Nightly Opera Streams, October 5–11

Dive into seven of Wagner’s awe-inspiring masterworks, including his monumental Ring cycle, with this guide to the week.

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

Wagner’s use and development of musical themes known as leitmotifs create a symbolic undercurrent of meaning throughout the Ring cycle. In this video, members of the Met Orchestra play and discuss some of the themes.

This week of free streams offers three opportunities to enjoy the artistry of the legendary German mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig, unquestionably one of the great singers of the second half of the 20th century.

With a pair of title roles that have been proclaimed “unsingable” by critics and artists alike, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde has encountered—or possibly courted—more than its fair share of mishaps at the Metropolitan.

In his mesmerizing production of Parsifal, which premiered in 2013, Canadian director François Girard explores the diverse spiritual influences of Wagner’s meditative final masterpiece as well as what the piece has to say to modern-day audiences.

In the fall of 2019, the entire Met family—along with the opera world at large—mourned the loss of Jessye Norman, one of the great sopranos of the past half-century.

The quest for the all-powerful ring continues with the second installment of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. Learn more about Die Walküre with our In Focus podcast.

Read how, against the wishes of Wagner’s widow, the Met presented the U.S. premiere of the composer’s final opera in 1903.

Ever since its premiere in 1882, Wagner’s Parsifal has engendered a kind of all-consuming devotion bordering on the fanatic. Peruse some evocative commentary from a handful of notable devotees of the composer and his final masterpiece.

Mythology provided Wagner with a steady supply of gods, goddesses, and psychosexual dynamism to satisfy his rich and ingenious imagination. Learn more about the composer’s Nordic sources of inspiration.

In Mariusz Treliński’s production of Tristan und Isolde, which opened the 2016­–17 Met season, the director explores the extreme psychological forces that propel the lovers into uncharted waters.

Learn about the storied history of Wagner’s operas at the Met, from the house’s opening season in 1883 to the present day.

Beloved bass-baritone James Morris—who appears in this week’s stream of Puccini’s La Bohème—reflects on singing more than 1,000 performances on the Met stage.

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