Nightly Opera Streams, March 15–21

Enjoy a week of Nightly Opera Streams curated by viewers around the globe. Explore the exciting lineup this guide.

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

Shortly before the Met premiere of Glass’s Akhnaten, its star Anthony Roth Costanzo joined with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Mannes Orchestra, and Gandini Juggling to perform excerpts at the Brooklyn Museum.

Learn more about Handel’s searing political satire, which had its Met premiere during the 2019–20 season.

Star diva Anna Netrebko opened the 2011–12 season in the title role of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, headlining Sir David McVicar’s historically detailed Met-premiere production.

Designer Catherine Zuber has charmed theatergoers—and won seven Tony Awards—for her breathtaking costumes for the Great White Way. Before the 2006 premiere of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Zuber talked about sexing up the look of Rossini’s classic comedy.

With his production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, which opened during the 2009–10 season, director Bartlett Sher created a Kafkaesque new staging of Offenbach’s phantasmagorical masterpiece.

The 2019–20 season saw the company premiere of Philip Glass’s transcendental Akhnaten, which starred countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo as the enigmatic title pharaoh who radically transformed ancient Egyptian society. 

Hear directly from Juan Diego Flórez and Peter Mattei, stars of the Live in HD performance of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, about what it takes to make Rossini’s music sing.

Joyce DiDonato discusses the mixture of ruthless political machinations and black comedy that makes Handel’s Agrippina—in which she plays the title role of the notorious Roman empress—so fascinating and rewarding.

Dive into the details of the visionary pharaoh Akhnaten’s ecstatic Hymn to the Sun with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and host Rhiannon Giddens in this episode of our Aria Code podcast, a collaboration with WQXR.

The 1910 world premiere of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West at the Met was an enormous event for the then-young company. This Playbill article from the 2010 performances of the opera takes a look at that historic occasion from a century on.

One of the most memorable aspects of Phelim McDermott’s production of Akhnaten, created in collaboration with the pioneering theater group Improbable, is its incorporation of mesmerizing juggling, designed by choreographer and juggling master Sean Gandini, which seems to make Philip Glass’s music appear before your very eyes.

The revival of the bel canto repertoire that began in the mid–20th century was late in coming to the Met, but the company has made up for lost time in recent years, including with important productions of Donizetti’s three operas based on the lives of Anne Boleyn, Mary Stuart, and Elizabeth I.

A gun-slinging heroine. A romantic tale of the Wild West. The first great opera with an American setting. Learn more about Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West with our In Focus podcast.

When an artist appears on the Met stage, there is generally some noise—but not for Rob Besserer, who appears in Il Barbiere di Siviglia in the mute role of Ambrogio.

To open the 2011–12 season, Anna Netrebko gave the company its first-ever portrayal of Donizetti’s Anne Boleyn. In this video about the Met premiere production of Anna Bolena, Netrebko and director David McVicar discuss the dazzling opera’s many merits.

Orchestra and stage rehearsals, costume fittings, and conversations with the all-star cast: Go backstage with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Renée Fleming, and conductor Valery Gergiev as they prepare for the 2007 performances of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.

Dive into the details of Hoffmann’s aria “Ô Dieu! de quelle ivresse” with tenor Matthew Polenzani and host Rhiannon Giddens in this episode of our Aria Code podcast, a collaboration with WQXR.

During the 2019–20 season, the Met presented Agrippina for the first time, in a pointed production by Sir David McVicar that amplified the work’s satirical relevance.

Tchaikovsky’s romantic adaptation of Pushkin got a slow start at the Metropolitan, but, especially in recent decades, it has become the most popular Russian opera in the company’s repertoire.

The inventive director discusses his ritualistic, dreamlike production of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten—including a virtuosic troupe of acrobats and jugglers—which had its Met premiere on November 8, 2019.

Superstar soprano Anna Netrebko has appeared in more Live in HD transmissions than any other principal artist. Watch highlights from a dozen of her roles, including this week’s stream of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur.

The extraordinary and beloved Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who died in 2017, is featured in this week’s stream of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.

Visionary set and costume designer John Macfarlane’s versatile aesthetic was on display in two very different new productions during the 2019–20 season, Handel’s Agrippina and Wagner’s Der Fliegende Höllander, the former of which streams this week.

While the company hadn’t presented an opera by Handel before 1984, in recent years, the composer’s works have appeared with increasing frequency on the Met stage.

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