Met Opera on Demand, the company’s at-home streaming service, now offers an extensive collection of more than 800 performances spanning nearly 90 years of Met history—a mix of radio broadcasts, classic telecasts, and Live in HD cinema presentations. And these three superfans can’t get enough. Herewith, their top picks from the MOoD catalog. By Jonathan Minnick
Eswar Prasad
Writer and Economics Professor at Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
“MOoD sustained me during the pandemic and provided much-needed solace and balm,” Eswar Prasad says. “Some of the operas have become ingrained into my consciousness as I invariably had them on at practically all working times during this period while I was laboring intensively on a book manuscript.” Through the process, Prasad says that he found a set of operas that he kept returning to, day after day: “Akhnaten, Turandot, Madama Butterfly, Aida, and Satyagraha, in that order.” As he explains, he often gravitated toward the operas of Puccini and Glass for their own unique qualities: “Glass’s hypnotic cadences and Puccini’s beautiful music, in particular, have proved especially great during periods of concentrated writing.”
Odette Iannetta
Student
New York City
“If I had to choose one opera, it would be Bellini’s Norma from 2017,” says 16-year-old Odette Iannetta. “It features the greatest quartet of singers that this generation has to offer in one of the finest performances at the Met.” A major fan of soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and the work of director David McVicar, Odette says that the experience of watching a Live in HD production through MOoD, with the array of cameras offering multiple cinematic perspectives on the stage, enhances her connection with the performance. Another of Odette’s personal gems is McVicar’s 2016 production of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, which she describes as, “in every way a monumental undertaking with a breathtaking result, covering every operatic feeling.” She also praises the 2020 performance of Handel’s Agrippina and the 2008 production of Massenet’s Thaïs. But her heart belongs to Norma: “If I could take only one thing from planet Earth, this Norma would be it.”
Mark Combrinck-Hertz
Philadelphia, PA
Mark Combrinck-Hertz and his mother, Dr. Lee Combrinck-Graham, were regular visitors to the Met in the 1990s and early 2000s. When they moved to Philadelphia, they wanted to maintain their rich connection to the Met, and a joint MOoD subscription fit the bill. Dr. Combrinck-Graham sent in Mark’s picks on behalf of her son, who has an intellectual disability. That hasn’t stopped Mark from becoming a thorough expert on opera—his mother says he knows virtually everything about the productions, performers, and conductors, and regularly watches new productions to make sure he’s up to date. Mark’s favorites include Verdi’s Aida from 1989, with soprano Aprile Millo, mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick, and tenor Plácido Domingo, and Bizet’s Carmen from 2010, featuring mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča and tenor Roberto Alagna. But he’s chiefly partial to the 2008 production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, starring soprano Deborah Voigt in a heart-wrenching performance of Isolde, especially the scene where she drinks the love potion. As his mother quips, “He’s such a romantic!”