New York, NY (May 18, 2007)—Beginning Friday, May 18 at 8:00 p.m., opera fans will have the opportunity to re-live memorable performances from the Met’s 2006-07 season. On Friday nights through September, Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS Satellite Radio will broadcast performances recorded during the 2006-07 season, including the opening night performances of three acclaimed new productions: Madama Butterfly (May 18), Il Barbiere di Siviglia (June 1), and The First Emperor (June 29). Met Music Director James Levine conducts four of the performances on the schedule, which includes a total of 19 notable performances from the season’s repertory. Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Channel 85) launched as a 24/7 channel in September 2006 and is available to SIRIUS subscribers in the United States and Canada.
The encore broadcast series on Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS is scheduled as follows:
May 18, 2007
Puccini: Madama Butterfly (9/25/06)—New Production Premiere/2006-07 Season Opening Night Gala Performance
Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Maria Zifchak, Marcello Giordani, Dwayne Croft. Conducted by James Levine.
May 25, 2007
Gounod: Faust (10/12/06)
Ruth Ann Swenson, Karine Deshayes, Ramón Vargas, Tommi Hakala, Ildar Abdrazakov. Conducted by Bertrand de Billy.
June 1, 2007
Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (11/10/06)—New Production Premiere
Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Flórez, Peter Mattei, John Del Carlo, Samuel Ramey. Conducted by Maurizio Benini.
June 8, 2007
Mozart: Idomeneo (11/29/06)
Dorothea Röschmann, Alexandra Deshorties, Magdalena Kožená, Kobie van Rensburg. Conducted by James Levine.
June 15, 2007
Verdi: Don Carlo (11/30/06)
Patricia Racette, Olga Borodina, Johan Botha, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, René Pape, Samuel Ramey. Conducted by James Levine.
June 22, 2007
Verdi: Rigoletto (12/19/06)
Ekaterina Siurina, Kate Aldrich, Piotr Beczala, Carlos Alvarez, Robert Lloyd. Conducted by Friedrich Haider.
June 29, 2007
Tan Dun: The First Emperor (12/21/06)—World Premiere
Elizabeth Futral, Michelle DeYoung, Plácido Domingo, Paul Groves, Hao Jiang Tian, Wu Hsing-Kuo. Conducted by Tan Dun.
July 6, 2007
Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (1/8/07)
Lisa Milne, Erika Miklósa, Matthew Polenzani, Rodion Pogossov, Eike Wilm Schulte, René Pape. Conducted by Scott Bergeson.
July 13, 2007
Bellini: I Puritani (1/11/07)
Anna Netrebko, Eric Cutler, Franco Vassallo, John Relyea. Conducted by Patrick Summers.
July 20, 2007
Puccini: La Bohème (1/24/07)
Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Ainhoa Arteta, Marcello Giordani, Dwayne Croft, Aaron St. Clair Nicholson, John Relyea, Paul Plishka. Conducted by Carlo Rizzi.
July 27, 2007
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana / Leoncavallo: Pagliacci (1/30/07)
Dolora Zajick, Salvatore Licitra, Mark Delavan/Krassimira Stoyanova, Salvatore Licitra, Lado Ataneli. Conducted by Marco Armiliato.
August 3, 2007
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin (2/9/07)
Renée Fleming, Ramón Vargas, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Sergei Aleksashkin. Conducted by Valery Gergiev.
August 10, 2007
Verdi: Simon Boccanegra (2/19/07)
Angela Gheorghiu, Marcello Giordani, Thomas Hampson, Ferruccio Furlanetto. Conducted by Fabio Luisi.
August 17, 2007
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (3/1/2007)
Hei-Kyung Hong, Maria Zifchak, Johan Botha, Matthew Polenzani, James Morris, Hans-Joachim Ketelsen, Evgeny Nikitin. Conducted by James Levine.
August 24, 2007
Verdi: La Traviata (3/7/07)
Krassimira Stoyanova, Jonas Kaufmann, Dwayne Croft. Conducted by Marco Armiliato.
August 31, 2007
Strauss: Die Ägyptische Helena (3/19/07)—New Production
Deborah Voigt, Diana Damrau, Jill Grove, Michael Hendrick, Garrett Sorenson, Wolfgang Brendel. Conducted by Fabio Luisi.
September 7, 2007
Giordano: Andrea Chénier (3/26/07)
Violeta Urmana, Ben Heppner, Mark Delavan. Conducted by Marco Armiliato.
September 14, 2007
Handel: Giulio Cesare (4/10/07)
Ruth Ann Swenson, Alice Coote, Patricia Bardon, David Daniels, Lawrence Zazzo. Conducted by Harry Bicket.
September 21, 2007
Puccini: Turandot (4/25/07)
Erika Sunnegårdh, Liping Zhang, Richard Margison, Hao Jiang Tian. Conducted by Marco Armiliato.
About the Met
Under the leadership of General Manager Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera has launched many new initiatives to connect the company with a larger audience, including free open houses that offer the public access to final dress rehearsals of Met new productions; reduced ticket prices, including an immensely popular new rush ticket program; and the new Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, which exhibits contemporary art inspired by operas in the Met’s repertory.
Building on its 76-year-old international radio broadcast history, the Met recently began to use advanced media distribution platforms and state-of-the-art technology to attract new audiences and reach millions of opera fans around the world. In addition to Metropolitan Opera Radio on Sirius and the Met’s Saturday matinee terrestrial radio broadcasts sponsored by Toll Brothers, with generous long-term support from the Annenberg Foundation and the Vincent A. Stabile Foundation, the Met also presents free live streaming of performances on its website once every week during the season with support from RealNetworks®.
In 2006, the company launched “Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD,” a series of six live performance transmissions, shown in high definition in movie theaters throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. The series met with overwhelming success and played to sold-out houses, prompting many theaters to schedule encore showings. These performances are subsequently being broadcast on PBS, as part of a new “Great Performances at the Met” series. “Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD” expands from six to eight opera transmissions in 2007-08, beginning with Roméo et Juliette on December 15.