Nightly Opera Streams, May 31–June 6

This week of free streams showcases some of the operatic masterpieces featured in Aria Code, our insightful and entertaining podcast created in collaboration with WQXR. Learn more with this guide.

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

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin explores one of the great operatic anthems of hope, “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s Turandot.

Dive into the details of Turandot’s fearsome “In questa reggia” with soprano Christine Goerke.

Mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča discusses Dalila’s signature aria “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila.

Tenor Roberto Alagna explores Don José’s devastating Flower Song from Bizet's Carmen.

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

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

Explore Lady Macbeth’s legendary sleepwalking scene with soprano Anna Netrebko.

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.

Explore the full catalog of Aria Code episodes, including the newly released third season.

Take a look behind the scenes at how the Met’s stage managers, the company’s backstage generals, marshal the vast theatrical forces required for Franco Zeffirelli’s grand staging of Puccini’s Turandot.

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.

In Richard Eyre’s production of Bizet’s masterpiece, which premiered during the 2009–10 season, Carmen’s life-or-death quest for freedom is driven by sex.

Before appearing in the 2019 revival of La Fille di Régiment, legendary actress Kathleen Turner discussed making her operatic debut in Donizetti’s hilarious comedy.

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.

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

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.

Year in and year out, the 110 artisans in the Met costume shops are responsible for clothing the multitudes that fill the stage night after night—from Chinese ministers to Russian aristocrats to the humble inhabitants of Catfish Row.

In 2014, Anna Netrebko made her sensational Met role debut as Lady Macbeth. In this backstage interview from the Live in HD transmission, host Anita Rachvelishvili asks the soprano about her approach to the fiery antiheroine.

Take a peek behind the scenes in this time-lapse video documenting the Met scenic shop’s work on an enormous set piece for Darko Tresnjak’s 2018 production of Samson et Dalila.

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. 

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.

Before the curtain went up on their new production of Samson et Dalila, director Darko Tresnjak, set designer Alexander Dodge, and costume designer Linda Cho discussed collaborating on more than 50 productions and making their Met debuts together.

Our exhibition chronicling the extensive contributions made by African American artists at the Met and the decades-long struggle for racial equality at the nation's leading opera company—originally installed in the opera house in connection with the 2019 new production of Porgy and Bess—is now available in digital format.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Follow along with this week’s stream of La Fille du Régiment with a graphic-novel version of the synopsis—perfect for younger opera lovers. 

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