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COMMUNITY PROGRAMS
Online Lectures
Learn more about your favorite operas in the Met season with the click of a button – expand your operatic horizons at your convenience in the comfort of your own home, office, or favorite Internet hot spot!
The Metropolitan Opera Guild is pleased to present selected lecture and community program series favorites to accompany the Metropolitan Opera season and enrich the opera going experience.
Choose an opera below and learn more about the music, characters, composer, historical significance, story line, and more!
Verdi’s Portentous Party Music: Rigoletto, La Traviata, Un Ballo in Maschera
These three operas from Verdi’s middle period derive their dramatic intensity from abrupt shifts between seemingly frivolous, exuberant party music and moments of darkest tragedy. Seemingly trivial and lighthearted on the surface, Verdi’s party tunes actually drive scenes of searing intensity.
With highlights from the following Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts:
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Rigoletto
December 17, 2005
Conductor: Asher Fisch
Featuring: Carlo Guelfi (Rigoletto), Anna Netrebko (Gilda), Rolando Villazón (Duke of Mantua), Nancy Fabiola Herrera (Maddalena)
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Don Giovanni
March 13, 2004
Conductor: James Levine
Featuring: Thomas Hampson (Don Giovanni), Anja Harteros (Donna Anna), Gregory Turay (Don Ottavio), Christine Goerke (Donna Elvira), René Pape (Leporello), Hei-Kyung Hong (Zerlina)
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La Traviata
March 6, 2004
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Featuring: Renée Fleming (Violetta), Ramón Vargas (Alfredo), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Germont)
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Un Ballo in Maschera
January 26, 1991
Conductor: James Levine
Featuring: Aprile Millo (Amelia), Luciano Pavarotti (Riccardo), Leo Nucci (Renato), Florence Quivar (Ulrica), Harolyn Blackwell (Oscar)
Clips require Real Audio: Click Here to download the player.
Aida’s Audiences
When the final curtain falls, each member of an audience has a different experience in the opera house, though all have seen the same performance. This is particularly true when considering Verdi’s 1871 Aida, which leaves audiences unsure which group of characters they are intended to identify with or exactly what the take home message might be—if such a singular meaning is even available.
With highlights from the following Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts:
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Aida
March 6, 1976
Conductor: James Levine
Featuring: Leontyne Price (Aida), Plácido Domingo (Radames), Marilyn Horne (Amneris), Cornell MacNeil (Amonasro)
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October 4, 2007
Conductor: Kazushi Ono
Clips require Real Audio: Click Here to download the player.
Listening to Lucia’s Romantic Madness
To a degree greater than in any other period in opera history, bel canto—the genre Donizetti and his 1835 Lucia di Lammermoor exemplify so brilliantly—demands that we listen to and savor opera’s beautiful voices.
With highlights from the following Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts:
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Lucia di Lammermoor
December 9, 1961
Conductor: Silvio Varviso
Featuring: Joan Sutherland (Lucia), Richard Tucker (Edgardo), Frank Guarrara (Enrico)
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Norma
April 4, 1970
Conductor: Richard Bonynge
Featuring Joan Sutherland (Norma)
Clips require Real Audio: Click Here to download the player.
The Delightful Double Nature of Mozart’s Magic Flute
On one level, Die Zauberflöte is a perfect first opera for all age and experience levels; on another, it is a tale deeply rooted in Masonic symbolism and philosophy.
With highlights from the following Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts:
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Die Zauberflöte
January 21, 2006
Conductor: Paul Daniel
Featuring: Mary Dunleavy (Pamina), Eric Cutler (Tamino), Erika Miklósa (Queen of the Night), Morris Robinson (Sarastro), Nathan Gunn (Papageno), Anna Christy (Papagena)
Clips require Real Audio: Click Here to download the player.
About the Lecturer
Dr. W. Anthony Sheppard is Professor of Music at Williams College where he teaches courses in Opera, Twentieth-Century Music, Popular Music, and Asian Music. His research interests include twentieth-century opera and music theater, cross-cultural influence and Orientalism, and film music. His first book, Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater, (University of California Press, 2001) received the Kurt Weill Prize, his article on Madama Butterfly and film earned him the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, and his article on World War II film music was honored with the Alfred Einstein Award by the American Musicological Society. His research has been supported by major grants from the NEH and the American Philosophical Society and he is currently completing a book entitled Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination. Professor Sheppard frequently speaks at major national and international conferences and universities in addition to delivering pre-performance lectures at the Met and has been teaching opera since 1993.
For more information about this and other programs, please call 212-769-7028 or email lectures@operaed.org.
CLICK HERE TO RECEIVE MORE INFORMATION ON OUR LECTURE SERIES
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