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

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This comprehensive performance documentary, the first profile of the tenor in a decade, features the celebrated tenor – and general director of both the Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera – as he looks back and reflects with heartfelt candor on his choicest roles from opera houses around the world.

The story of Domingo’s roots in Spain is interwoven with his famous performance as Don Jose in Carmen at the Vienna Staatsoper, while his reminiscences about his childhood in Mexico inform his acclaimed performance in El Gato Montes from LA Opera.

Other excerpts – several of them culled from earlier Great Performances telecasts — includes Ernani and I Pagliacci from La Scala (the latter seen in the Franco Zeffirelli film version); La Gioconda from the Vienna State Opera; Andrea Chénier, The Tales of Hoffmann, Otello and The Girl of the Golden West from The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Luisa Miller and Simon Boccanegra from the Metropolitan Opera; Samson and Dalila from the San Francisco Opera; and the Emmy-winning Tosca from Rome (Cavarodossi from “Tosca” is his all-time favorite role, he states).

Among the celebrated female costars glimpsed with Domingo over the years are the late Shirley Verrett, Ileana Cotrubas, Kiri Te Kanawa, Renata Scotto, Teresa Stratas, Carol Neblett, Elena Obraztsova, Adrianne Pieczonka and Agnes Baltsa.

He has appeared in over 3,500 performances in over 130 roles, a number unmatched by any other celebrated tenor in history. He has also conducted upwards of 450 performances; is founder of the Operalia international singing competition. He has won 11 Grammy Awards, and two Emmy Awards, one of them for 1983’s Plácido Domingo Celebrates Seville on Great Performances, the other for 1992’s The Metropolitan Opera Silver Anniversary Gala. In October 2009 he was awarded the million dollar Birgit Nilsson Prize, the most prestigious prize in opera.

He crossed over from the world of classical music into the mainstream in the 1990s when he teamed up with fellow tenors Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras to form The Three Tenors, whose worldwide performances brought opera to a brand new audience. There are glowing tributes from Carreras and the late Pavarotti on their versatile colleague.

At the age of 68, Domingo embarked on his very first as baritone in an opera, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, and followed it with the title role of another Verdi classic, Rigoletto, airing Friday, July 15 at 9 p.m. ET on Great Performances. Rigoletto from Mantua, which aired live in Europe last year, was shot in sumptuous locations in that city.

Also forthcoming on Great Performances as part of the PBS Arts Fall Festival is the world premiere performance of the late Daniel Catán’s Il Postino, based on the popular 1994 Italian film, with Domingo as the poet Pablo Neruda.

Produced and directed by Chris Hunt, Placido Domingo: My Favorite Roles is an Iambic Media Production in association with THIRTEEN for WNET. For Great Performances, John Walker is producer; Bill O’Donnell is series producer; and David Horn is executive producer.

Great Performances is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, the Irene Diamond Fund, The Lillian Goldman Programming Endowment, the Starr Foundation, Vivian Milstein, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, and Joseph A. Wilson.

With Rigoletto from Mantua, producer Andrea Andermann continues his successful series of “Live Films.” His productions of both “Tosca” by Puccini and “La Traviata” were Great Performances landmarks in 1992 and 2000 respectively. Those two innovative and spectacular productions received much public and critical success, confirmed by international television awards including seven Primetime Emmy’s and the UK BAFTA’s.

Directed by Marco Bellocchio, Rigoletto from Mantua stars Plàcido Domingo in the baritone title role of Rigoletto; Julia Novikova as his innocent daughter Gilda; Vittorio Grigolo as the womanizing Duke; and Ruggero Raimondi as the assassin Sparafucile.

The production marks Domingo’s third major project for Great Performances this season. (The career retrospective, Plácido Domingo: My Favorite Roles and LA Opera’s Il Postino will each be broadcast this fall.)

Academy Award-winning Vittorio Storaro shot the vivid high definition cinematography. The RAI National Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Zubin Mehta. The opera is one of the maestro’s favorite operas. “It is not only Verdi at the peak of his creativity but also a spectacular theatrical ‘thriller,’” says Mehta.

Critics around the world raved about the results. The Sunday Times of London proclaimed, “What a triumph for the producer and the technical team.” The BBC marveled, “It was just fantastic the way they made it all work.” Il Tempo dubbed it “Colossal.” Le Libre Belgique enthused, “The cast is fabulous and images resound from a tension both visible and emotional.”

Tenor Domingo has a special relationship to “Rigoletto.” It was the first opera he ever heard; the character of Borsa was his first operatic role; he sang the Duke many times; and he has conducted the work on numerous occasions. Domingo had qualms about taking on the titular baritone role. “When Andrea Andermann invited me to interpret the part of Rigoletto, I replied that there were so many good baritones in the world who could sing it. But Andrea said that he wasn’t looking for a baritone, but rather for the Rigoletto [that I] could bring to life.”

Now, he gives voice and soul to Rigoletto, a court jester, who after publicly ridiculing a nobleman, Count Ceprano, is tragically punished by the courtiers for his unforgivable insolence.

Gilda, the attractive, sheltered daughter of Rigoletto, pays the price with her life for the errors of her father and the mistaken love for the cynical Duke of Mantua, a powerful and handsome man, intoxicated and driven by the taste of female conquest. Gilda becomes bewitched by the Duke in disguise believing that he is a young student, and subsequently falls in love with him, but in reality, nothing is what it appears to be and the fate of the characters entwine dangerously until the tragic end.

Based on how it was conceived and developed, Rigoletto from Mantua is one of the most complex audio-visual operations ever attempted. Through an advanced and sophisticated technological system, the locations in different points of the city of Mantua were seamlessly linked together. Maestro Mehta performed the music of Verdi from the Teatro Scientifico Bibiena.

The 16th century comes to life in the accomplished photography of Vittorio Storaro, who performed similar duty for the first two live operas. Bellocchio achieved the difficult task of leading the artists in the interpretation of the characters, all the while dealing with the complex task of directing a Live Film.

The locations chosen included: the sumptuous rooms of Palazzo Te, the famous villa of parties, receptions and idleness of the Duke of Mantua, built between 1525 and 1535 by the architect and painter Giulio Romano at the will of Federico II Gonzaga; Palazzo Ducale, the main residence of the Gonzaga rulers, Marquis and ultimately the dukes of the city of Mantua, also The Fortress of Sparafucile, known as the Rock of Rigoletto, a former military garrison Gonzaga located at the entrance to the city of Mantua.

For Great Performances, John Walker is producer; Bill O’Donnell is series producer; and David Horn is executive producer.

Major funding for the Great Performances telecast is provided by the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund, The Lillian Goldman Programming Endowment, and the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation.

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Prior to the premiere of the production in 2007, which also featured Graham, Domingo, and Groves, the Met hadn’t performed Gluck’s final opera since 1917. The title role of Iphigénie en Tauride is a touchstone role for Graham, who has performed it with great success at the Salzburg Festival, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera and Teatro Real de Madrid. Domingo added the role of Iphigénie’s long-lost brother Oreste to his extensive repertoire for the 2007 premiere of Wadsworth’s production and earned excellent reviews for his performance in what has traditionally been considered a baritone role. Groves reprises his Pylade, which he has sung at leading opera houses in Madrid, Paris, London, Chicago, and San Francisco. Maestro Summers, who has conducted a diverse range of works at the Met ranging from Salome to Rodelinda, also conducts the Met’s revival of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor this season. The cast also features Gordon Hawkins as the Scythian king Thoas and Julie Boulianne as the goddess Diane.

Iphigénie en Tauride (“Iphigenia in Tauris”), based on the Greek myth about a priestess facing the aftermath of her family’s violent history, is often considered the culmination of Gluck’s life ambition to achieve a perfect union of music and drama. Reviewing the current revival, the New York Times critic called it “An impassioned revival… (which) confirms that there is no reason for this radiant opera not to be a repertory staple,” praising the singers and “the Met orchestra’s warmly powerful, propulsive performance.”

Wadsworth’s production features sets by Thomas Lynch, costumes by Martin Pakledinaz, and lighting by Neil Peter Jampo.

Great Performances at the Met: Iphigénie en Tauride was directed for the live HD transmission by Barbara Willis Sweete and hosted by soprano Natalie Dessay. Jay David Saks is the music producer. The performance is sung in French with English subtitles.Great Performances is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, public television viewers and PBS. 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: Iphigénie en Tauride is provided by the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, and Joseph A. Wilson.

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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Set in the 14th century in and around Genoa, Simon Boccanegra is the tale of a man who, once a ruthless pirate, fathers a child out of wedlock and later is acclaimed the first Doge of Genoa. As the Doge, he tries to be a good leader and though his personal life is in shambles; he eventually does right by his daughter. The title character is considered one of the summits of the baritone repertory.

“It has been my dream for years,” Plácido Domingo said of singing Simon Boccanegra. The Associated Press hailed his performance as “a triumph.” A critic from The New York Times reported that Domingo “was mighty and majestic in the title role… his thrilling turn as a trouble-plagued doge ranks as one of the most resonant and affecting performances I’ve seen him give.”

Great Performances at The Met Simon Boccanegra is directed for television by Barbara Willis Sweete and hosted by acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming. Jay David Saks is the audio producer. Michael Scott designed the sets and costumes. Wayne Chouinard is lighting director. Peter McClintock is stage director. Simon Boccanegra is the eighth of 10 productions airing during the 2009-2010 season of Great Performances at The Met.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. 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.

Photo: ORF/Ali Schafler

The intoxicating strains of Franz Lehar and other masters of the operetta and zarzuela stage dominate Domingo, Netrebko & Villazón: Three Stars in Vienna, an icon-studded concert gala from the Imperial Park of Vienna’s Schönbrunn Summer Palace, this December on GREAT PERFORMANCES on PBS (check local listings). Tenors Plácido Domingo and Rolando Villazón join soprano Anna Netrebko in the evening of highlights from such favorite works as The Merry Widow, Land of Smiles and El Gato Montes.

Presented by Thirteen/WNET New York in high definition, the broadcast is led by noted French conductor Bertrand de Billy, directing the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

From its opening vocal salvo, Domingo’s thrilling account of Lehar’s “Gern hab ich die Frau’n gekuesst” from Paganini, through Netrebko’s swirling Gypsy rendition of “Heia in den Bergen” (from Emmerich Kálmán’s Die Csárdásfürstin) to Villazón’s heart-breaking “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz” (Lehar’s Land of Smiles), the program is a welcome reminder of the glittering lost world of operetta.

The genre (first cousin to the zarzuela of Spain) is a precursor to today’s modern musical and once dominated the world’s stages, thanks to “light music” composers like Lehar, Johann Strauss Jr., and Léo Delibes. Domingo, Netrebko & Villazón: Three Stars in Vienna offers a rare opportunity to re-examine some of their gems. (A complete list of telecast selections accompanies this release.)

Recorded in the Austrian capital June 27, 2008, Domingo, Netrebko & Villazón: Three Stars in Vienna is a co-production of ORF, ZDF and Unitel Classica, in association with Thirteen/WNET New York. Heidelinde Haschek directs, with Heidelinde Rudy and Sandra Marchart as Producers.

GREAT PERFORMANCES is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS.