Nightly Opera Streams, September 21–27

Dive deeper into seven of Puccini’s most passionate masterpieces with this guide to the week’s streams.

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

Tenor Tony Stevenson and fight director B. H. Barry joined Executive Stage Director Paula Suozzi for a virtual discussion about La Fanciulla del West and took questions about the opera from students. 

Sir David McVicar's production of Puccini’s classic melodrama Tosca transports audiences to the gritty, glittering, and gripping world of Rome in 1800.

Puccini’s beloved tragedy had its Met premiere in 1907 and has since starred numerous legendary sopranos in the title role. And though the company has performed the work nearly 900 times, it has presented only five different productions.

Dive into the details of Turandot’s fearsome “In questa reggia” with soprano Christine Goerke.

In 2008, Giacomo Puccini's sumptuous yet tragic love story La Rondine returned to the Met stage for the first time in more than 70 years, in a spirited production by Nicolas Joël.

Franco Zeffirelli’s lavish production of Puccini’s La Bohème has dazzled audiences for nearly 40 years. This backstage video offers a look behind the scenes at how the monumental sets are changed.

Take a look behind the scenes at how the Met’s stage managers, the company’s backstage generals, marshal the vast theatrical forces required for Franco Zeffirelli’s grand staging of Puccini’s Turandot.

One of the repertory’s most glamorous operas has been matched by equally glamorous casts in more than 200 Met performances since its company premiere in 1907.

The 1910 world premiere of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West at the Met was an enormous event for the then-young company. This Playbill article from the 2010 performances of the opera takes a look at that historic occasion from a century on.

This Live in HD segment takes us to a 2016 rehearsal for the new production of Manon Lescaut with soprano Kristine Opolais and director Richard Eyre, who chat with host Renée Fleming about having Puccini in your blood, film noir, and femmes fatales.

Puppeteers Kevin Augustine, Tom Lee, and Jonothon Lyons explain how they breathe life into the puppet that acts as Cio-Cio-San’s child in Anthony Minghella’s elegant and heartbreaking production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

As he prepared to star as Ruggero in La Rondine—in a production that marked the work’s first Met performances in more than 70 years—tenor Roberto Alagna spoke about Puccini’s unappreciated gem.

Puccini’s operatic thrill ride Tosca features a fictional diva that’s one of the ultimate showcases for the real thing. But at a time when the term “diva” is thrown around seemingly willy-nilly, what exactly did the composer have in mind?

Marcello Giordani, who passed away in October 2019 and is featured in this week’s stream of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, was one of the Met’s brightest star tenors in recent decades.

“There’s a certain grandeur that needs to be onstage.” Sir David McVicar discusses his monumental production of Puccini’s Tosca, which premiered at the Met on New Year’s Eve, 2017.

Han Feng, who created the costumes for the Met’s production of Madama Butterfly, explains how she went from being a successful fashion designer to working with director Anthony Minghella on his celebrated staging.

Year in and year out, the 110 artisans in the Met costume shops are responsible for clothing the multitudes that fill the stage night after night—from Chinese ministers to Russian aristocrats to the humble inhabitants of Catfish Row.

Arriving at the Met seven months after its world premiere, Puccini’s Turandot has long been a showcase for some of opera’s most exciting artists appearing in equally spectacular stagings.

Before headlining Sir David McVicar’s new production of Tosca, Sonya Yoncheva discussed the challenges and rewards of embodying Puccini’s “completely passionate” title diva.

Few artists have had a greater impact on Met history than Franco Zeffirelli, the beloved director and designer who died in 2019.

A gun-slinging heroine. A romantic tale of the Wild West. The first great opera with an American setting. Learn more about Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West with our In Focus podcast.

After creating 11 productions for the company, director Franco Zeffirelli returned to the Met in 2008 for a revival of his signature production of La Bohème. He spoke about filming opera, respecting Puccini, and the “irresistible fire” of La Bohème.

In Richard Eyre’s 2016 film noir–inspired production of Manon Lescaut, soprano Kristine Opolais sang the title role of the rapacious seductress who drives the Chevalier des Grieux to what Puccini himself called “a desperate passion.”

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