Support the Met Broadcasts Campaign

Broadcast Tradition

Founded in 1883, the Metropolitan Opera is the largest performing arts organization in the United States and one of the premiere opera companies in the world. The Met’s season at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center begins in September and runs through mid-May, for a total of 32 weeks, during which time the company performs an average of seven times per week. During the 2011–12 season, the Met will give over 225 performances of staged opera, with a repertory of 26 different works.

The first Metropolitan Opera broadcast was Hansel and Gretel on Christmas Day, 1931. After an initial series of corporate sponsors, American Tobacco, Listerine and RCA, the Met was left to fund the next few seasons without sponsorship. In 1940, Texaco stepped in to underwrite the cost of the broadcasts. For 64 years, until the final performance of Götterdämmerung on May 24, 2004, Texaco and, later, ChevronTexaco, provided financial stability and commitment to the broadcasts.

The weekly program of Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts is the longest continuing series in broadcast history. Since 1931, there have been over 1,560 Metropolitan Opera broadcasts of over 162 different operas. The Toll Brothers–Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network now extends to nearly 350 stations in the United States and is heard in over 40 countries on five continents. The Metropolitan Opera broadcasts have won more than 60 awards, including nine George Foster Peabody Awards, radio’s top honor.

During the 2011–12 season, the Metropolitan Opera will bring all seven of its new productions and 15 returning works from its repertory, plus two archival broadcasts (Johann Strauss’s’ Die Fledermaus with Patrice Munsel, Risë Stevens, and Richard Tucker, from 1951, and Bellini’s Norma with Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne, from 1970), to its nearly 11 million listeners around the world over The Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network.

The Metropolitan Opera broadcast season is sponsored by Toll Brothers, America’s luxury homebuilder®, with generous long-term support from The Annenberg Foundation, the Vincent A. Stabile Endowment for Broadcast Media and contributions from listeners worldwide.