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Opera For Everyone

by Opera for Everyone
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Latest episodes

  • Ep. 146 Tristan und Isolde by Wagner

    October 5, 2026 · 1 hr 58 min

    Before the story of Lancelot, Arthur and Guinevere, there was another story of a knight who clandestinely loves the wife of the king. With hazy origins at an unclear point in history, this story has been retold again and again over the…

  • Ep. 145 Parsifal by Wagner

    August 31, 2026 · 2 hr 11 min

    Richard Wagner refused to call Parsifal an opera, but instead considered it a rite of “consecration.” For many years, its performance was restricted to the small German town of Bayreuth: the destination of a new kind of artistic/religious…

  • Ep. 144 Wagner's Lohengrin

    July 15, 2026 · 2 hr 5 min

    Lohengrin is THE quintessential “knight in shining armor” coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress.  Swanning in on his mysterious boat, he is a literal answer to her prayers.  But though he may be a gift from God, terms and conditions…

  • Ep, 143 The Wreckers by Ethel Smyth

    June 8, 2026 · 1 hr 59 min

    Cornwall in the mid-eighteenth century was a remote and isolated region along the southwest coast of Britain, one where a ship and its crew might easily be dashed on the jagged rocks. And sometimes, that catastrophe might be nudged along…

  • Ep. 142 Alcina by Handel

    May 10, 2026 · 1 hr 58 min

    A seemingly all-powerful sorceress rules over her own island domain.  She enchants not only nature, but also men, who are helpless to resist her charms.  And when she does tire of those besotted men, it’s nothing that a transfiguration…

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  • Ep. 141 Attila by Verdi

    April 12, 2026 · 1 hr 60 min

    Known to history as “The Scourge of God,” Attila was a rampaging conqueror who famously turned aside from the city of Rome after a meeting with the Pope.  In this version, Attila is also opposed by a vengeful slave, a morally flexible…

  • Ep. 140 Moby Dick by Jake Heggie

    March 9, 2026 · 1 hr 58 min

    All hands on deck! This episode of Opera for Everyone dives headlong into a leviathan of 21st-century opera: Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick (2010). Adapted from Melville’s classic American novel, this seafaring drama is a gripping operatic…

  • Ep. 139 Le Prophète by Meyerbeer

    February 10, 2026 · 1 hr 58 min

    When an entrenched oligarchy and a cynical revolution go to war with one another, what happens to all the people in the middle?  Some may be victimized, others silenced, and yet others swept up in the churn of events.  In Giacomo…

  • Ep. 138 Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes, by Wagner

    January 12, 2026 · 2 hr 4 min

    Richard Wagner’s first truly successful opera, set in medieval Rome, sees a young nobleman in love with a young plebeian woman.  While this might sound like it’s going to be an operatic love story, it’s quite a different thing entirely…

  • Ep. 137 The Threepenny Opera by Weill and Brecht

    December 14, 2025 · 1 hr 60 min

    Mac the Knife, terror of the London criminal underworld, is a character paradoxically best known to many as the subject of the upbeat, bubbly eponymous 1955, 1959, and 1960 hit single.  However, his fictional roots go much deeper, to a…

  • Ep. 136 Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortilèges

    November 16, 2025 · 1 hr 57 min

    Can an opera, that most complex of art forms, take you back to childhood?  Unlikely though it might seem, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (“The Child and the Enchantments”) does just that through the talents of composer Maurice Ravel and writer…

  • Ep. 135 The Rake's Progress

    October 5, 2025 · 1 hr 58 min

    Which is stronger: the temptations of a shadowy wish-granter, or the love of a virtuous woman?  In The Rake’s Progress, Tom’s true love Anne seeks to save him from himself, seeking to unwind the schemes of the literal devil.  Yet when the…

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About the show

Opera for Everyone is a radio show and podcast that makes opera understandable, accessible, and enjoyable for all. Pat Wright hosts the show, inviting guest co-hosts to participate in the mission she and Keely Herron developed after lively discussions of operas they had enjoyed seeing together. Music soars. Epiphanies abound. Hilarity ensues. The show airs Sundays from 9.00 a.m. to 11.00 a.m. on 89.1 KHOL in Jackson, Wyoming. Cover artwork by illustrator Rosie Brooks (www.rosiebrooks.com)