What about opera?

In most of my posts, I complain about the lack of broadcasts of lengthier works. Mahler, Bruckner, Beetoven's Ninth, "Symphony Fantastique" just aren't broadcast over the FM stations I've been monitoring. Well opera falls into the "don't bother with it" syndrome --- except for the live from the Metropolitan opera on Saturdays during the Met's season.

My local station KVOD, when it was a commercial station, would broadcast "Sunday night at the opera" around 8 pm each Sunday. With some good commentary, often with comments from the local Opera Colorado performers and officials, you could depend on listening to an entire opera.

KVOD was tranformed from a commercial station to part of a public radio duo. KVOD broadcast classical music 24 hours each day, with an "In-depth News" talk radio on KCFR with "All Things Considered" and similar programs. With this switch, opera was deep-sixed. The Sunday program disappeared, the local support of Opera Colorado diminished and opera lovers were sent to their CD collections.

Clearly masters like Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccinni -- you know who I mean, are only worthy of fragments from their works. Sad, sad, sad.