This afternoon’s broadcast of Peter Fox Smith’s weekly opera program will fill, as usual, an hour of air time, from noon to 1, on Vermont Public Radio’s classical-music network.

If A Passion for Opera sounds a little different, that’s because VPR has canceled the show — the last segment of which Smith and his longtime producer Sam Sanders recorded on Thursday in VPR’s studio at King Arthur Flour in Norwich.

“When Sam and I learned the fate of our program, we worked out a special show,” Smith, a resident of North Pomfret, said during a telephone interview on Friday. “We made a list, each of us, of favorite recordings, and each played what we could not live without.”

Longtime listeners to the 82-year-old Smith, who previously hosted Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, which wove his commentary through weekly live simulcasts from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, now will have to live without hearing the on-air expertise he’s been sharing since VPR’s founding in 1977.

According to VPR, the number of listeners to Smith’s program, which costs between $25,000 and $30,000 a year to produce, keeps shrinking. In the most recent Nielsen ratings, network vice president John Van Hoesen said on Friday, an average of about 1,600 people listened to A Passion for Opera during the quarter-hour measured.

“For opera itself, listening has always been among the lowest, even on our classical station,” said Van Hoesen, who has been the network’s chief content officer for several years after more than a decade leading VPR’s news department. “It’s a specialty service, and our audience has definitely dipped.

“At the same time, this is not a ratings decision. … Not all programs that VPR creates can continue forever. The needs of listeners and users are changing. With podcasts, and the way people use streaming services, a lot is changing, which changes the way VPR responds to the public.”

The part of that public that supports the Lebanon-based Opera North started registering its displeasure on Friday, shortly after the company sent a notice to patrons and supporters urging them to email VPR President Robin Turnau and advocate to restore Smith’s program.

“We hadn’t had much of a response until today, when a couple of dozen people wrote in and said they would like the program to continue,” Van Hoesen said. “At the same time, there were others who said that it was time for the program to conclude.”

Either way, Opera North general director Evans Haile wants devotees of Smith’s show to keep writing.

“We’ve gotten a lot of response, of people not being aware that Peter is going off the air, of people being taken by surprise, which says something,” Haile said on Friday, adding that VPR officials “need to know. It’s important for them to hear from people. Peter is an enthusiast. I don’t use that word lightly. He believes in what he brings to the program, and his enthusiasm comes across to the listener. He should be respected. He deserve the respect and the celebration.”

Van Hoesen said that Smith declined an offer from VPR officials to hold a celebration of Smith’s 40 years with the station as part of its 40th-anniversary festivities.

“We do honor Peter’s commitment to classical music, and (to) sharing his love of opera,” Van Hoesen said.

Smith’s devotion to opera has taken several forms. He lectured on the art form at Dartmouth College until the mid-1990s, and for more than three decades he accompanied VPR’s broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera for four hours every Saturday afternoon. The Met broadcasts continue, but four years ago VPR changed Smith’s role, to essentially delivering a one-hour talk before Met simulcast begins.

While he didn’t appreciate the change in format, he didn’t interpret it as a sign of things to come.

Then Turnau called him about a month ago to tell him that VPR was canceling the show and replacing it with an opera-related broadcast from Minnesota that doesn’t cost the station anything.

“It was a total, shocking surprise to me,” Smith said. “Absolutely no hints, out of the blue. … I was not given any indication that the program was in jeopardy.”

Now that word is getting around, he added, “People I’ve been talking with have been saying, ‘How can this possibly happen?’ and ‘We cannot let it happen.’ ”

If listener reaction doesn’t change the minds of the powers-that-be at VPR, which next week begins its fall pledge drive, Smith has plenty on his plate. He is entertaining an offer from “a learning institute in Vermont” to teach an opera course, and working on his seventh book.

Today’s program will include a recording of a duet between two opera legends — Greek diva Maria Callas and Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling — which Smith describes as fitting for his longtime collaboration with Sanders, now in his mid-70s.

“He is one of those rare technical producers who knows a huge amount about music,” Smith said. “There was nothing I enjoyed more than working with Sam Sanders.”

All of which made Thursday’s last recording session bittersweet for Smith.

“I have always, since I was a teenager, enjoyed introducing and sharing opera with people who thought they didn’t like it or didn’t know anything about it,” he concluded. “I’ve been very fortunate to have had 40 years of doing something I love very much.

“I’m only sorry it didn’t end happily.”

David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.