Nightly Opera Streams, August 24–30

This week’s streaming lineup features seven of Giuseppe Verdi’s most beloved masterpieces. Learn more about one of opera’s most prolific composers and the titles on offer with this helpful guide.

View the Playbills from the original performance dates for each stream, including synopses, program notes, and more.

In April 2020, Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and tenor Roberto Alagna joined General Manager Peter Gelb for a virtual panel discussion about Verdi’s Don Carlo and their personal and musical lives during the pandemic.

On this episode of our Aria Code podcast, soprano Diana Damrau discusses portraying one of opera’s most complex heroines, Violetta in Verdi’s tragic La Traviata.

An avid cook as well as a leading baritone,  Ambrogio Maestri showed Renée Fleming how he rustles up his signature Risotto Salsiccia e Funghi and discussed singing the title role of Falstaff during the 2013 Live in HD transmission.

Verdi’s Don Carlo is today widely considered one of the composer’s finest achievements, but it was not always so. Learn about the opera’s long road to recognition at the Met.

The Met’s education department works with schools across the country to introduce opera to a new generation. In a 2012 visit to a Brooklyn public school, students learn about and sing the Anvil Chorus from Verdi’s Il Trovatore.

In his new staging of Verdi’s enduring masterpiece La Traviata, Tony Award–winning director Michael Mayer conjured a world of decadence and drama that evolves with the changing seasons.

Verdi’s final masterpiece, Falstaff—with its quicksilver ensembles and vivid characterizations—is a celebration of living in the moment, says director Robert Carsen, who brought a new production of the opera to the Met in 2013.

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin talks about what makes Verdi’s La Traviata—with its mixture of intimacy and grandeur—a “perfect” opera for him.

One of opera’s greatest voices, Dolora Zajick has delivered knockout Met performances of many of the repertory’s most dramatic mezzo-soprano roles over the past three decades.

In this podcast episode, soprano Nadine Sierra and host Rhiannon Giddens discuss the overwhelming emotions of young love and dive into the details of Gilda’s breathtaking Act I aria, “Caro nome.”

Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera was inspired by the historical King Gustav III of Sweden. Director David Alden draws parallels in his film-noir inspired production between Gustav and Icarus.

Food and drink were Falstaff’s great loves and provided inspiration for the sets of director Robert Carsen’s witty 2013 production of Verdi’s Falstaff, updated to 1950s England.

Set and costume designer Santo Loquasto, a longtime Broadway master and four-time Tony-winner, has created striking sets and costumes for four Met productions, including the staging of Luisa Miller being screened this week.

Verdi’s lesser-known masterpiece had its Met premiere in 1929 with the remarkable Rosa Ponselle in the title role, then disappeared from the company’s repertoire until 1968. Since then, it has received nearly 100 performances with a number of noteworthy artists.

Award-winning set designer Christine Jones discusses bringing Verdi’s Rigoletto into the neon age in Michael Mayer’s Las Vegas–inspired production.

With his 2012 production of Un Ballo in Maschera, set in a cinematic Swedish atmosphere, director David Alden aimed to integrate the stylistic paradoxes of Verdi’s endlessly intriguing opera.

The extraordinary and beloved Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who died in 2017, is featured in this week’s stream of Verdi’s La Traviata.

Verdi’s La Traviata was first presented by the nascent Metropolitan Opera Company during the third week of its inaugural season in 1883. Since then, the opera has appeared more than 1,000 times, starring more than 100 different sopranos as Violetta.

Joyce DiDonato speaks with director Michael Mayer and two of the stars of his neon-bedecked staging of Verdi’s Rigoletto—Željko Lučić and Piotr Beczała—during an early rehearsal for the production.

Soprano Sonya Yoncheva tells Live in HD host Joyce DiDonato about Verdi’s mid-career masterpiece Luisa Miller, and weighs in on her experience singing the tragic title role.

Director Nicholas Hytner explains why Don Carlo is the “quintessential Verdi opera” and discusses his monumental staging, which premiered at the Met in 2010.

Director Michael Mayer explores the connection between Verdi’s Rigoletto and the lurid underworld of 1960s Las Vegas, where his production is set, in this 2013 video.

In Sir David McVicar’s 2009 staging, Verdi’s Il Trovatore reclaimed its place as a dramatic—not just musical—masterwork.

The operas of Giuseppe Verdi have been performed around 5,700 times at the Metropolitan Opera, more than those of any other composer by a wide margin.

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