Opera on WRTI

This week, we're back at our usual 1 pm start time! Tune in for the Met’s delightful Baroque fantasy THE ENCHANTED ISLAND. The opera returns after its critically acclaimed world-premiere run in 2011–12, bringing together the music of Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Purcell, and other composers, set to a brilliant new English libretto inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Few opera singers' careers begin with Daniel Barenboim telling them to prepare the title role for a season-opening new production of Carmen at La Scala. Yet this was how the Georgian mezzo soprano Anita Rachvelishvili got her big break in 2009. 

She had been in a young singers' training program at the storied Milan opera house when Barenboim recognized her potential, and cast her as the iconic, red-dressed, raven-haired heroine.

It’s love hidden, proclaimed, delayed, found...and love not to be. Richard Strauss' bittersweet romantic comedy Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose) features a superb ensemble led by Viennese soprano Martina Serafin in one of her signature roles, the Marschallin. Mezzo-soprano Alice Coote sings the trouser role of the Marschallin’s young lover, Octavian, while soprano Erin Morley is Sophie, the innocent young woman who comes between the two.

Singing at The Metropolitan Opera rarely means just returning to "business as usual." But - for soprano Renee Fleming, the worldwide audience for the February 8th Met Opera radio broadcast and HD simulcast in which she stars will be small change compared to the millions who watched her recent pre-Super Bowl performance.

Soprano Anna Netrebko reprises her adorable Adina in this charming production of Gaetano Donizetti’s tender comedy. Acclaimed tenor Ramón Vargas is the love-struck Nemorino, and Erwin Schrott sings the likeable quack Dulcamara, whose "magic" potion causes as many problems as it solves, and maps the destiny of a love triangle involving a lovable bumpkin, a dashing sergeant, and a bewitching town flirt.

L'Elisir d'Amore (The Elixir of Love) includes the heartbreaking aria "Una furtiva lagrima."