Kirk Browning
1921 - 2008Born in New York City, Browning dropped out of Cornell University after attending for only one month and moved to Waco, Texas, where he was hired as a newspaper reporter. Because of a childhood injury, he was rejected by the United States Army when he tried to enlist during World War II, so he worked as an ambulance driver in England and France. In the late 1940s, he was a chicken farmer operating an egg route in Ridgefield, Connecticut when one of his customers offered him a job in the music library at NBC. The clerical position led to his directing live televised performances by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Soon after he was made a stage manager of the network's newly formed opera company, and he later became its Director.
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Toscanini: The Television Concerts, Vol. 7: Wagner
Kirk Browning
Arturo Toscanini
The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Broadcast #7 was of a concert on December 29, 1951 from Carnegie Hall, featuring music from Wagner's operas. (Concerts #6 and #7 were released as "Vol. 4" in the DVD series.)
Toscanini: The Television Concerts, Vol. 7: Wagner
Puccini: La Boheme
Kirk Browning, Franco Zeffirelli
Teresa Stratas, Renata Scotto
"La Bohème" is one of Giacomo Puccini's most popular and timeless works and the second-most performed opera at New York's Metropolitan Opera. This production, directed by the legendary Franco Zeffirelli, features José Carreras, Teresa Stratas, Renata Scotto and Richard Stilwell. The opera is replete with extraordinary visual beauty as it presents the tragic story of young bohemians struggling to make it in the world.
Puccini: La Boheme
The Light in the Piazza (Live from Lincoln Center)
Kirk Browning
Victoria Clark, Aaron Lazar
In the summer of 1953, Margaret Johnson, the wife of an American businessman, is touring Italy with her daughter, Clara. While sightseeing, Clara—a beautiful, surprisingly childish young woman—loses her hat in a sudden gust. As if guided by an unseen hand, the hat lands at the feet of Fabrizio Naccarelli, a handsome Florentine, who returns it to Clara. This brief episode, charged with coincidence and fate, sparks an immediate and intense romance between Clara and Fabrizio. Margaret, extremely protective of her daughter, attempts to keep Clara and Fabrizio apart.
The Light in the Piazza (Live from Lincoln Center)
New York City Opera: A Little Night Music
Kirk Browning
Sally Ann Howes, George Lee Andrews
A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The musical includes the popular song "Send in the Clowns".
New York City Opera: A Little Night Music
Hansel & Gretel - The Met
Kirk Browning, Bruce Donnelly
Judith Blegen, Frederica von Stade
The Metropolitan Opera's performance of "Hansel and Gretel" features music by Engelbert Humperdinck and is conducted by Thomas Fulton. The Met's storybook production cheerfully evokes a magic world of woodland sprites and candy dreams and yet brings as well the entire apparatus of Wagnerian music and drama to bear on a German fairy tale. This production is sung in English, and features the Metropolitan Opera, Chorus, and Ballet.
Hansel & Gretel - The Met
Ernani
Kirk Browning, Pier Luigi Samaritani
Luciano Pavarotti, Leona Mitchell
Verdi's early masterpiece is based on a Victor Hugo play with a complicated plot concerning a young woman and the three men vying for her affections—her elderly uncle, a king destined to become Holy Roman Emperor, and a bandit who is actually an overthrown nobleman. Though there is plenty of action arising from the various passions and grudges scattered among these characters, the opera is best appreciated as a feast of beautiful and dramatic Italianate singing. With virtuosic roles for a quartet of principals, the opera delivers one feat of heroic vocalism after another.
Ernani
Don Pasquale
Kirk Browning, John Dexter
Gabriel Bacquier, Beverly Sills
This John Dexter production, designed by Desmond Heeley, was a parting gift to the great American soprano Beverly Sills, who bid farewell to the Met as Norina, the smart young widow at the center of Donizetti’s comedy. The sensational Alfredo Kraus sings her beloved Ernesto. Håkan Hagegård, in his Met debut role and season, is Dr. Malatesta, the man who helps the young couple trick the crusty old bachelor of the title (Gabriel Bacquier at his comical best) into a fake marriage. This being a Donizetti comedy, it all turns out perfectly well at the end—and getting there is pure operatic fun.
Don Pasquale
Don Carlo
Kirk Browning, John Dexter
Vasile Moldoveanu, Renata Scotto
Don Carlo (1980) Metropolitan Opera. Verdi / italian. King Philip's court is plagued by rebels, family squabbles and intrigue. The Spanish Inquisition tries to exert its influence. The tension finally ignites at the King's coronation, where heretics are to be burned at the stake
Don Carlo
Ceremonies in Dark Old Men
Kirk Browning, Michael Schultz
J. Eric Bell, Godfrey Cambridge
Russell B. Parker, a former vaudeville hoofer, is a man of big dreams but small ambitions. He hardly works at all in fact, often spending the time incessantly playing checkers with his friend, William Jenkins. Parker lives with Theopolis and Bobby, his two unemployed sons, and Adele, his hard-working daughter. The ghost of his dead wife, a woman who drove herself into an early grave working to support the family, nags at his conscience.
Ceremonies in Dark Old Men
The Taming of the Shrew
Kirk Browning
Marc Singer, Fredi Olster
San Francisco's prize-winning American Conservatory Theater's rowdy commedia dell'arte production incorporates slapstick, pratfall and earthy humor into William Shakespeare's comedy about the two unmarried daughters of a wealthy Italian merchant. While daughter Bianca is genteel and popular, daughter Kate is foul-tempered and strong-willed. No one dares to marry Kate, until Petruchio arrives in Padua and tries his hand at courtship.
The Taming of the Shrew
Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall
Scott Ellis, Kirk Browning
Liza Minnelli, Bernadette Peters
This program features the music of Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim in a 1992 performance at Carnegie Hall. An American Musical Theatre writer for over 40 years, Stephen Sondheim has created the scores for hits such as Passion, Assassins, Bounce, Into The Woods, Sunday In The Park With George, Merrily We Roll Along, Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overtures. Featuring: Liza Minnelli, Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters, Glenn Close and many more.
Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall
Turandot
Kirk Browning, Franco Zeffirelli
Éva Marton, Leona Mitchell
The Franco Zeffirelli production of Puccini's "Turandot", recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera in April, 1987. Éva Marton stars as Turandot, with Plácido Domingo as Calaf, Leona Mitchell as Liù, Paul Plishka as Timur, and Hugues Cuenod as L'Imperatore Altoum. James Levine conducts.
Turandot
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Kirk Browning, Gian Carlo Menotti
Chet Allen, Rosemary Kuhlmann
The historic, original, live airing of what would become an annual Christmas tradition throughout the 1950s, this opera tells the story of Amahl, a crippled shepherd boy, and his destitute mother, who provide temporary shelter to three men who are following a star to the newly-born Christ child.
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Rigoletto
Kirk Browning, John Dexter
Cornell MacNeil, Ileana Cotrubas
A Victor Hugo play, haunting and scandalous, provided the inspiration for Verdi’s mid-career masterpiece. A vengeful but misguided court jester strives to save his daughter from a duke’s licentious clutches, but can't part with the feeling that a curse looms over all of his actions. In Rigoletto, the composer introduces several of his most iconic arias and duets—as well as an 11th-hour quartet that counts among the finest moments in opera.
Rigoletto
