Festival (Canadian TV series) season 3

The third season of the Canadian television anthology series Festival broadcast on CBC Television from 1 October 1962 (1962-10-01) to 20 May 1963 (1963-05-20). Twenty-five new episodes aired this season.

Season three presented a balance of music, dance, opera, and plays.

The CBC Symphony Orchestra performs Beethoven's 7th symphony, conducted by Karl Böhm, and viewers are taken behind the scenes for the "birth of a symphony" by Russian conductor Igor Stravinsky with commentary by Helmut Blume. Pianist Malcolm Frager and opera singers Pierrette Alarie and Léopold Simoneau perform Mozart. Soprano Lois Marshall, with pianist Glenn Gould and violinist Oscar Shumsky, present works by Richard Strauss. Gould also hosts an episode with piano, SATB vocals, and string quartet performances, including a madrigal by Luca Marenzio, two Bach fugues, a Mozart adagio and fugue, piano sonatas by Beethoven and Hindemith, and Gould's own composition, So You Want to Write a Fugue. Modern music is hosted by composer Harry Somers and performed by Canadia's top jazz musicians, pianist Norm Amadio, trumpeter Guido Basso, guitarist Ed Bickert, cornetist Trump Davidson and his Dixieland group, composer/trumpeter Gordon Delamont, singer Don Francks, Ed Karam and his Big Band, trombonist Rob McConnell, tenor saxophonist Rick Wilkins, and composer Norm Symonds. Film historian Tony Thomas narrated as four composers presented their film music, performed by the CBC Symphony Orchestra. The episode included William Walton's compositions from two films, the historical Henry V (1944) and the British biographic The First of the Few, known in America as Spitfire (1942), and two films featuring Louis Applebaum's music in Action Stations and A Round is a Round. Aaron Copland composed for Something Wild, a 1961 neo-noir psychological thriller, and David Raksin for the 1962 drama Two Weeks in Another Town.

Opera programming includes players from the Avon Theatre, a Stratford Festival venue, and an 18-voice chorus before a live studio audience in a theatrical performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1889 comedic opera The Gondoliers, with music by the National Festival Orchestra conducted by Louis Applebaum.^[1] Another episode features a 54-voice chorus production of Verdi's four-act penultimate opera Otello (1887), based on Shakespeare's play Othello (ca. 1603), conducted by music director Ernesto Barbini. For dance programming, Barry Morse presents the 1841 romantic ballet-pantomime fairy tale, Giselle performed by the National Ballet of Canada, from which, Ugandan founding member Angela Leigh portrays the Queen of the Wilis, Russian ballerina Galina Samsova plays her vassal wilis, Canadian-American ballerina Sally Brayley plays Bathilde, and Canadian ballerina Lois Smith plays the title role, Giselle. The Ximenez-Vargas Ballet Company of Spain performs Spanish folk music and dances from 18th century Andalusia, featuring flamenco dancer Maria Alba, and singer Chinin de Triana. One sacred work is presented, Laudes Evanglii, a Choreographic Pageant in Seven Scenes. Giorgio Signorini wrote the libretto based on the Latin liturgical play, Laudes Dramaticae Umbriae about the life of Christ, with music by Valentino Bucchi, and choreography by Léonide Massine. Filmed in London (1961), participants included Ballet European, the chorus of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, soloists and mimes.^[2]

Plays include Henrik Ibsen's drama The Wild Duck (1884) adapted by Alvin Goldman, and George Bernard Shaw's 1906 problem play The Doctor's Dilemma. From the 1940s to 50s, Festival presented Bertolt Brecht's epic Life of Galileo (1943), adapted by Lister Sinclair, Alvin Goldman's adaption of Ugo Betti's 1950 morality play The Gambler (1950), Christopher Fry's 1950 blank verse play Venus Observed, Jean Anouilh's 1952 Joan of Arc play The Lark adapted by Lillian Hellman, and John Arden's 1959 Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, An Un-historical Parable. Edward Albee is interviewed by Charles Templeton between the presentations of his two plays, the off-Broadway satire The American Dream (1961), and his one-act The Sandbox (1959). Jean-Robert Remillard's The Endless Echo is an Orpheus and Eurydice story transposed to rural Quebec in the 1940s, translated by Alvin Goldman.^[3] Anthony Terpiloff's satire Ivan is about a USSR poet, alluding to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, being threatened by the "Official Writer's Union" and denied a passport.^[4] Other plays include Jack Pulman's drama A Book with Chapters in It, W. O. Mitchell's The Devil's Instrument,^[5] Helge Krog's psychological Break-Up,^[6] and M. Charles Cohen's original play for television David, Chapter II.^[7]

Notes:

• Weeks not indicated were pre-empted by special broadcasts such as Camera Canada or The Telephone Hour.
• National election coverage pre-empted Festival on 8 April 1963.
• "A Cradle of Willow" that aired the week of 24 December 1962 (1962-12-24)^[8] is a repeat from season one, the week of 25 December 1961.
• "A Book with Chapters in It" aired twice this season, 8 October 1962 (1962-10-08)^[9] and 29 April 1963 (1963-04-29).^[10]
• "David, Chapter II" aired twice this season, 28 January 1963 (1963-01-28)^[11] and 20 May 1963 (1963-05-20).^[12]
• "Othello" ran 2 hours 15 minutes, compared to the usual 60-90 minutes. Therefore it was originally broadcast at 8:30 EST instead of 9:30.
• "Venus Observed" was originally scheduled for broadcast 7 January 1963, but delayed due to videotape erasure.

• Festival at IMDb