Father Lee’s analyses and commentaries on operas

(1) For his first 10 seasons as an intermission analyst (1984 to 1993) on the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday afternoon live radio broadcasts, Father Lee’s intermission talks were delivered in a form called “MUSICAL and DRAMATIC ANALYSES” – (a.k.a “OPERA NEWS on the AIR”), pioneered by such luminaries as Boris Goldovsky, George Jellinek and John Culshaw.

These broadcast talks are generally delivered “at the piano” and are about 20-25 minutes long.
In those ten seasons, he delivered 29 MADAs, the texts of 23 of which were published in his book “FIRST INTERMISSIONS” (1995, revised and enlarged 2002, 2004).

With help from my friends, with particular thanks to Dr Miguel Lugo,
I have been able to find all but 1 of his 29 talks in this series, so far.
If you know of someone who has a copy of the missing one –
(the Faust MADA from 1990) – please contact me.

(2) For his final 12 seasons (1994 to 2006) Father Lee delivered 16 more broadcast intermission talks – not MADAs, but a new form called “DISCUSSION COMMENTARIES” … in that they were loosely linked to, although still inspired by, the Opera of the day.

These are also mostly about 20 minutes long.

So far, I have been able to find 10 of these 16 talks in audio format.
Six to go …
If you know of a copy of his talks entitled :
“REMEMBERING 1940” (1999),
“BJOERLING, LEHMANN, MELCHIOR” (2000),
“WAGNER and the GREEKS” (2004),
“WAGNER and the LAST 100 YEARS” (2004),
“RICHARD STRAUSS, his PAULINE and the ALLOMATIC” (2005),
or “FORZA, VERDI’S OPERA MADE Of IDEAS” (2006)
– please let me know.

In his final year at the Met, 2005-06, he experimented with 3 short “ON-LINE FEATURES” – (on Die Zauberflote, Fidelio and Pelléas et Mélisande) – all of which were in the later “Discussion Commentaries” format – all of which I have – and which are here included in the NATIONAL STYLES segments below.

The texts for most of his “Discussion Commentaries” can be found in
his book “A SEASON OF OPERA : from Orpheus to Ariadne” (1998, 2000).

(3) Father Lee also produced 11 longer talks (generally over an hour) for the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s series
called “TALKING ABOUT OPERA”.
These were not “broadcast” talks, but more extensive, in-depth lectures in CD format, and included his selection of extensive excerpts from recordings, with orchestra.
All 11 of his contributions to this landmark project are reproduced here – with the kind permission of Mr. Paul Gruber, the Guild’s Executive Director, Program Development.