Nightly Opera Streams, April 20–26

From chilling psychodrama to effervescent comedy, this guide will help you make sense of this week’s captivating lineup of operas.

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

In this video, follow director and choreographer Susan Stroman as she works on Lehár’s witty, waltzing operetta, with commentary from Renée Fleming, Nathan Gunn, and Kelli O’Hara.

Strauss’s overwhelming one-act opera has a limited but distinguished history at the Met, thanks largely to a series of great artists on the podium and in the title role.

Love, heartbreak, and death: a classic tragedy and a classic opera. Learn more about Verdi’s La Traviata with our In Focus podcast

Sir David McVicar's production of Puccini’s classic melodrama Tosca transports audiences to the gritty, glittering, and gripping world of Rome in 1800.

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and host Rhiannon Giddens discuss the title character’s aria “Nacqui all’affanno … Non più mesta” in this episode of our Aria Code podcast, a collaboration with WQXR.

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.

Before the 2016 premiere of Patrice Chéreau’s staging of Elektra, three of the late director’s collaborators discussed his detailed approach to art, music, theater, and people.

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.

“There’s a certain grandeur that needs to be onstage.” Sir David McVicar discusses his monumental production of Puccini’s Tosca, which premiered at the Met on New Year’s Eve, 2017.

Live in HD host Deborah Voigt asks Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez how they mastered the florid bel canto style of La Cenerentola, Rossini’s effervescent take on the Cinderella story.

Resources from the Met’s education department are available for many of the operas featured in this streaming series. Designed for use in the classroom, they are perfect for parents whose kids are now learning from home, or for anyone who’d like to know more about opera.

In his elegant and insightful production, director Willy Decker explores why audiences have adored the heroine of La Traviata for more than a century and a half.

With its deep Freudian undercurrents, Strauss’s incendiary Elektra, inspired by Greek myth, is as modern now as it was at its premiere more than a century ago.

Before headlining Sir David McVicar’s new production of Tosca, Sonya Yoncheva discussed the challenges and rewards of embodying Puccini’s “completely passionate” title diva.

Susan Stroman’s production of The Merry Widow opened on New Year’s Eve 2014, with Renée Fleming in the title role. Before the premiere, star and director spoke about the enduring charms of Lehár’s enchanting operetta.

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.

As he prepared to conduct Patrice Chéreau’s explosive staging of Elektra in 2016, Esa-Pekka Salonen explained how Strauss’s liminal 20th-century masterpiece blends musical styles.