Nightly Opera Streams, September 28–October 4

This week is devoted to one of history’s greatest musical minds, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

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

After languishing in obscurity for some 200 years, Mozart’s early masterpiece finally assumed its rightful place in the repertory in the late 20th century, including at the Met, where it has enjoyed numerous successful runs with outstanding casts.

Mozart masterfully and simultaneously reveals the turbulent and conflicting emotions of his leading characters in this Act III quartet from Idomeneo.

While the Met presented Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro during its first decade of operation, the composer’s Così fan tutte didn’t arrive until 1922, when the company presented the opera’s U.S. premiere.

Dive into the details of the Queen of the Night’s iconic rage aria “Der Hölle Rache” with soprano Kathryn Lewek and host Rhiannon Giddens in this episode of our Aria Code podcast, a collaboration with WQXR.

In his new production of Le Nozze di Figaro, which premiered on Opening Night of the 2014–15 season, director Richard Eyre brought to the fore the sensuality of Mozart’s shimmering masterpiece. 

Elīna Garanča, in the trouser role of Sesto, sings an excerpt from the celebrated aria “Parto, parto,” from Mozart’s penultimate opera, La Clemenza di Tito.

Though a rarity on the Met stage in the company’s early decades, Mozart’s masterpiece of comedy and social commentary has been a cornerstone of the Met repertory for the past 80 years, brought to life by a parade of great singers and conductors.

Live in HD host Renée Fleming talks with Don Giovanni stars Mariusz Kwiecień, Barbara Frittoli, and Luca Pisaroni about their roles, as well as all the onstage—and backstage—drama.

In the Met’s 1998 telecast of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli interpolated two of Mozart’s rarely heard alternate arias into her performance as the scheming maid Susanna. Listen to her jaunty rendition of “Un moto di gioia” in Act II.

Before appearing as Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito in 2012, mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča spoke about singing Mozart’s sublime music, her character’s conflicting emotions, and the challenges of playing a man.

Tony Award–winning director Julie Taymor discusses her spectacular production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which has had more than 100 performances at the Met.

In Michael Grandage’s Met-debut production of Don Giovanni, the title character wasn’t just a serial seducer but an intensely complex individual.

Alabama-born soprano Susanna Phillips is no stranger to the music of Mozart, having performed five of the composer’s heroines at the Met—including Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte.

In Richard Eyre’s production of Le Nozze di Figaro, the page Cherubino makes a hasty escape from the Countess’s bedroom—taking a death defying leap out a second-story window.

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