sacred music for the next several months.

Wally also hosts Sonoma Sunrise, 6 to 7 am, Monday through Friday.