From Natalie Dessay and Anna Netrebko to Juan Diego Flórez and Jonas Kaufmann, see show-stopping excerpts from “Carmen,” “Rigoletto,” “La Bohème,” and more, hosted by soprano Deborah Voigt.
Deborah Voigt. Photo by Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera.
Hosted by Deborah Voigt, from the Grand Staircase of the Metropolitan Opera house in New York City, the special covers a wide range of operatic ground, from heartbreak to hilarity, delivered by such artists as Natalie Dessay, Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Juan Diego Flórez, Jonas Kaufmann, and Anna Netrebko, along with Voigt herself. These extraordinary moments, selected from more than 75 productions, were initially seen as part of the Met’s global Live in HD movie-theater transmissions, and later shared with PBS audiences as presentations of Great Performances at the Met.
These broadcast performances are the “high pressure performances that separate the divas from the girls,” says Voigt with a twinkle in her eye. The musical excerpts are interspersed with commentary by Voigt and some backstage interviews with the singers.
Music Program
“Chacun le sait, chacun le dit”
La Fille du Régiment (Donizetti)
Natalie Dessay
“Ah, mes amis”
La Fille du Régiment (Donizetti)
Juan Diego Flórez
“Figlia impura di Bolena”
Maria Stuarda (Donizetti)
Joyce DiDonato, Elza van den Heever
“Pourquoi me réveiller”
Werther (Massenet)
Jonas Kaufmann
Final Scene, Carmen (Bizet)
Elīna Garanča, Roberto Alagna
“So anch’io la virtù magica”
Don Pasquale (Donizetti)
Anna Netrebko
“How soft and sweet your magic tone”
The Magic Flute (Mozart)
Matthew Polenzani
“En proie à la tristesse”
Le Comte Ory (Rossini)
Diana Damrau
“Plebe! Patrizi!”
Simon Boccanegra (Verdi)
Plácido Domingo
with Adrianne Pieczonka, Marcello Giordani, James Morris
Final Scene, Eugene Onegin (Tchaikovsky)
Renée Fleming, Dmitri Hvorostovsky
“Largo al factotum”
Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini)
Peter Mattei
“Fin ch’han dal vino”
Don Giovanni (Mozart)
Mariusz Kwiecien
“D’amor sull’ali rosee”
Il Trovatore (Verdi)
Sondra Radvanovsky
“Mild und leise wie er lächelt”
Tristan und Isolde (Wagner)
Deborah Voigt
“Questa o quella”
Rigoletto (Verdi)
Piotr Beczala
“Un bel dì vedremo”
Madama Butterfly (Puccini)
Patricia Racette
Death Scene, Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky)
René Pape
“O soave fanciulla”
La Bohème (Puccini)
Kristine Opolais, Vittorio Grigolo
“Loge, hör!”
Die Walküre (Wagner)
Bryn Terfel
Encores! Great Performances at the Met is produced by THIRTEEN Productions LLC for WNET. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer and David Horn is executive producer.
Corporate support for Great Performances at the Met is provided by Toll Brothers, America’s luxury home builder®, with additional funding by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, The LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, Rosalind P. Walter, The Agnes Varis Trust, The Starr Foundation, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, and PBS.
