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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.

Following a London West End run in December 2007, a sold-out limited engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in March 2008, and a subsequent eight-week run on Broadway, director Rupert Goold’s gripping stage production of Macbeth was filmed for television at the end of 2009. Patrick Stewart in his triumphant, Tony-nominated performance as the ambitious general, and Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood as his coldly scheming wife. On March 31, 2011, Macbeth was the proud recipient of a George Foster Peabody Award.

In support of the GREAT PERFORMANCES telecast, WNET.ORG is distributing 30,000 copies of a Macbeth poster & teachers’ guide to schools nationwide, which will assist educators in utilizing the PBS broadcast in the classroom. This activity-based analysis of the play is illustrated by various lesson plans and activities.  After the October 6 premiere PBS broadcast, the complete film will be available for viewing online at here on the Great Performances Web site and video.pbs.org.

Download the Education Guide

Download the poster

The co-production between WNET.ORG and Illuminations Television, in association with the BBC, stars Sir Patrick Stewart in his triumphant, Tony-nominated performance as the ambitious general, and Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood as his coldly scheming wife.

The production, though retaining the Goold’s exciting concept of relocating the bloody action to a nameless 20th-century militaristic society, has been rethought in vivid filmic terms. The movie, marking Goold’s cinematic debut, will be presented on PBS as part of the Great Performances series Wednesday, October 6, at 9 p.m. (check local listings).

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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. Originating at England’s innovative Chichester Festival Theatre, the play – the Bard’s shortest tragedy — is taken out of its Scottish context to offer an allegory of war and the quest for power in the modern world. Writing for the Hollywood Reporter after its London opening, Ray Bennett enthused, “Seldom can Shakespeare’s murky Scottish tragedy ‘Macbeth’ have been staged with so much clarity and emotional punch as in Rupert Goold’s exhilarating production.”

When the production opened stateside at BAM, Ben Brantley of The New York Times praised Stewart’s “fearsome insight and theatrical fire.”

Elysa Gardner in USA Today observed Stewart’s “witty, nuanced work, which reveals Macbeth as an intelligent, rational person driven to madness by outside forces and his own violent transgressions. There is something of Lear — and Hamlet, too — in this portrait of a thoughtful, corruptible man.”

This is not your grandfather’s “Macbeth.” Shot in High-Definition at Welbeck Abbey in the U.K., Goold maintains the atmosphere and tone of the stage version, heightening the Shakespearean classic with an edgy style reminiscent of Illuminations’ recent film adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet, which was also broadcast on PBS in April 2010 by THIRTEEN’s Great Performances. Among the actors recreating their roles for the film are Michael Feast (Macduff); Martin Turner (Banquo); Scott Handy (Malcolm); Paul Shelley (Duncan); Suzanne Burden (Lady Macduff); and Christopher Patrick Nolan (The Porter).

In support of the presentation, WNET.ORG is offering a Teachers’ Guide for educators to utilize the PBS broadcast in classrooms around the country. Hosted on www.pbs.org/gperf, the activity-based analysis of the play is illustrated by various lesson plans and activities. After the October 6 PBS broadcast premiere, the complete film will be available for viewing online at pbs.org/gperf and video.pbs.org.

Macbeth was produced by John Wyver and Sebastian Grant, with Mark Bell as executive producer for the BBC; for Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer, and David Horn is executive producer.

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