Met Opera Guild Podcast

This episode features a special conversation between Opera News Editor-in-Chief, F. Paul Driscoll, and the Met’s Assistant General Manager for Music Administration John Fisher, providing insight into the Met's 2017-18 season.

Dvořák's Czech masterpiece has opera returned to the Met this season with a new, fantastical production by Mary Zimmerman. Today’s episode features my co-host and Guild lecturer Naomi Barrettara in a pre-performance talk exploring the folklore sources behind the opera plot, as well as the musical fabric that bring this story to life.

Today's episode features an engaging interview with Met Opera chorus master, Donald Palumbo, originally recorded in November 2016. In it, we hear about Maestro Palumbo's path to the Met as well as his approach for preparing one of the world's best opera choruses.

With the Met's new production of Romeo et Juliette coming to theaters around the world this Saturday, January 21st, seasoned stage director Jay Lesenger explores Gounod's operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's most famous play.

In today's episode, a Talking About Opera lecture on Verdi's first big hit, which includes Verdi's path to success and a chorus that became an anthem of the Italian nationalist movement.

In this episode, Guild lecturer Naomi Barrettara takes an in depth look at the musical and dramatic elements of Strauss's Salome, as well as it's scandalous 1907 Met Opera premiere.

Just after it's Met premiere, Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin will be broadcast Live in HD to theaters around the world on Saturday, December 10, 2016. In this episode, we have a pre-performance lecture given by Naomi Barrettara with everything you need to know before seeing this stunning 21st-century opera.

Rossini's final opera, Guillaume Tell, is the grandest of them all. Composer and conductor Victoria Bond talks about the challenges and fireworks incorporated in this work as it comes to the Met stage for the first time in 80 years.

Perhaps Verdi's grandest opera, Aida has been a staple of the opera repertory since its first performance in 1871. Here is Bridget Paolucci talking about the musical and thematic highlights that make this opera an audience favorite.

Composed by Czech nationalist, Leos Janacek, Jenufa incorporates the beauties of Czech music, language, and culture while telling a disturbing story based on true events. Here, Yveta Graff takes us through the opera's plot and music, and the tells the history of its composition and early performances.

Don Giovanni is an ingenious fusion of bumbling comedy and the earnestness of tragedy. Here is former Met radio commentator Father Owen Lee and his Talking About Opera presentation on Mozart's hit.

From the famous opening "Tristan Chord" to the final "Liebstod," Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is considered a revolutionary work. Today, a closer look at the musical and dramatic layers of Wagner's masterpiece.

Tristan und Isolde opens the Met's 2016-17 season in a new production starring Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton, conducted by Simon Rattle. In this episode, an insider's perspective on Wagner's towering drama, as Opera News Editor-in-Chief, F. Paul Driscoll, sits down with the Met's Assistant General Manager for Music Administration, John Fisher.

For this episode, we are going to dip our toes into the wonderful world of languages with soprano Jane Marsh. Jane is a regular lecturer at the Met Opera Guild, and she is a language enthusiast, fluent in English, German, Italian, French, and Russian. Jane will be our language expert for today’s episode, and she will be guiding us through the pronunciation of composer, opera, and singer names that we have on the roster at the Met this season, focusing on Italian, German, and French. There are also musical examples included throughout the episode to illustrate the flavor of each language as it is sung.

Today’s episode features an exploration of Wagner’s GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG, concluding our mini-series of episodes on Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

We are now moving into part three of a four episode series on Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Each episode in this series covers one of the operas in the cycle, so you don’t necessarily have to listen to them in order to follow the content of the lecture, but if you want to get a sense of the chronology of the cycle, then we suggest listening to episodes 43 and 44 before starting this one. Our lecturer is the legendary Met Opera Radio Broadcast Host Peter Allen, and today he will be taking us through Wagner’s SIEGFRIED.

This episode is part two of a Talking About Opera recording on Wagner’s Ring Cycle. This mammoth work is comprised of four operas with interconnected stories that Wagner fashioned by combining various elements of Old Norse mythology. So for this week and next week’s episodes, we are releasing one episode per opera, in a series of lectures featuring former Met Opera Radio Broadcast Host Peter Allen.

The second half of the summer is a special time for German opera fans, as people from all over the world make a pilgrimage to Germany for the annual Bayreuth Festival. This festival is entirely dedicated to the operatic output of Richard Wagner, including performances of the entire Ring Cycle. For the next several episodes, we thought it would be fitting to take a tour through these amazing works via a 4-part Talking About Opera program with former Met Opera Radio Broadcast Host Peter Allen. Episode 43 begins with the first opera in the cycle, DAS RHEINGOLD.

This week we are happy to present our third and final instalment of Memories from the Golden Horseshoe. This series features Met radio commentator Ira Siff, regaling us with his memories of performances he witnessed at the old Metropolitan Opera house in its final years between 1961 and 1966.

Picking up right where we left off in Episode 41, Part 1, this is Part 2 of a Talking About Opera lecture, with Bridget Paolucci discussing Verdi's FALSTAFF.