Enjoy our social distancing programming featuring some of our Broadway’s Best lineup, Now Hear This, Rupert Goold’s Macbeth, and more. In these unprecedented times, we hope you and your loved ones are staying safe and healthy. All of us at Great Performances are dedicated to carrying on our legacy of bringing the best of the performing arts to you.
Macbeth
Available through December 31
Following a London West End run in December 2007, a sold-out limited engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in March 2008, and an eight-week run on Broadway, director Rupert Goold’s stage production of Macbeth was filmed for television at the end of 2009 with Patrick Stewart in his Tony-nominated performance as the ambitious general, and Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood as his scheming wife.
Doubt from the Minnesota Opera
Available through June 22
Watch an adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s hit 2005 Broadway play and the 2008 film about suspicion leading to a battle of wills at a Bronx Catholic school. Starring Christine Brewer, Adriana Zabala, Matthew Worth and Denyce Graves.
Orphée et Eurydice from Lyric Opera of Chicago
Available through June 22
Experience Christoph Willibald Gluck’s enduringly popular French-language opera based on the famous Greek myth. From Lyric Opera of Chicago in collaboration with The Joffrey Ballet. Starring Dmitry Korchak, Andriana Chuchman and Lauren Snouffer.
Much Ado About Nothing
Available through June 7
This bold interpretation of Shakespeare’s comedic masterpiece features Danielle Brooks (“Orange is the New Black,” Broadway’s “The Color Purple”) and Grantham Coleman (“Buzzer,” “The Americans”) as the sparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick.
Noël Coward’s Present Laughter
Available through May 27
Kevin Kline’s Tony Award®-winning performance in Noël Coward’s Present Laughter, first produced in 1942 with Coward himself in the leading role.
Red
Available through May 27
Award-winning stage and screen actor Alfred Molina reprises his critically acclaimed performance as the American abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko in playwright John Logan’s Tony Award-winning 2010 play Red.
The Sound of Music
Available through May 27
Beloved by generations of audiences worldwide, The Sound of Music tells the inspiring true story of the von Trapp Family Singers and their escape from Austria during the rise of Nazism. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1959 hit stage musical garnered five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and the blockbuster 1965 movie adaptation won five Oscars, including Best Picture.
Great Performances presents the 2015 live U.K. broadcast version starring Kara Tointon as Maria, Julian Ovenden as Captain von Trapp, Katherine Kelly as Baroness Schraeder, Alexander Armstrong as Max, and Maria Friedman as the Mother Abbess. Cinematically photographed on adjoining sound stages, the production offers a more naturalistic interpretation of this great classic of the American musical theater. Among the many classic songs featured in the score are “The Sound of Music,” “My Favorite Things,” “Do-Re-Mi,” “Climb Every Mountain,” “Edelweiss” and more.
Harold Prince: The Director’s Life
Available through May 27
This Great Performances retrospective celebrates the extraordinary career of producer and director Harold Prince, whose seven decades in the theater spanned from Broadway’s “Golden Age” to the contemporary blockbusters of today.
Winner of 21 Tony Awards (the most of any individual), Prince’s peerless résumé includes such legendary shows as “West Side Story,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Cabaret,” “Company,” “Follies,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Evita,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and many more. In addition to archival clips, this fascinating performance-documentary includes interviews with many of Prince’s renowned collaborators, including Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Mandy Patinkin, John Kander, Susan Stroman, Angela Lansbury and others, all sharing their firsthand insights into his pioneering achievements in the theater.
Now Hear This: Vivaldi: Something Completely Different
Available through May 27
In the series premiere of Great Performances: Now Hear This, host Scott Yoo crosses Northern Italy, chasing the story of one of the most recorded pieces of music in the world, Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” and discovers how the composer merged religious melodies, opera and a new level of violin playing to launch a new era of music. On the journey, Yoo discovers a new Vivaldi work, his connection to Stradivarius, a trove of original manuscripts and how Vivaldi’s music was almost lost to history.
Now Hear This: The Riddle of Bach
Available through May 27
In the second episode of Great Performances: Now Hear This, host Scott Yoo goes to Germany to learn Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas and partitas, widely considered among the greatest works ever written for solo violin. There, Yoo discovers a riddle Bach left behind in his portrait. In trying to solve it, Yoo and his wife, leading flutist Alice Dade, discover that Bach based his melodic style on Vivaldi and his rhythms on the music of the French court, which leads to a spectacular finale in Paris.
The Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood
Available through May 27
In honor of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, Tanglewood—the famed summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra—dedicated its entire 2018 season to the iconic composer, conductor, performer, educator and humanitarian. Hosted by Audra McDonald, Great Performances: The Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood features appearances by prominent conductors Andris Nelsons, Christoph Eschenbach, Keith Lockhart, John Williams and Michael Tilson Thomas leading an incredible orchestra made up of musicians from some of the organizations most important to Bernstein.
The Cleveland Orchestra Centennial Celebration
Available through May 27
Great Performances: The Cleveland Orchestra Centennial Celebration commemorates the centennial of the orchestra’s founding with a gala concert conducted by music director Franz Welser-Möst featuring works touching on more than a century of Viennese musical traditions. World-renowned, Grammy-nominated pianist Lang Lang joins the orchestra in a special performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24.