Nightly Opera Streams, December 7–13

This week of Nightly Met Opera Streams features seven musical masterpieces sung in English. Explore the full lineup with this informative guide.

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

Learn about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant Manhattan Project physicist at the center of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic.

The Met’s new production of Porgy and Bess was a sold-out sensation, thanks in no small part to its choreographer Camille A. Brown, a native New Yorker whose work has also dazzled on Broadway and national television.

Between 1910 and 1937, new works flourished on the Met stage as the company committed to presenting a number of operas by contemporary American composers.

Teresa Stratas, who gives a tour-de-force performance as Marie Antoinette in this week’s stream of Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, enjoyed a Met career spanning more than three decades.  Read more about this fascinating and elusive artist.

Friends and colleagues of the great English composer reflect on his incomparable musical legacy.

Host Rhiannon Giddens explores the enduring legacy of the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess in an episode of our Aria Code podcast.

In anticipation of the 2012 Met premiere of his operatic version of The Tempest, composer Thomas Adès discussed his creative process and what it takes to be faithful to Shakespeare.

Thomas Adès’s brilliant new opera The Exterminating Angel received its highly anticipated North American premiere at the Met following acclaimed runs in Salzburg and London. The production, directed by Tom Cairns, embraced the mesmerizing weirdness of the opera.

American composer John Adams reflects on his work at the forefront of modern opera, his sources of inspiration, and the telltale signs of a good story.

Colin Graham, who directed the world premiere of The Ghosts of Versailles at the Met, explains why John Corigliano’s opera offers a message of hope and compassion perfect for our time.

When searching for an instrument to give voice to the imprisoning force that traps a group of chic dinner guests in The Exterminating Angel, composer Thomas Adès settled upon an early electronic instrument from the 1920s.

When James Robinson’s new production of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess opened the Met’s 2019–20 season, it marked the latest chapter in the endlessly fascinating journey of what many believe is our nation’s greatest homegrown opera.

In his 2008 production of Britten’s Peter Grimes, director John Doyle examines one of opera’s most intriguing outcasts and the community that judges him.

In his remarkable Doctor Atomic, composer John Adams explores the life and work of Robert Oppenheimer and the march toward one of the most controversial inventions of 20th-century science.

In January 2020, cast members of the Met’s hit new production of Porgy and Bess—including bass-baritone Eric Owens and choreographer Camille A. Brown—came together for a fascinating conversation moderated by Terrance McKnight.

Director Robert Lepage discusses his fantastic, magic-infused staging of Thomas Adès The Tempest—and the opera’s Shakespearean origins—in this 2012 video.

Live in HD host Nadine Sierra chats backstage with composer Thomas Adès about his stunning and surreal opera The Exterminating Angel, along with two of the production’s stars, Amanda Echalaz and Joseph Kaiser.

During the 2012–13 season, Thomas Adès’s The Tempest had a thrilling Met premiere, with the composer conducting Robert Lepage’s magical production and magnetic baritone Simon Keenlyside starring as Prospero.

Learn about the Met career of great American baritone Cornell MacNeil, one of the great singers of the second half of the 20th century, who stars in this week’s stream of Puccini’s Tosca.

On Opening Night of the 2019–20 season, nearly every member of the 60-person chorus of Porgy and Bess was appearing on the Met stage for the very first time. Get to know just a few members of this superb ensemble.

After nearly three decades staging the plays of Shakespeare, Robert Lepage turned to Thomas Adès’s operatic version of The Tempest, directing the work’s Met-premiere production in 2012.

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