With the debut of the PBS Arts Fall Festival October 2011, public television is reaffirming its preeminence in the arts as never before, shining an even brighter spotlight on a dynamic roster of performance programming from around America.  GREAT PERFORMANCES is proud to join in launching this nine week festival by showcasing the quality and diversity of the performing arts from four corners of our country: Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.  And beyond the Fall Festival, GP extends the tour even further, taking viewers to our nation’s capital, then to the rhythm & blues capital of Memphis (by way of Broadway), with a pilgrimage along the way to that great music city, New Orleans.

Now entering its 39^th season on PBS, GREAT PERFORMANCES continues its mission of providing a place for the world’s leading performing artists on the world’s biggest media stages—both on air, and online.  From classical concerts to popular song, opera to musical theater, and dance to drama, GREAT PERFORMANCES raises the curtain on a new season of excellence from arts capitals of every variety.

GREAT PERFORMANCES heads to New Orleans for a front row seat as Hugh Laurie—the versatile British star of the hit television series House—shares his lifelong passion for the blues.  In Let Them Talk, Laurie takes the stage and proves he can hold his own with blues legends Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas, as well as another musical fellow traveller from Great Britain, Sir Tom Jones.  Back in the bright lights of New York City, international superstar tenor Andrea Bocelli takes on the biggest stage of his career for a performance in Central Park. Hosted by Paula Zahn, the concert features special guests Celine Dion, Tony Bennett, Chris Botti, David Foster and many more to perform his signature hits and classical favorites.

GREAT PERFORMANCES continues to be the place for the best in classical music with the leading orchestras of the world.  In the spirit of remembrance and renewal on the tenth anniversary of September 11, music director Alan Gilbert leads the New York Philharmonic in a stirring performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony No. 2, joined by soprano Dorothea Röschmann, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung and the New York Choral Artists.   In Los Angeles, GP joins the LA Phil and Music Director Gustavo Dudamel for another dynamic inaugural gala featuring jazz legend Herbie Hancock in an all-Gershwin concert.  In San Francisco, don’t miss the festivities when the San Francisco Symphony celebrates its centennial season with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and special guests Lang Lang and Itzhak Perlman performing works by Copland, Mendelssohn, Britten and Adams.  At the holidays, ring in the New Year with the sound of music when Julie Andrews returns to host the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual concert of Strauss Family waltzes under the baton of guest conductor Mariss Jansons.  Next spring, Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic will light up the stage of Carnegie Hall with a bravura concert of music by Debussy, Dvorak, Schoenberg and Elgar.  And in summer 2012, GP’s classical concerts come full circle when Gustavo Dudamel joins the Vienna Philharmonic as guest conductor for another magical summer night concert in the spectacular gardens of Schönbrunn Palace.

Co-founded in 1985 by trailblazing dance legend Edward Villella, Miami City Ballet makes its long-awaited GREAT PERFORMANCES’ debut, showcasing the company’s critically acclaimed performances of George Balanchine’s Square Dance and Western Symphony as well as Twyla Tharp’s The Golden Section; as program host, Villella provides context and the company’s history with each of the dances.  At San Francisco Ballet, choreographer John Neumeier—the American-born Artistic Director of Hamburg Ballet—presents his haunting interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fable, The Little Mermaid, set to a lush score by young composer Lera Auerbach.  Starring SFB principal dancer Yuan Yuan Tan in the performance of her career, Neumeier’s adaptation blends dramatic storytelling and striking theatricality to create a major new work of narrative ballet.

In recent seasons, GREAT PERFORMANCES has returned to timeless classics of Shakespeare with exciting new adaptations featuring virtuoso roles for some of the leading actors of our time, including King Lear with Ian McKellen, Hamlet with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart, and the Peabody Award-winning Macbeth with Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood.  Next season, GP returns with more innovative film adaptations of Shakespeare in The Divine Right, a major four-part miniseries from executive producer Sam Mendes.  These new productions assemble four of Shakespeare’s history plays – Richard II, Henry IV Parts I & II, and Henry V –into a chronological narrative, with some of the most acclaimed Shakespearean acting talent of today, including Patrick Stewart, Ben Wishaw and David Suchet.

Called “the most exciting individual in American theater” by Newsweek magazine, Anna Deavere Smith (The West Wing, Nurse Jackie) turns her theatrical exploration to matters of the human body with Let Me Down Easy.  As in her acclaimed earlier plays Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, Deavere Smith interviews an eclectic range of people, and then performs as the interviewee in their own words.  This new gallery of indelible portraits ranges from boldface names like cyclist Lance Armstrong, supermodel Lauren Hutton and Texas Governor Ann Richards, to unknown but equally memorable characters, including a rodeo bull rider, a New Orleans hospital doctor and the director of a South African orphanage. All share their transforming experiences in confronting the price of health, facing the end of life, or discovering the resilience of the human spirit.  Recorded at Washington DC’s Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, NBC’s Today raved, “Run—do not walk—to see this play,” with The San Francisco Chronicle writing, “This is Smith at the top of her unique documentary form, in writing, performance and timeliness.  The result is pure theatrical gold.”

At LA Opera, superstar Placido Domingo shines in a new adaptation of the popular 1994 film Il Postino, written especially for Domingo by Mexican composer Daniel Catán, telling the tale of a young fisherman whose life is transformed when he is pressed into service as the “postman” for exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.  On Broadway, GREAT PERFORMANCES turns the radio dial back to pre-civil rights America in Memphis, the blockbuster Tony-winning Best Musical, where a white DJ’s love of rhythm & blues transcends the air waves—and racial lines—when he becomes involved with a young black singer, but in a world that is far from ready for their love.  In Miami, GP travels further back in time to the heyday of The Thomashefskys, two young stars of the New York City’s vibrant Yiddish theater—who happened to become the grandparents of San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.  Inspired by his warm personal memories, Tilson Thomas takes viewers on a colorful musical tour of the lives and repertoire of Bessie and Boris Thomashefky as they become major stars in the Yiddish theater circuit.  And Andrew Lloyd Webber’s all-time musical mega-hit The Phantom of the Opera celebrates its 25^th anniversary with a spectacular production at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

GREAT PERFORMANCES at the Met returns to PBS for a sixth season of 13 magnificent productions with the leading stars of international opera – including Robert Lepage’s bold new staging of Wagner’s Ring cycle, marking the first American telecast in high definition television and 5.1 surround sound. See the full line-up for the 2011-2012 season.