Mercury Opera and Monday's mystery piece

Mercury Opera Rochester has announced its 2010-2011 season.  In the fall, the company will offer its first Gilbert & Sullivan production, The Pirates of Penzance, at the new auditorium at Penfield High School.  In collaboration with Geva Theater's fall production of Amadeus, Mercury will perform a little-known opera by Antonio Salieri at Geva.  Other productions include Leonard Bernstein's Candide, Verdi's Falstaff in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, and a children's opera called Little Red's Most Unusual Day, loosely based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood.  You might have recognized Monday’s mystery piece as Mozart. “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” is an ode to love from the opera The Magic Flute in which two singers express the principle that there is nothing nobler than two people who love each other and desire to live through love alone. “Love sweetens every torment. Every creature offers itself to her. It seasons our daily lives, It beckons us in the circle of nature.” We heard Bernard Haitink, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Lucia Popp, soprano, and Wolfgang Brendel, baritone. Tomorrow, see if you recognize a piece premiered in a coffee shop in Leipzig. Thanks for listening to Classical 91.5.