The sixth season of the Canadian television anthology series Festival broadcast on CBC Television from to . Thirty-two new episodes aired this season.
Karl Böhm conducts the Toronto Symphony Orchestra performing the "Haffner" Symphony by Mozart, Beethoven's Leonore Overture, and the Die Meistersinger Overture by Wagner. Françoys Bernier conducts Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. Albert Lotto plays Piano Concerto No. 1 by Franz Liszt. Pianist Michel Legrand performs compositions from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with singer Claire Gagnier and others. Barry Callaghan hosts blues greats Brownie McGhee (guitar) Sonny Terry (harmonica), Willie Dixon (bass/guitar), Jesse Fuller (one-man band), singer Mable Hillery, singers Sunnyland Slim (piano), Big Joe Williams (guitar), Booker White (guitar), and Muddy Waters with his band. Seiji Ozawa conducts with violinist James Buswell performing 1920s compositions by Maurice Ravel, two by Stravinsky, and jazz-influenced An American in Paris by George Gershwin. Pianist/Comedian Victor Borge plays Rachmaninoff and duets with Leonid Hambro. Peter Schickele plays La campanella by Liszt. Jack Pohr performs Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) by Pablo de Sarasate. New York musicians play Cantata Iphigenia in Brooklyn, by P. D. Q. Bach. American Yehudi Menuhin and Canadian Glenn Gould play Arnold Schoenberg's Phantasy, Sonata No. 4 by Johann Sebastian Bach, and Sontata No. 10 by Beethoven. German vionist Dr. Hermann Scherchen conducts the Toronto Chamber Orchestra in J.S. Bach's The Art of Fugue. CBC Talent Festival finalists appear at Massey Hall and Place des Arts with orchestras conducted by Sir Wilfrid Pelletier, Sir Ernest MacMillan and John Avison, performing Mozart, ÃÂdouard Lalo, Charpentier, Giacomo Puccini, and Kent Kennan.
Tenor Jon Vickers sings from Beethoven's only opera Fidelio, and selections from Die Walküre by Wagner. Festival aired Gioachino Rossini's 1816 opera The Barber of Seville conducted by Otto-Werner Mueller after it won an international Emmy Award on the CBC French sister-network Société Radio Canada series L'Heure du concert in March 1965. Similarly, Murray Schafer's opera Loving (Toi) appeared on both The Concert Hour and Festival with Serge Garant conducting. Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet is performed, choreographed by John Cranko. Melissa Hayden and Edward Villella, of the New York City Ballet, perform Pas de deux choreographed by George Balanchine to music by Tchaikovsky. Percy Rodriguez narrates Countee Cullen's poetry, to Moe Koffman's jazz, and Charlotte De Neve's dance choreography. Host Theodore Bikel sings folk songs, with Catherine McKinnon, Willie Dunn, and Odetta.
John Gielgud recites an anthology of Shakespeare works, encompassing emotions and behavior across the "Ages of Man". Plays this season include Henrik Ibsen's 3-act A Doll's House (1879), George Bernard Shaw's "love and war" comedy Arms and the Man (1894), and Oscar Wilde's four-act An Ideal Husband (1895). Modern-era plays include Seán O'Casey's Irish drama Juno and the Paycock (1924), Jean Anouilh's Romeo and Jeannette (1946), Albert Camus' play based on a true story, Les Justes (The Just Assassins) (1949), George Bloomfield's television adaptation of James Forsyth's play Héloïse (1951), which is based on the story of Abelard and Héloïse, and Ray Lawler's drama Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955). Contemporary plays include Robert Anderson's drama Silent Night, Lonely Night (1959), American novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder's one-act Childhood (1960), William Hanley's Whisper Into My Good Ear (1962) for which he won the Vernon Rice Award, and Edna O'Brien's Irish tragedy A Cheap Bunch of Nice Flowers (1962). Autobiographical portrayals include Jack Creley as John Kenneth Galbraith, author of best-selling book The Scotch (1963), released in the UK as The Non-potable Scotch: A Memoir of the Clansmen in Canada. Playwright/novelist George Ryga's Man Alive is an original epic drama play written expressly for Festival, and aired with Len Birman in the lead role. Teleplays include, George Salverson's The Murderer based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment (1866), Marc Brandel's Ashes to Ashes, and two from John Hopkins, A Game â Like â Only a Game, and the drama Horror of Darkness.
In addition to individuals cast this season, organizations include the CBC Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Chamber Orchestra, the Festival Singers of Canada, the National Ballet of Canada ...
This season, Festival began presenting multi-part episodes at irregular intervals, starting with "Music and Drama on [the] Same Program" which aired 27 October, combining the concert "Double Bill: Karl Böhm and Jon Vickers" with the one-act drama play Childhood by Thornton Wilder.
Earlier in March, CBC Television had made an announcement offering free tickets to attend the 27 March concert to be recorded at Massey Hall in Toronto, featuring Canadian tenor Jon Vickers singing, and Austrian Karl Böhm conducting the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Music aficionados were quick to acquire tickets, eliciting a large enthusiastic audience. The venerated hall, which opened in 1894, and was renovated in 1933, had undergone another transformation of the stage. The dark wood backdrop panels had been replaced with a lightly colored superstructure including tiers for orchestra members and a high balcony platform, which Vikers put to good use in his vocal performance.
Franz Kraemer's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute had a cast of 123, a 60-piece orchestra, an off-camera chorus, and a mobile, polyfoam-scaled, 75-foot fire-breathing dragon with electric eyes and lashing tongue. It took twelve men to operate it from within.
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