The ninth and final season of the Canadian television anthology series Festival broadcast on CBC Television from to . Fourteen new episodes aired this season, in addition to three musical specials which aired in Festival's time-slot, a BBC production of Billy Budd, and a third drama special from the anthology series Cariboo Country.
Season nine plays and literature includes Peter Raby's adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers, a 1968 Stratford production. Melwyn Breen adapted The Journey of the Fifth Horse for television from Ronald Ribman's off-Broadway play, which in turn was partly based on Ivan Turgenev's novella The Diary of a Superfluous Man, a drama set in 19th century Russia. John Whiting's stage drama A Penny for a Song (1951) was adapted for television by Fletcher Markle. American playwright Frank D. Gilroy's That Summer, That Fall, which had been adapted for Broadway in 1967, is a version of the Hippolytus-Phaedra story. Charles Israel's drama Noises of Paradise is based on a story by Seymour Epstein. In a double bill, Harold Pinter's one-act The Basement aired with James Saunders' one-act Neighbours. Saunders' drama A Scent of Flowers (1966) also aired. Canadian plays included George Salverson's The Write-Off, Munroe Scott's drama Reddick, and Gratien Gélinas' play Yesterday the Children were Dancing.
Music includes an hour of jazz piano by four distinguished pianist-composers, each with their individual styles; American Erroll Garner, American Bill Evans, English-American Marian McPartland, and Canadian Brian Browne. They perform their own compositions and jazz standards by Jerome Kern, Duke Ellington, et al., accompanied by their own accomplished/fellow musicians including Skip Beckwith, Archie Alleyne, Linc Milliman, James Kappes, Eddie Gómez, Arnold Wise, Charles "Ike" Isaacs, Jimmy Smith, and José Mangual Sr.. A "changing of the baton" occurs between Seiji Ozawa and Czechoslovak composer Karel AnÃÂerl, who conducts the Toronto Symphony Orchestra performing tone poem No. 2 Vltava (The Moldau) from Má vlast by Bedà Âich Smetana, with concertmaster Gerard Kantarjian. Producer Franz Kraemer introduces a University of Toronto concert by Australian soprano Joan Sutherland singing arias by Bizet, Handel, Bononcini, Bellini, Rossini, and Delibes, accompanied by her husband, pianist Richard Bonynge. The French-CBC production of Carl Orff's 1937 secular cantata Carmina Burana is re-aired on the English-CBC network this season on Festival, with Pierre Hétu conducting a 70-piece orchestra, Marcel Laurencelle directing 60 chorus members, pianist/chorister Monik Grenier, dancers with choreography by George Skibine, and children playing nearly 300 roles. Featured are French-Canadian coloratura soprano Colette Boky, tenor René Lacourse, baritone Claude Létourneau, baritone Raymond Pincince, American ballerina Marjorie Tallchief, and Daniel Jackson.
Executive producer Robert Allen is the drama supervisor for Festival, in charge of selecting which plays are chosen, and in which order they air. For each script approved, fifty were rejected. As of mid-November 1968, twelve play productions had been chosen for season nine, out of which five are Canadian; The Write-Off, Yesterday the Children were Dancing, Reddick, The Noises of Paradise, and the last, Sister Balonika which had developed out of the Cariboo Country anthology series.
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