The Opera at Noon brings listeners to opera houses around the world for incredible performances of this art form that dates back to the 16th Century.
February 4: Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth
Performance from February 3, 1973
The ingenious works of William Shakespeare have long inspired—and continue to inspire—composers to create theatrical masterpieces of their own. Verdi turned to the Bard throughout his career, adapting three of his plays for the operatic stage and long hoping to set a fourth, King Lear, to music. His first Shakespearean drama, a chilling take on Macbeth, matches the eerie tone of the source material with a score equally as dark and unsettling—not to mention one of opera’s most hair-raising villainesses. In this 1973 radio broadcast, baritone Sherrill Milnes gives a commanding performance as the tortured title character, alongside soprano Martina Arroyo as his bloodthirsty conssort, Lady Macbeth. A veteran of more than 300 Met performances, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli takes the podium to conduct the gripping performance, which also stars tenor Franco Tagliavini as Macduff and bass-baritone Ruggero Raimondi as Banquo.
February 11: Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci
Performance from February 7, 1970
The Met commemorates the centenary of director Franco Zeffirelli with a historic performance featuring Leonard Bernstein conducting Grace Bumbry and Franco Corelli in Cavalleria Rusticana, and Fausto Cleva conducting Teresa Stratas and Richard Tucker in Pagliacci.
February 18: Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo
Performance from fall 2022
Carlo Rizzi; Russell Thomas (Don Carlo), Eleonora Buratto (Elisabetta di Valois), Peter Mattei (Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa), Yulia Matochkina (Princess Eboli), Günther Groissböck (King Filippo II), John Relyea (The Grand Inquisitor)
February 25: Dmitri Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Performance from October 12, 2022
Keri-Lynn Wilson; Svetlana Sozdateleva (Katerina Ismailova), Brandon Jovanovich (Sergei), John Relyea (Boris Ismailov), Nikolai Schukoff (Zinovy Ismailov), Alexey Shishlyaev (Police Sergeant), Rodell Rosel (Shabby Peasant), Alexander Tsymbalyuk (Old Convict), Maria Barakova (Sonyetka), Goran Jurić (Priest)
