Nightly Opera Streams, June 7–13

From 1960s Las Vegas to a seaside amusement park and beyond, this week of free Nightly Opera Streams showcases inventive productions that re-set the action of classic operas—with enlightening and exciting results. Explore the full lineup with this guide.

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

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.

In Phelim McDermott’s production of Così fan tutte, the cast shares the Met stage with sword swallowers, fire-eaters, and a live Burmese python. Set in a carnival fairground inspired by 1950s Coney Island, the director’s imaginative staging explores love, temptation, betrayal, and reconciliation amid the spectacle of the sideshow.

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.

French soprano Natalie Dessay is Amina, the sleepwalking heroine of Bellini’s La Sonnambula, in this exquisite aria from the opera’s second act.

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.

During the 2012–13 season, Thomas Adès’s The Tempest had a thrilling Met premiere, with the composer conducting Robert Lepage’s magical production and magnetic baritone Simon Keenlyside starring as Prospero.

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.

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.”

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.

Meet the talented troupe of performers, straight off the Coney Island midway, who bring authentic sideshow flair to Phelim McDermott’s production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte.

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.

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.

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

In advance of the April 2020 free Nightly Opera Stream of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, General Manager Peter Gelb, soprano Kelli O’Hara, and baritone Christopher Maltman gathered for a virtual panel discussion.

In anticipation of the 2012 Met premiere of his operatic version of The Tempest, composer Thomas Adès discussed his creative process and what it takes to be faithful to Shakespeare.

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.

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

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.

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.

While the Met presented Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro during its first decade of operation, the composer’s Così fan tutte didn’t arrive until 1922, when the company presented the opera’s U.S. premiere.

Director Robert Lepage discusses his fantastic, magic-infused staging of Thomas Adès The Tempest—and the opera’s Shakespearean origins—in this 2012 video.

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

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.

After nearly three decades staging the plays of Shakespeare, Robert Lepage turned to Thomas Adès’s operatic version of The Tempest, directing the work’s Met-premiere production in 2012.

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.

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