Festival (Canadian TV series) season 2

The second season of the Canadian television anthology series Festival broadcast on CBC Television from 2 October 1961 (1961-10-02) to 11 June 1962 (1962-06-11). Twenty-five new episodes aired this season.

Classical plays for season two include Webster's macabre tragedy The Duchess of Malfi (1614), and CBC's 1961 teleplay of Macbeth featuring Zoe Caldwell as Lady Macbeth, and Sean Connery as Macbeth in his only Shakespearean lead role. Originally adapted and directed by Paul Almond and broadcast in five parts for senior high school students, it was edited into a single presentation and aired on Festival in April 1962.^[1]

Operas included Bizet's 1875 opéra comique four-act Carmen featuring mezzo-soprano Belén Amparan, who had performed the role of Carmen for The Met in 1958 and 1960.^[2] Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comedy The Pirates of Penzance was also presented in full. In another episode, "An Evening with Gilbert and Sullivan", the Stratford Light Opera performed portions of Pirates, The Mikado (1885), The Yeoman of the Guard (1888), and the full version of Trial By Jury (1875).

Tribute is paid to Igor Stravinsky, celebrating his 80th birthday and he conducts the CBC Symphony Orchestra performing Symphony of Psalms with the Festival Singers of Canada. Robert Craft conducts Stravinsky's ballets Petrouchka, Agon, and Apollo with the New York City Ballet. Tchaikovsky's 1877 ballet Swan Lake is performed by the National Ballet of Canada. Eugene Ormandy conducts the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra with pianist John Browning in works by American composers, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Edward MacDowell, Roger Sessions, and John Philip Sousa. Ed McCurdy performs Nova Scotian folk songs.

The bulk of season two presented modern and contemporary works. Early-modern plays included Shaw's satire The Apple Cart: A Political Extravaganza (1928), Maxwell Anderson's 1930 Broadway drama Elizabeth the Queen, and Jean Anouilh's five-scene Le Voyageur sans bagage ("The Traveller without Luggage", 1937). Works from the 1940s and 50s included Alvin Goldman's adaptation of Ugo Betti's La regina e lgli insorti ("The Queen and the Rebels", 1949), Christopher Fry's romantic comedy The Lady's Not for Burning (1948) and his verse play A Sleep of Prisoners (1951), Dorothy Wright's three-act nativity play A Cradle of Willow (1952),^[3][4] and Canadian radio host Jacques Languirand's Les Grands Départs ("Grand Exits", 1957). Gratien Gélinas both wrote and acted in his play Bousille et les Justes ("Bousille and the Just", 1959). Contemporary plays included two from Harold Pinter, his tragicomic A Slight Ache (1958) and his couples comedy The Collection (1961), Bernard Kops's 1960 play The Dream of Peter Mann, Hugh Webster's adaptation of Marghanita Laski's drama The Offshore Island, set following a nuclear war, and Ron Boorne's office politics drama The Day of the Dodo. Tommy Tweed adapted his own radio play, The Brass Pounder from Illinois, about the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway under William Van Horne, as portrayed by John Drainie. It was produced with technical help from the Canadian Pacific Railway.^[5] Literary adaptations included Giraudoux's 1938 drama Ondine based on Fouqué's fairy tale novella Undine (1811), and James Agee adapts Stephen Crane's short story The Blue Hotel (1898).

Notes:

• Beginning this season, the program was no longer billed as Festival '61, but simply as Festival.
• Most of the weeks in which Festival did not air, programming was pre-empted by special episodes of Camera Canada.^[6]
• "The Offshore Island" which aired the week of 12 March 1962, re-aired later in the season on 14 May 1962 (1962-05-14).^[7]
• The week of 2 April 1962 (1962-04-02)^[8] was a repeat of "The Luck of Ginger Coffey" that originally aired the week of 19 June 1961 in season one.

• Festival at IMDb