Tagged: Verdi

Airs Saturday, March 23 at 12 noon.  The 2012-13 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues with an archival broadcast of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino from March 12, 1977. Met Music Director James Levine conducts an all-star cast led by soprano Leontyne Price as Leonora, tenor Plácido Domingo as Don Alvaro, baritone Cornell MacNeil as Don Carlo, mezzo-soprano Rosalind Elias as Preziosilla, baritone Renato Capecchi as Melitone, and bass Martti Talvela as the Padre Guardiano. La Forza del Destino will be heard over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network at 12 p.m. CT on Saturday, March 23.

Airs Saturday, March 9 at 12 noon. The 2012-13 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues with a live broadcast of Verdi’s Don Carlo, led by renowned conductor Lorin Maazel in his first Verdi performance with the company. Tenor Ramón Vargas sings his first Met performances of the title role, opposite soprano Barbara Frittoli, also in her house role debut, as Elisabeth de Valois. Reprising their roles from previous Met seasons are mezzo-soprano Anna Smirnova as the jealous Princess Eboli; baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky as the revolutionary Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa; bass Ferruccio Furlanetto as the tormented King Philip II; and bass Eric Halfvarson as the Grand Inquisitor. Don Carlo will be heard live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network at 12 p.m. CT on Saturday, March 9.  

Airs Saturday, February 16 at 12 noon. The 2012-13 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues with a live broadcast of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Tony Award-winning director Michael Mayer’s new production moves the opera’s tragic events from a decadent 16th-century Italian court to the glitzy, depraved setting of Las Vegas circa 1960. Serbian baritone Željko Lučić sings the title character, here a world-weary comedian. German soprano Diana Damrau is Gilda, Rigoletto’s innocent daughter. And Polish tenor Piotr Beczala sings the Duke, portrayed as an amoral lounge singer. Slovakian bass Štefan Kocán is the assassin-for-hire Sparafucile, and Belarussian mezzo-soprano Oksana Volkova makes her network broadcast debut as his seductive sister, Maddalena. Italian conductor Michele Mariotti, who made his Met debut earlier this season, conducts his first company performances of the Verdi masterwork. Rigoletto will be heard live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network at 12 p.m. CT on Saturday, February 16.