Gioacchino Rossini was born in 1792 in Pesaro, Italy. During his first 37 years he wrote an incredible string of operas that made him a national hero. Strangely, although he lived another 40 years, he never wrote another opera!

Rossini's The Barber of Seville is almost certainly the greatest comic opera ever written. It's playful, romantic story is a perfect vehicle for Rossini's sparkling music.

When the opera opened in Rome, on February 20th of 1816, it was one of the weirdest premieres ever. Apparently the singing that first night wasn't the best, and one of the singers tripped and had to keep on singing with a bloody nose! During the first act a cat wandered onto the stage and wreaked havoc. After that opening-night bomb, the opera quickly became an enormous hit. Like most operatic overtures, this one was designed as an exciting preview of the memorable music to follow.

Benjamin Britten, a 20th-century British composer, wrote powerful operas that earned him a reputation for melodic and dramatic genius as well as great literary insight. Peter Grimes, was his first opera, and many think it was his best.

The story, based on George Crabbe's poem The Borough, is about a gruff old fisherman accused of killing his apprentice through neglect. We learn that Grimes has a heart of gold, but this doesn't stop the people of his little village from rising up against him like a lynch mob. Like many of the heroes of Britten's other operas, he becomes a symbol for innocence destroyed by the cruelty of an unfeeling majority.

Four "Sea Interludes" from the opera have been assembled into a suite that is often performed in concert settings. If one listens closely, the sounds of the ocean can be clearly heard in these magnificent pieces that mirror the building intensity of the drama.

Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischutz enjoys a reputation that few other pieces can boast: it helped launch an entire era! Romanticism, especially the mighty stream of German Romantic opera that culminated in Wagner, first burst upon the scene in this remarkable work that created a sensation with its color, imagination, depiction of nature and air of mystery. It was unlike any other opera that had ever been written.

The hero, Max, must prove his skill as a marksman before he can marry his sweetheart Agathe His friend, Caspar, persuades him to try some magic bullets that can't miss. Naturally, there's a catch! Caspar has sold his soul to the devil, and can only save himself by turning over another victim. All ends well, as the chastened Max is given a "suspended sentence" of a year in which to prove himself worthy of Agathe's hand.

The Carmen Fantasy is a new adaptation, designed especially for virtuoso trumpeters Charles Geyer and Barbara Butler by contemporary composer and conductor Donald Hunsberger. The familiar, yet ever fresh, themes of Bizet's masterpiece take on new brilliance as the trumpets provide dazzling counterpoint and interludes to the operatic tunes.