Based on the Academy Award-winning 1994 Italian film that became a surprise hit with audiences around the world, and also on the 1985 novel Ardiente Paciencia by Antonio Skármeta, Il Postino tells the story of a shy young postman in a tiny Italian fishing village, who discovers the courage to pursue his dreams through his daily deliveries to his only customer, the esteemed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, played by Domingo.

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The other leading roles will be performed by tenor Charles Castronovo in the titular role of Mario Ruoppolo and soprano Amanda Squitieri as the beautiful café waitress Beatrice Russo, the object of Mario’s romantic ardor. Other performers include soprano Cristina Gallardo-Domâs as the poet’s wife Matilde Neruda, baritone Vladimir Chernov as the postmaster Giorgio and mezzo-soprano Nancy Fabiola Herrera as Donna Rosa, Beatrice’s aunt.

Grant Gershon, LA Opera’s chorus master and associate conductor, conducts this production which was directed by Ron Daniels, with scenery and costumes designed by Riccardo Hernandez, projections designed by Philip Bussmann and lighting designed by Jennifer Tipton. The choreographer is David Bridel. The opera, sung in Spanish, was performed in September and October of 2010 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“I am very excited to participate in the world premiere of an opera by one of today’s most important composers,” said tenor Plácido Domingo, LA Opera’s Eli and Edythe Broad General Director, when the opera premiered last fall. “Daniel Catán’s operas have been very popular throughout the United States and elsewhere, and his Florencia en el Amazonas was a great success at LA Opera in 1997. For several years, he and I had wanted to collaborate on a new work. When he told me that he was working on an operatic adaptation of Il Postino, I immediately felt that Pablo Neruda was a role that I very much wanted to bring to life.”

Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle music critic, wrote, “Operagoers who complain that they don’t write ‘em like they used to can take comfort from Il Postino…Catán’s lush, singable score is fashioned almost entirely on the models of Madama Butterfly and Tosca, with a few snippets of La Bohème thrown in…it is undeniably beautiful, and it packs an emotional punch. Best of all, it provides a role superbly tailored to the great Plácido Domingo, who delivers it magnificently.”

The Los Angeles Times’ Mark Swed enthused, “Domingo has never had a role better tailored for him…from Neruda’s tender opening love scene, to his stylish ‘50s costumes, to his father-knows-best warm humor (Domingo happens to be a gifted comic actor)…his beaming avuncular compassion, especially in his relationship with Mario, is pretty hard to resist.”

Born in Mexico City in 1949, Daniel Catán was, until his untimely death on April 8, 2011, one of the foremost composers in contemporary opera. In 1994, San Diego Opera presented his first opera La Hija de Rappacini (Rappaccini’s Daughter). Its success led to his next opera, Florencia en el Amazonas, loosely based on Gabriel García Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the Houston Grand Opera commissioned Catán’s third opera Salsipuedes, which had its premiere in 2004.

Speaking of his fourth opera, Il Postino, the composer recalled, “I realized, from the very first time I saw the film, that it was a suitable theme for an opera. It deals with Art and Love: the foundations upon which we build our lives. Love is what makes us human. Art is our most sophisticated tool for achieving that humanity. And opera is one of the most complete art forms ever imagined, for it includes music and poetry.”

At the time of his death, the 62-year-old composer was reported to be working on an operatic adaptation of another classic film, Frank Capra’s “Meet John Doe.”

The film Il Postino, directed by Michael Radford, was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture; the film’s score, composed by Luis Enríquez Bacalov, won the Academy Award for Original Music Score. For his opera, for which he was both composer and librettist, Daniel Catán drew additional inspiration from Antonio Skármeta’s 1985 novel Ardiente Paciencia, upon which the film was based.

Speaking of Catán after his death, Domingo remarked, “To have lost a composer of his stature at the very height of his powers is a devastating loss to the world of classical music. Daniel Catán was one of the great opera composers of our time, beloved by audiences and especially by the musicians who had the privilege of performing his incredible work.”

Il Postino from LA Opera was directed by Brian Large, and produced by Moshe Barkat and Christopher Koelsch; for Great Performances, John Walker is producer, Bill O’Donnell is series producer, and David Horn is executive producer. Commissioned by LA Opera, Il Postino is a co-production with Theater an der Wien (Vienna) and Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris). The world premiere production was made possible by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Milan Panic, with special commissioning support provided by Edward E. and Alicia Garcia Clark, and additional generous underwriting support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Barbara Augusta Teichert, Hispanics for LA Opera, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Great Performances is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, Vivian Milstein, Annaliese Soros, the Starr Foundation, the Filomen M. D’Agostino Foundation, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, public television viewers and PBS.
For more information on the life, work and legacy of Daniel Catán, please visit: http://www.catanfoundation.com

The June 1 premiere broadcast of Nixon in China will immediately follow a new American Masters episode (8 p.m., check local listings) about the extraordinary career of Met Music Director James Levine.

Nixon in China stars James Maddalena as Richard Nixon, a role he created at the opera’s world premiere in 1987. With a libretto by American poet Alice Goodman, the opera is based on significant moments during President Nixon’s visit to China in February of 1972, with the key political figures as the lead characters: Nixon, first lady Pat Nixon (Janis Kelly) and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Richard Paul Fink) for the Americans; Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Robert Brubaker), his wife Chiang Ch’ing (Kathleen Kim), and Premier Chou En-lai (Russell Braun) for the Chinese.

The Met’s production features the work of the world premiere production’s design team, including set designer Adrianne Lobel, costume designer Dunya Ramicova, lighting designer James F. Ingalls, and choreographer Mark Morris. Adams, Sellars, Goodman and Morris also collaborated on the opera The Death of Klinghoffer.

Adams, who has conducted his works with many major orchestras, makes his Met debut as conductor of Nixon in China; his opera Doctor Atomic had its Met premiere in 2008 and later aired on Great Performance at the Met.

Maddalena has sung Nixon on many of the world’s leading stages, including the English National Opera, Netherlands Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Washington Opera, and the Théâtre du Châtelet. Kelly, who also starred with Maddalena in the recent English National Opera revival of the opera, made her Met debut as Pat Nixon. Kathleen Kim, who won critical plaudits for her Zerbinetta and Olympia in recent seasons, takes on the challenging coloratura role of Chiang Ch’ing, the forbidding and formidable wife of Mao Tse-tung. Brubaker has sung in many 20th-century works at the Met, including Moses und Aron, The Makropoulos Case, Peter Grimes, and the Met premiere of Busoni’s Doktor Faust. Braun is best-known to Met audiences for his Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Fink sang principal roles in the Met premieres of Adams’ Doctor Atomic and John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby.

Great Performances at the Met: Nixon in China was directed for the live HD transmission by Peter Sellars and hosted by Met baritone Thomas Hampson. Jay David Saks is the music producer. The performance is sung in English with subtitles.

Great Performances is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Irene Diamond Fund, Vivian Milstein, the Starr Foundation, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, and Joseph A. Wilson. Corporate support for Great Performances at the Met is provided by Toll Brothers, America’s luxury home builder®. Additional funding for Great Performances at the Met: Nixon in China was provided by M. Beverly and Robert G. Bartner.

For the Met, Mia Bongiovanni and Elena Park are Supervising Producers, and Louisa Briccetti and Victoria Warivonchik are Producers. Peter Gelb is Executive Producer. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is Series Producer; David Horn is Executive Producer.

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Hamlet aired in the UK on Boxing Day at Christmastime 2009, and more than 900,000 viewers tuned in for the BBC broadcast. In an article in The Observer, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote: “Like many people, I had my love of Shakespeare reawakened by David Tennant’s TV portrayal of Hamlet over Christmas.”

Best known for his performance in the title role of the popular British TV series Doctor Who since 2005, Tennant made his debut in October as the host of MASTERPIECE CONTEMPORARY on PBS. His many other credits include his recent portrayal of Barty Crouch Junior in the big-screen blockbuster Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Tennant has also received numerous awards from the theatre community for his lead roles in several Shakespearean productions and other classic plays.

Veteran stage and screen actor Sir Patrick Stewart reprises his 2009 Laurence Olivier Award-winning role of Claudius in the screen version, which is directed by Gregory Doran, who also returns to reprise his stage direction of the production. Co-produced by Illuminations Television and the RSC for the BBC, in association with Thirteen for WNET.ORG and NHK, the adaptation recreates the tone and atmosphere of the stage production in a film-style interpretation shot in HD on location at St. Joseph’s College in Mill Hill, London. The production is produced for television by John Wyver and Sebastian Grant.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. Major support for the telecast is also provided by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

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Great Performances is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG – one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers.

Despite all the success and visibility of its debut, the intervening decades have found Opus Jazz infrequently performed. The concept of taking this little-seen ballet and adapting it for the screen in a modern, real-world context was the brainchild of two New York City Ballet soloists, who, while dancing the ballet, found that it had urban themes and a contemporary relevance that spoke to them. “Sean and I danced Opus Jazz at the New York City Ballet revival in 2005,” explains Bar. “We thought the ballet seemed a bit dated in its 1950’s trappings, but the themes that came out in the dancing — the energy and raw emotion of urban youth — were just as relevant today as they were then.” Mr. Suozzi adds that because the ballet is danced in sneakers, instead of toe shoes, it seemed especially fitting to be filmed on location. “We decided to put our dancers in regular clothes, instead of costumes,” says Suozzi. “It makes the dance even more accessible. Ballet doesn’t have to be a mysterious art form — it’s our most natural, visceral expression.”

Enlisting filmmakers Henry Joost (Catfish) and Jody Lee Lipes (Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be The Same, Afterschool), Bar and Suozzi set out to make the most ambitious dance film in recent memory — the first to return Jerome Robbins’ choreography to the streets of New York since the movie version of West Side Story. Shot in widescreen 35mm film format, this on-location adaptation utilizes New York City locations like the pre-renovation High Line, McCarren Pool, Coney Island, Red Hook, and Carroll Gardens as backdrops for the five very different movements of the ballet. Scripted interludes between the dance scenes draw the audience further into the lives of the young, restless characters, all played by dancers from the New York City Ballet. “Acting out rage and delight through Robbins’ carefully cultivated steps, the cast demonstrated the pent-up emotions of a new generation,” raves The New York Times of this film (read the full review here). The stylized cinematography captures the majestic landscape of New York City as well the subtle beauty, energy and sensuality of the dance piece. The resulting film is a unique and compelling 43-minute abstract narrative that highlights the form, structure and energy of the dance, while embodying the raw emotional experience of urban youth.

Following the dance film is a 10-minute documentary by director Matt Wolf (Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell) and Anna Farrell (Twelve Ways to Sunday) that recounts the history and summarizes the enduring significance and appeal of Opus Jazz. Choreographer (and original West Side Story dancer) Eliot Feld, Sondra Lee (one of Robbins’ original “Opus” dancers), along with other Robbins’ friends and colleagues join the current cast of dancers to contextualize the cultural and historical importance of Mr. Robbins’ career and NY Export: Opus Jazz.

“Great Performances has been bringing the best in American dance to public television viewers via the Dance in America series since 1976,” says Executive Producer David Horn. “WNET was very fortunate to be able to collaborate with Robbins during his lifetime on several landmark productions for television. So we are proud to serve as the broadcast partner for this film, and we are confident the adaptation will make an impact on today’s generation, as it has on generations before.”

Written for the screen by Jody Lee Lipes and edited by Zac Stuart-Pontier, NY Export: Opus Jazz was produced by Kyle Martin and Melody Roscher. Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. Major funding for NY Export: Opus Jazz was also provided by the Jerome Robbins Foundation, Emily Blavatnik, Chandra Jessee, Gillian Attfield, Arlene C. Cooper, Judy Bernstein Bunzl and Nick Bunzl, Marty and Perry Granoff, and Nancy Norman Lassalle. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer and David Horn is executive producer.

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Passing Strange is the semi-autobiographical story of a young black man who leaves behind his middle-class, church-ruled upbringing in mid-1970s Los Angeles to travel to Europe in search of his artistic and personal identity, or what he calls “the real.” There he finds he can exploit a “South Central” persona, playing the cool, black expatriate-musician who speaks for his people. Picaresque misadventures with sex, drugs, politics and art find him in a far-out Amsterdam and a hyper-militant Berlin. But in the end, he discovers that cultural complexity—and hypocrisy—are not limited to middle-class African American life, and that while to him art may be more real than life, only love is truly more than real. Co-starring with Stew as ‘Narrator’ is an extraordinarily talented ensemble cast, featuring DeAdre Aziza, Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, Chad Goodridge, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and Daniel Breaker as the story’s central character, ‘Youth.’

The Broadway show won a 2008 Tony Award for “Best Book of a Musical,” and in total, it received seven Tony nominations, including “Best Musical.” The show also won a Drama Desk Award, a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and two Obie Awards. The highly-acclaimed score does not stand apart from the action as in some rock musicals, but advances the narrative through a sophisticated libretto. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times raves: “Passing Strange is bursting at the seams with melodic songs, and it features a handful of theatrical performances to treasure. Call it a rock concert with a story to tell, trimmed with a lot of great jokes. Or call it a sprawling work of performance art, complete with angry rants and scary drag queens. Call it whatever you want, really. I’ll just call it wonderful.”

Passing Strange was originally created and workshopped at the Sundance Theatre Lab in Utah in 2004 by Stew, his long-time musical partner Heidi Rodewald, and Annie Dorsen, who collaborated on the creation of the show and directed it as well. It was performed at Berkeley Rep in California before coming to New York City’s Public Theater in 2007. The production then moved to Broadway and opened to critical acclaim in February 2008 at the Belasco Theatre. Spike Lee, who had seen the show, was contacted by producer Steve Klein, who was interested in making a film of the stage production. “When I saw the play I was knocked out,” says Lee. “The story, its musicianship and the acting was a revelation. Unlike recent translations of theater onto the big screen, the film doesn’t alter any of the cast, staging or production. This is a hybrid.”

Lee, working with cinematographer Matthew Libatique (“Miracle at St. Anna,” “Iron Man,” “Inside Man”) shot two performances of the Broadway show before its close, including the final performance. Lee then filmed the production without the audience, enabling dynamic close-ups, dolly shots, crane shots and other cinematic coverage. Lee’s long-time editor, Barry Brown, edited the final film.

A 40 Acres & a Mule Filmworks and Apple Core Holdings production in association with Thirteen for WNET.ORG, Passing Strange was produced by Steve Klein, with Klein, Kenneth Greif, Laurence Horn, and William Kohane serving as executive producers.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, Vivian Milstein, LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer and David Horn is executive producer.