The seventh season of the Canadian television anthology series Festival broadcast on CBC Television from to . Twenty new episodes aired this season.
Synopsis The bulk of season seven presented plays and story adaptations beginning with the premiere, the naturalistic 1888 play Miss Julie written by August Strindberg and translated by Elizabeth Spriggs. John Bethune adapted two plays for television, William Shakespeare's comedy The Taming of the Shrew and Oscar Wilde's satire Lady Windermere's Fan (1892). Mavor Moore adapted three works, Max Beerbohm's short story Enoch Soames (1916), Maxwell Anderson's 1933 Broadway drama Mary of Scotland, and a story by French-Canadian author Marie-Claire Blais, The Puppet Caravan. Ottawa writer Enid Abrahams' television drama Thomas' Elegy aired, as did his play, New Bottles, New Wine. Two plays by M. Charles Cohen were performed; his sequel David, Chapter III, and The True Bleeding Heart of Martin B. Michael Sinelnikoff's drama Spirit of the Deed is based on Henry James' short story The Third Person (1900). Antony Ferry wrote a teleplay about the works of poet-playwright Bertolt Brecht, called Brecht: A Threepenny Profile. Rudi Dorn both wrote and directed Variations, a thirty-minute "fantasy for vision" presented in forty-four scenes with very few lines of dialogue. Canadian playwright Stanley Mann wrote the original drama The Fifth-Floor People. Also presented are Federico García Lorca's tragedy Yerma (1934), Tom Hendry's Fifteen Miles of Broken Glass, Herb Hosie's Westbrook's Man, Tad Mosel's drama play My Lost Saints, and Marc Brandel's thriller The Devil Makes Three.
Paul McDowell bridges comedy skits and sketches with music and songs in a revue hour filmed with an audience.
Season six's hour of "The Blues" hosted by Barry Callaghan is now expanded into ninety minutes of discussion and songs performed by folk/blues guitarist Brownie McGhee, harmonica player Sonny Terry, guitarist/bassist Willie Dixon, Georgia-born one-man band musician Jesse Fuller, singer Mable Hillery, guitarist Booker White, pianist Sunnyland Slim, guitarist Big Joe Williams, and the "father of modern Chicago blues" Muddy Waters and his band, including pianist Otis Spann with James Cotton (harmonica), Samuel Longhorn (guitar), James Madison (guitar), and Jimmy Lee Morris (bass). Jazz king of Harlem "stride" piano, Willie "the Lion" Smith showcases his compositions and discusses music with fellow jazz pianist Don Ewell. A star of the Metropolitan Opera, Canadian soprano Teresa Stratas, performs with baritone Louis Quilico, contralto Patricia Rideout, tenors Robert Jeffrey and Ermanno Mauro, and the Festival Orchestra conducted by Walter Susskind. They perform selections from Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, songs from La Périchole by Jacques Offenbach, and scenes from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin (1879) and Verdi's opera La Traviata (1853). Decca classical records producer John Culshaw introduces an hour with the BBC head of music and arts programs, Sir Humphrey Burton, and pianist Glenn Gould, discussing the future of music performance and composition, with Gould playing excerpts from Bach and Beethoven.
Notable guest cast In addition to individuals cast this season, organizations include the ...
Episodes Notes: Festival reruns include "Contre Basse" on , "Silent Night, Lonely Night" on "No Two People" on , "Heloise and Abelard" on , "Spirit of the Deed" on , and "Fifteen Miles of Broken Glass" on . For three weeks Music Canada aired in Festival's time-slot, on , , and . Other programming that pre-empted Festival include the Hallmark Hall of Fame specials, "Blithe Spirit" on , and "Anastasia" on , Intertel on 7 December 1966 and , and Bob Hope on . Special programming that pre-empted Festival includes a News Special re-broadcast of the funeral procession of late Governor General of Canada, Georges Vanier on , the Centennial Performance on , and the NFB documentary The Things I Cannot Change on . For the week of , Festival aired the 90-minute documentary The Golden Ring (1965), a United Kingdom BBC production released on 16 May 1965, about the making of the Götterdämmerung ("Twilight of the Gods") recording, the last of the four epic music dramas from Richard Wagner's cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen ("The Ring of the Nibelung"). For the week of , Festival commissioned the drama special "How to Break a Quarter Horse" for the upcoming 1967 Canadian Centennial. The episode was developed from the anthology series Cariboo Country. The week of , Festival aired the BBC production of Cathy Come Home which originally aired on The Wednesday Play on 16 November 1966.
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