Originally called Festival '61, the inaugural season of the Canadian television anthology series Festival aired on CBC Television starting on . Twenty-five episodes were produced and aired, not including four episodes produced by American broadcast corporations for the educational variety series Omnibus, which aired during the Festival '61 time-slot.

Synopsis Season one provided a mix of classical era plays like Shakespeare's 1599 historical tragedy Julius Caesar, and late-romantic / early-modern offerings like Chekhov's 1900 Russian drama Three Sisters, along with operas that included Gluck's 1762 Orfeo ed Euridice, the 1903 Strauss one-act Elektra adaption, Verdi's 1893 comedy Falstaff, and Gilbert and Sullivan's 1878 comedy H.M.S. Pinafore.

More contemporary works included plays and adaptations such as Emlyn Williams' psychological thriller Night Must Fall (1935), Arthur Laurents' 1946 drama Home of the Brave, and two of Jean Anouilh plays, Colombe (1950) and Ring Round the Moon, a 1950 adaptation by English dramatist Christopher Fry of Anouilh's Invitation to the Castle (1947). One episode provided two presentations; Harold Pinter's comedy-drama The Dumb Waiter (1957), and Edward Albee's first play The Zoo Story (1958), which were both plays in one-act. Polish playwright Sławomir Mrożek's first play, the 1958 drama The Police, was also presented, written in the style of Theatre of the Absurd.

A purely musical program also aired, performing classical compositions by Beethoven. Along with Western music, the Peking Opera provided Eastern, traditional Chinese opera which combines music with acrobatics, dance, mime, and stage combat with martial arts weapons.

In addition to theatrical plays, adaptions of novels and short stories where also presented, such as Dickens' oft-adapted, oft-filmed, 1861 Gothic coming of age novel Great Expectations, two short stories from 1891, Wilde's semi-comic mystery Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, and Henry James' emotional The Pupil, along with more modern novels like Brian Moore's 1960 fiction The Luck of Ginger Coffey and Hugh Walpole's 1924 macabre The Old Ladies.

Production For the premiere Festival '61 episode, H.M.S. Pinafore, the performance was staged in Toronto. A special in-studio theatre was constructed to maintain a theatrical ambience with room for seats to invite a live audience, a stage, proscenium arch, curtains, and a full orchestra. The studio theatre was used afterwards by CBC Television for subsequent shows.

Canadian actor William Shatner was billed as a special guest star for the role of Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. Including main roles, the production cast fifty actors as soldiers, bearers, citizens, women, and extras. Anneke Franck from the make-up team tackled a particular problem, making a cast of Douglas Rain's face to build a custom Roman-esque nose for NBC's make-up director, Robert O'Bradovich, using a special Hollywood process involving the baking of sponge latex, which could not be accomplished in Toronto.

The performance of Oscar Wilde's short story, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime required construction of twelve different sets to accommodate the play's action, which roamed from place to place; a Venice café, the Thames Embankment, and everywhere in between.

At a duration of one hour and forty-five minutes, Elektra was recorded early in January 1961 in Toronto at the cost of $60,000. It marks the North American television premiere of Richard Strauss' opera, with a new English translation by Franz Kraemer.

Notable guest cast

Episodes

Notes: For four weeks, the Montreal 9.30 p.m. time-slot was listed as "Festival '61–Omnibus" replacing CBC productions with programming by the American educational variety series, Omnibus (hosted by Alistair Cooke, featuring plays, music performances, and discussions). The Omnibus episode titles and their Festival air dates follow: "Night People" (5 December 1960), "Abraham Lincoln: The Early Years" (30 January 1961), "Fierce, Funny and Far Out" (27 February 1961), and "An Omnibus of American Song" (20 March 1961). For three other weeks, other programs aired; The Bell Telephone Hour on 28 November 1960, the Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas opera The Golden Child on 12 December 1960, and NHL Hockey on 10 April 1961. For the week of , "The Subject is Beethoven" was re-aired. It originally aired the week of 6 February 1961.

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