Nightly Opera Streams, January 25–31

This week of free streams celebrates the operatic bad boys that audiences love to hate. Dive into the full lineup with this guide.

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

Setting sail in March 2020, François Girard’s evocative new production of Der Fliegende Holländer explores the mystical nature of the opera and the power of images to consume us.

An avid cook as well as a leading baritone,  Ambrogio Maestri showed Renée Fleming how he rustles up his signature Risotto Salsiccia e Funghi and discussed singing the title role of Falstaff during the 2013 Live in HD transmission.

Joyce DiDonato speaks with director Michael Mayer and two of the stars of his neon-bedecked staging of Verdi’s Rigoletto—Željko Lučić and Piotr Beczała—during an early rehearsal for the production.

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.

A spectral sea captain, cursed to wander the open ocean for eternity—unless the true love of a woman can save him. Learn more about Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer with our In Focus podcast.

The Met’s compelling production of Verdi’s Macbeth is infused with the Shakespearean expertise of director Adrian Noble, onetime leader of Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company.

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.

In this podcast episode, soprano Nadine Sierra and host Rhiannon Giddens discuss the overwhelming emotions of young love and dive into the details of Gilda’s breathtaking Act I aria, “Caro nome.”

Baritone Željko Lučić has sung many of Verdi’s greatest roles at the Met, including the title character of Macbeth, which he has sung with the company in three different seasons. In this interview preceding the 2019 revival, he spoke about his evolving view of the character and his devotion to Verdi’s music.

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

Based on one of the Bard’s eeriest plays, Verdi’s grim tragedy has courted controversy and scandal from even before its 1959 Met premiere.

In an early rehearsal for François Girard’s striking new production of Der Fliegende Holländer, soprano Anja Kampe is joined by choristers and dancers to weave what the director calls “the net of destiny.”

Verdi’s final masterpiece, Falstaff—with its quicksilver ensembles and vivid characterizations—is a celebration of living in the moment, says director Robert Carsen, who brought a new production of the opera to the Met in 2013.

Go behind the scenes of the creation of Bartlett Sher’s Met-premiere staging of Rossini’s whimsical comedy Le Comte Ory.

Award-winning set designer Christine Jones discusses bringing Verdi’s Rigoletto into the neon age in Michael Mayer’s Las Vegas–inspired production.

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.

Learn about the storied history of Wagner’s operas at the Met, from the house’s opening season in 1883 to the present day.

Director Michael Mayer explores the connection between Verdi’s Rigoletto and the lurid underworld of 1960s Las Vegas, where his production is set, in this 2013 video.

The director of the Met’s vivacious staging of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory discusses his take on the opera in this video looking forward to the production’s 2011 premiere.

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.

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