Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love)
Comic opera in two acts (sung in German)
By transferring the action of his operatic version of Measure for Measure from Vienna to Palermo, Wagner was able to add another dimension to Shakespeare. He used the story of the struggle of the warm and permissive Sicilians against the cold and repressive German viceroy to create a brilliant opera in praise of youth, love and the good life and at the same time, to ridicule the bourgeois hypocrisy of his contemporaries.
BBC NORTHERN SINGERS chorus- mastersTEPHENwiLKiNSON BBC NORTHERN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, leader BARRY GRIFFITHS conducted by EDWARD DOWNES
Repetiteurs JEFFREY TATE and ALISTAIR DAWES German coach HILDE BEAL Producer
ERNESTWARBURTON BBC Manchester, Act 1
(William Elvin, Jeffrey Tate and Alistair Dawes broadcast by permission of the General Administrator Royal Opera House, Covent Garden)
(The next programme in the series is Rienzi on 27 June. A duplicated German/English libretto of Rienti is available price 90p (post free) from: Wagner Libretti, BBC, po Box 27, Manchester M60 ISJ)
3.25* Interval Reading
3.35* Das Liebesverbot Act 2