Nightly Opera Streams, November 16–22

This week celebrates Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, with seven of the maestro’s most exciting appearances in our Live in HD series. Learn more about the full lineup with this guide.

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

Since his 2009 debut, Yannick Nézet-Séguin has become one of the Met’s most popular and accomplished artists, beloved by audiences, singers, orchestra musicians, and staff for his superior musical gifts and all-around good vibes. And with the start of the 2018–19 season, he became a central part of the company, taking on the role of the company's Music Director.

This short documentary takes you behind the scenes as Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin works with soprano Diana Damrau and the Met Orchestra to prepare a new production of La Traviata, which opened in December 2018.

Swedish baritone Peter Mattei, one of opera’s great singing actors, added another chapter to his Met legacy in 2019 with his role debut as the title character of Berg’s Wozzeck.

The Met’s Dialogues des Carmélites production by John Dexter is one of the company’s most successful and admired stagings. Learn about how it came to be.

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.

A highlight of last spring’s At-Home Gala, the Met Orchestra and Chorus came together through nearly 100 individually recorded videos to perform “Va, pensiero” from Verdi’s Nabucco, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Works by three leading Czech composers—Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, and Leoš Janáček—have gained increasing popularity at the Metropolitan.

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

Renée Fleming, one of the most celebrated exponents of the title role of Dvořák’s Rusalka, discusses the impact the lonely water sprite has had on her career in this 2014 Live in HD interview with host Susan Graham.

South African artist and director William Kentridge has been responsible for three of the Met’s most thought-provoking productions in recent years—including the company’s first new staging of Berg’s Wozzeck in more than 20 years.

In the Met’s 2011 production of Gounod’s Faust, which starred Jonas Kaufmann, director Des McAnuff reimagined the classic legend with a dreamlike staging set in the first half of the 20th century.

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.

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.

An ordinary soldier is driven to madness and murder by an intolerable cocktail of humiliation, jealousy, and the indignities of daily life. Learn more about Berg's Wozzeck with our In Focus podcast.

At the beginning of a 2020 rehearsal for a run of Massenet’s Werther that was sadly canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the cast and Met Orchestra gave Maestro Nézet-Séguin a special birthday surprise.

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.

As he prepared to take the podium for the 2014 revival of Rusalka, Yannick Nézet-Séguin discussed his love for Dvořák’s dark fairy-tale opera.

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.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin brought his first season as Met Music Director to a close with Dialogues des Carmélites in May 2019. As he prepared to lead Poulenc’s powerful opera of faith and martyrdom, he spoke about what makes this masterpiece of 20th-century music unique.

Amid the chaos of the French Revolution, an order of nuns commit the ultimate act of martyrdom, giving opera one of its most devastating and unforgettable final scenes. Learn more about Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites with our In Focus podcast.

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.

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.

Tony Award–winning director Des McAnuff discusses his dreamlike, 20th-century staging of Faust, Gounod’s classic operatic take on the elderly scholar who sells his soul in return for eternal youth.

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.

Peter Mattei and Elza van den Heever, as Wozzeck and Marie, rehearse with Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Met Orchestra shortly before the premiere of William Kentridge’s new production this past winter.

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.

In advance of his second season as Met Music Director—which saw him lead performances of Berg’s Wozzeck and Puccini’s Turandot—Yannick Nézet-Séguin spoke about adding these 20th-century masterpieces to his company repertoire.

Enjoy on-demand access to the Met's entire catalog of more than 800 complete performances on all your favorite devices with our subscription streaming service. Start your seven-day free trial today.