Nightly Opera Streams, July 19–25

After 70 weeks, 112 different operas, and 21.2 million people tuning in from 152 countries, our series of free Nightly Opera Streams reaches its grand finale—with a week of exceptional performances chosen by viewers. Explore the full lineup with this guide.

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

In the latest episode of our Aria Code podcast, created in collaboration with WQXR, soprano Erin Morley and host Rhiannon Giddens dive into the dizzying Doll Song from Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann.

The extraordinary and beloved Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who died in 2017, appears in this week’s streams of Un Ballo in Maschera and Il Trovatore. Learn more about his celebrated Met career and watch highlights from all of his Live in HD performances.

Penny Woolcock’s spectacular production of Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles, which premiered in 2015, enlisted projection designers and acrobats to conjure the opera’s evocative aquatic setting. Learn more about the stunning diving sequences in this behind-the-scenes video.

Throwing herself wholly into every role she played, French soprano Natalie Dessay was one of the Met’s most magnetic artists for nearly two decades.

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

Learn more about Tonio’s spectacular aria “Ah! Mes amis ... Pour mon âme” and its parade of high Cs with tenor Javier Camarena.

One of opera’s greatest voices, Dolora Zajick has delivered knockout Met performances of many of the repertory’s most dramatic mezzo-soprano roles over the past three decades.

Soprano Erin Morley, who sings the automaton Olympia in this week’s stream of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, made a splash in the At-Home Gala last year with her self-accompanied tour-de-force performance of an aria from Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment.

Jacques Offenbach’s kaleidoscopic opera has a Met legacy boasting numerous outstanding artists who have portrayed the hapless title poet and his lost loves and nemeses.

Bizet’s melody-rich Les Pêcheurs de Perles returned to the Met repertory for the first time in 100 years during the 2015–16 season, in a sumptuous production by Penny Woolcock.

Teresa Stratas, who sings Nedda in this week’s stream of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, enjoyed a Met career spanning more than three decades.  Read more about this fascinating and elusive artist.

Take a look at some of the great Met tenors who have thrilled audiences with their signature portrayals of Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana and Canio in Pagliacci.

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.

Drawn from every era of operatic composition, from the Baroque to the modern day, a wide array of enthralling French works have appeared on the Met stage.

Diana Damrau, who starred as Leïla in the 2015 premiere of Penny Woolcock’s production of Les Pêcheurs de Perles, explains why Bizet’s heroine is stronger than she seems.

During the 2008 Live in HD transmission of Puccini's La Bohème, streamed this week, the celebrated director and designer Franco Zeffirelli was honored in an onstage presentation. This short video also includes excerpts from all his Met productions and comments from Zeffirelli himself.

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.

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.

In Sir David McVicar’s 2009 staging, Verdi’s Il Trovatore reclaimed its place as a dramatic—not just musical—masterwork.

With his 2012 production of Un Ballo in Maschera, set in a cinematic Swedish atmosphere, director David Alden aimed to integrate the stylistic paradoxes of Verdi’s endlessly intriguing opera.

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