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Based on Victor Hugo’s revolutionary play, Ernani involves three men–two noble, and one a bandit–who attempt to out-maneuver one another for the hand of the beautiful Elvira. Marco Armiliato conducts Verdi’s thrilling drama of passion, power, and honor, which is seen in Pier Luigi Samaritani’s lavish production.

American soprano Angela Meade, whose victory in the Met’s National Council Auditions was chronicled in the 2008 documentary film The Audition, takes the role of the noblewoman Elvira in her first Great Performances at the Met appearance. She made an acclaimed Met debut as Elvira in the 2007-08 revival of Ernani, filling in at the last minute for an ailing Sondra Radvanovsky.

Marcello Giordani, star of the Great Performances at the Met broadcasts of Turandot, La Damnation de Faust, Simon Boccanegra, and La Fanciulla del West, sings the title role of the noble bandit who loves Elvira.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky adds a new role to his distinguished repertory as Don Carlo, a royal suitor for Elvira’s hand. This is Hvorostovsky’s sixth Verdi role in his Met repertory, joining the title character in Simon Boccanegra, Germont in La Traviata (a role he repeats on Great Performances at the Met later this season), Rodrigo in Don Carlo, Renato in Un Ballo in Maschera, and di Luna in Il Trovatore.

Ferruccio Furlanetto is de Silva, a wealthy relative with his own designs on Elvira. De Silva is the second of three roles Furlanetto sings at the Met this season. The versatile artist first sang de Silva at the Met in the 2007-08 revival of Ernani.

Maestro Armiliato’s numerous Met appearances have included a variety of Verdi works, from the early Attila to the repertory staples Aida, Rigoletto, La Traviata, and Il Trovatore. Earlier this season, he led the Met premiere of Anna Bolena, seen on Great Performances at the Met.

Ernani was originally seen live in movie theaters on February 25 as part of the groundbreaking The Met: Live in HD series, which transmits live performances to more than 1700 movie theaters and performing arts centers in 54 countries around the world.

Great Performances at the Met is a presentation of THIRTEEN for WNET, one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local arts programming to the New York community.

Of Ernani, Ronald Blum of Associated Press declared, “There is an argument for Verdi the way it used to be, especially when a rare soprano like Angela Meade commands the night… For pure singing, she is one vocal thrill after another.” Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times enthused, “Mr. Furlanetto’s strong, dark, textured voice filled Verdi’s lines with burnished sound and arching lyricism.  Hvorostovsky shaped floating phrases with mellifluous, honeyed sound.” The New Yorker observed, “Marcello Giordani…sings with full-throated vitality.”

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato hosts the transmission. Barbara Willis Sweete directs the telecast.

Great Performances is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation. Corporate support for Great Performances at the Met is provided by Toll Brothers, America’s luxury home builder®.

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.

Watch a preview:
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The program was originally seen live in movie theaters on January 21 as part of the groundbreaking The Met: Live in HD series, which transmits live performances to more than 1700 movie theaters and performing arts centers in 54 countries around the world.

Great Performances at the Met is a presentation of THIRTEEN for WNET, one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local arts programming to the New York community.

Devised and written by the acclaimed British theater artist Jeremy Sams in his Met debut, The Enchanted Island is conducted by renowned Baroque specialist William Christie and seen in a fantastical production by director Phelim McDermott and scenic designer Julian Crouch that blends 18^th-century theatrical techniques with advanced video projection designs.

The Enchanted Island is a contemporary take on the 18^th-century tradition of operatic “pasticcios” (pastiches), in which new librettos were combined with music from various compositions to create entirely new theatrical pieces. The tradition was particularly popular in London, where Handel was a prominent practitioner. The score for The Enchanted Island comprises selections from a variety of Baroque operas, cantatas, and oratorios, many of which are rarely performed in contemporary opera houses.

DiDonato stars as the sorceress Sycorax and Daniels is her supernatural foe, the sorcerer Prospero; Domingo is Neptune, god of the seas; de Niese is the air spirit Ariel; Lisette Oropesa is Prospero’s daughter Miranda; Anthony Roth Costanzo is the shipwrecked prince Ferdinand; and Pisaroni is Sycorax’s monstrous son Caliban.

The score includes music from many Handel works, including operas (e.g. Alcina, Ariodante, Partenope, and Semele, Tamerlano, and Teseo); oratorios (Hercules and Judas Maccabaeus); and cantatas (e.g. “Tanti strali al sen mi scocchi” and “Notte placida e cheta”); and more. The other works represented in The Enchanted Island are by Vivaldi, Rameau, Ferrandini, Campra, Purcell, Rebel, and Leclair.

Sams, a noted stage director, writer, translator, composer, and lyricist, has created an English-language libretto for The Enchanted Island that combines the plots of two Shakespeare plays. In Sams’s story, the bitter supernatural war between The Tempest’s Prospero and his nemesis, the sorceress Sycorax, is interrupted by a quartet of unexpected island visitors: the four lovers from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, whose honeymoon cruise has ended in a shipwreck. The ensuing conflicts and romantic entanglements also involve Prospero’s daughter Miranda, Sycorax’s grotesque son Caliban, the shipwrecked prince Ferdinand, the air spirit Ariel, and Neptune, king of the undersea world.

Renowned Baroque specialist Christie made his Met debut last season leading Mozart’s Così fan tutte. His adventurous explorations into the Baroque repertory, particularly with his ensemble Les Arts Florissants, have earned him an international reputation as a consummate musician and historian.

DiDonato’s most recent Met appearances were as the Composer in last season’s revival of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and as Isolier in the Met premiere of Le Comte Ory. Daniels’s Met starring roles have included Orfeo in the new production of Orfeo ed Euridice (2007 and 2011), Bertarido in the Met premiere of Handel’s Rodelinda (2004), both Sesto and the title character in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, and Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Since his debut in 1968, Domingo has sung more than 600 Met performances in an ever-expanding repertory.

De Niese, a frequent collaborator with Maestro Christie, made her Met debut as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro in 1999. Earlier this season, Pisaroni sang Leporello in the new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Oropesa’s Met appearances have included Lisette in the new production of Puccini’s La Rondine (2008), Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Amore in Orfeo ed Euridice, and the Rhinemaiden Woglinde in the 2010 new production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Costanzo, a 2009 National Council Grand Finals winner, makes his Met debut this season as Unulfo in Rodelinda.

The four Midsummer lovers are sung by Layla Claire (Hermia), Elizabeth DeShong (Helena), Paul Appleby (Demetrius), and Elliot Madore (Lysander, in his Met debut).

The New York Times dubbed the work, at its premiere, “fanciful, clever, and touching,” while Associated Press found it “irresistibly entertaining…with enough fizz to send a dozen champagne corks popping.”

Soprano Deborah Voigt hosts. Barbara Willis Sweete directs the telecast.

Great Performances is funded by Vivian Milstein, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, and Annaliese Soros. Corporate support for Great Performances at the Met is provided by Toll Brothers, America’s luxury home builder®.

Visit Great Performances online at www.pbs.org/gperf for additional information on this and other Great Performances programs.

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.

Watch a preview:

The program was originally seen live in movie theaters on December 10 as part of the groundbreaking The Met: Live in HD series, which transmits live performances to more than 1700 movie theaters and performing arts centers in 54 countries around the world.

Great Performances at the Met is a presentation of THIRTEEN for WNET, one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local arts programming to the New York community.

Kaufmann makes his Met role debut as the title character, and Poplavskaya makes hers as Faust’s love interest and eventual victim, Marguerite; Pape returns to one of his greatest Met roles, the wicked tempter Méphistophélès. French-Canadian mezzo-soprano Michèle Losier makes her house role debut as the student Siébel and Russell Braun makes his in the role of Marguerite’s soldier brother, Valentin.

McAnuff is a Tony Award winner for Big River and The Who’s Tommy and the Artistic Director of Canada’s prestigious Stratford Shakespeare Festival. His production of Faust, a co-production with the English National Opera, where it premiered last season, sets the action in the mid-20^th century, with Faust as a nuclear scientist who sees the terrible effects of his life’s work and longs to return to a simpler time. The main part of the opera takes place in a flashback to an earlier part of the 20^th century, with the plot unfolding in the moments before Faust dies from drinking a fatal potion.

Gounod’s opera has been a staple of the Met’s repertory since 1883, when it was the first opera ever presented at the old Metropolitan Opera House.

When this production premiered last November, Associated Press enthused: “Exceptional work by a fine cast of singing actors led by tenor Jonas Kaufmann, soprano Marina Poplavskaya and bass René Pape…their performances, sharply directed by Des McAnuff, guaranteed that Gounod’s opera came across as serious and even gripping theater. And rarely has the score sounded more captivating than in the rhapsodic account by the Met orchestra under the guidance of the young conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.”

Nézet-Séguin, the Music Director Designate of the Philadelphia Orchestra, had two previous Met engagements: the new productions of Bizet’s Carmen (2009) and Verdi’s Don Carlo (2010), both broadcast on Great Performances at the Met. Kaufmann is currently one of the world’s most in-demand tenors, starring in a varied repertory that has included Met performances of Siegmund in Wagner’s Die Walküre (2011 new production), Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca, Don José in Carmen, Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata, and Tamino in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. In October, he became the first Met artist since Luciano Pavarotti (in 1984) to sing a solo recital from the Met stage, and this spring, he will reprise his Siegmund in complete Ring cycles.

Last season, Poplavskaya received critical praise for her singing and acting in two Met role debuts. She sang Elisabeth de Valois in the new production of Don Carlo, also seen on Great Performances at the Met, and she also starred as Violetta in Willy Decker’s staging of La Traviata. Pape, whose last Met engagement was as King Philip to Poplavskaya’s Elisabeth on the Japan tour, sang Méphistophélès in the Met’s 2004-05 season. Last season, he starred in the title role of a new production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (seen on Great Performances at the Met).

McAnuff’s design team for Faust includes two Tony nominees in their Met debuts: scenic designer Robert Brill and costume designer Paul Tazewell. Peter Mumford, whose work at the Met includes Madama Butterfly, Carmen, and Peter Grimes, designed the lighting for the production. Choreographer Kelly Devine and video designer Sean Nieuwenhuis also made their Met debuts with this production.

Mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato hosts. Barbara Willis Sweete directs the telecast.

Major funding for the telecast is provided by M. Beverly and Robert G. Bartner.  Corporate support for Great Performances at the Met is provided by Toll Brothers, America’s luxury home builder®. This Great Performances presentation is funded by the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation.

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.