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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Afternoon Concert

Music: Classical

Unique performances with BBC Orchestras, Choirs and other great orchestras

Unique performances with BBC Orchestras, Choirs and other great orchestras from around the world

Afternoon on 3: Thursday Opera Matinee

Afternoon Concert: Thursday Opera Matinee: Donizetti - Belisario

Performances & Events

Music: Classical: Opera

Donizetti - Belisario

04/07/2013

BBC Radio 3 - Afternoon Concert

Mark Elder conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Donizetti's lyrical tragedy Belisario.

Katie Derham presents a new recording by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Mark Elder of Donizetti's rarely heard opera Belisario. Plus music by Peter Mawell Davies.

This week's Thursday Opera Matinee, presented by Katie Derham, is a new recording by the BBC Symphony Orchestra of Donizetti's rarely heard opera Belisario, conducted by a great champion of the composer, Sir Mark Elder. An immediate success when it premiered at La Fenice in Venice in 1836, it disappeared from the repertoire in the late 19th century.

Under the baton of noted interpreter, Sir Mark Elder, a first-rate cast revive Donizetti's setting of the libretto by Salvadore Cammarano which tells the story of the 6th-century Byzantine general, his vengeful wife Antonina, his devoted daughter Irene, and the loyalty of his former prisoner, Alamiro.

Resuming the theme of the Symphony Orchestra's tour around Orkney, Afternoon on 3 ends with Peter Maxwell Davies' famous Orkney Wedding (with Sunrise). Listen out for the bagpipes.

Donizetti: Belisario

Antonina ..... Joyce El-Khoury (soprano)
Belisario ..... Nicola Alaimo (baritone)
Alamiro ..... Russell Thomas (tenor)
Irene ..... Camilla Roberts (soprano)
Justinian ..... Alastair Miles (bass)
Eudora ..... Julia Sporsén (soprano)
Eutropio ..... Peter Hoare (tenor)
Eusebio ..... Edward Price (baritone)
Centurion ..... Darren Jeffrey (bass-baritone)
Ottario ..... Michael Bundy (bass-baritone)
BBC Singers,
BBC Symphony Orchestra,
Mark Elder (conductor).

4.05pm
Peter Maxwell Davies: An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise
BBC Symphony Orchestra,
Jiri Belohlavek (conductor).

Afternoon Concert: Thursday Opera Matinee

Thursday Opera Matinee

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Series of fifteen operas recently recorded at some of world's greatest opera houses

Series of operas performed at venues around the world. Singers such as Bryn Terfel, Anna Netrebko, Simon Keenlyside and Joyce DiDonato perform under conductors including Seiji Ozawa and Simon Rattle

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Donizetti - Belisario

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