The Metropolitan Opera Saturday Radio Broadcasts on WJOP-LP 96.3 FM
November 26, 2018**METROPOLITAN OPERA RADIO BROADCAST ALERT**
Broadcasting live on WJOP-LP 96.3 FM Joppa Radio Newburyport.
Boito’s Mefistofele, in its First Met Broadcast Since 2000,
Opens the Met’s 88th Season of Radio Broadcasts
Saturday, December 1 at 1:00 p.m. ET
The 2018-19 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season opens with Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, starring 2018 Richard Tucker Award winner Christian Van Horn in the diabolical title role. The opera also stars Michael Fabiano as Faust, who bargains with the devil for his soul, Angela Meade as the innocent Margherita, and Jennifer Check as Helen of Troy. All four principal singers made role debuts with this run of the opera, which had not been heard at the Met since the 1999-2000 season. Joseph Colaneri conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Mefistofele will be heard live over Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network at 1:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, December 1.
American bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, a 2003 winner of the Met’s National Council Auditions, was named recipient of the Richard Tucker Award this season, becoming only the third bass-baritone to win the honor in its 40-year history. Since his 2013 Met debut as Pistole in Verdi’s Falstaff, he has returned as Colline in Puccini’s La Bohème, the Speaker in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and Julio in the U.S. premiere of Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel. This month, he is reprising Colline in La Bohème on the Met stage, and later this season he makes another company role debut as Publio in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito. Upcoming performances also include Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen at Bavarian State Opera and Zoroastro in Handel’s Orlando at San Francisco Opera.
American tenor Michael Fabiano, a 2007 winner of the Met’s National Council Auditions, made his company debut in 2010 as Raffaele in Verdi’s Stiffelio. Other Met roles have included Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata, Edgardo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and Rodolfo in La Bohème, a role he reprises this month at the Met. In 2014, he was awarded both the Richard Tucker Award and the Beverly Sills Artist Award. Later this season, he appears as Rodolfo in La Bohème at Lyric Opera of Chicago, in the title role of Massenet’s Werther at Opera Australia, and in the title role of Gounod’s Faust at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.
American soprano Angela Meade made her Met debut in 2008 as Elvira in Verdi’s Ernani, and has returned to sing two other Verdi roles, Alice Ford in Falstaff and Leonora in Il Trovatore, in addition to two Mozart roles, the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, as well as three bel canto title roles: in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Bellini’s Norma, and Rossini’s Semiramide. Like Fabiano and Van Horn, she is a winner of the Met’s National Council Auditions as well as the Richard Tucker Award. Her future engagements this season include Leonora in Il Trovatore at Seattle Opera and at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, as well as Alice Ford in Falstaff at the Dallas Opera.
American soprano Jennifer Check, a graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, made her company debut in 2001 as Clotilde in Norma. Since then, she has sung more than 200 Met performances in roles such as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni and Berta in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and later this season she will return as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. Her roles with other companies in recent seasons include Chrysothemis in Strauss’s Elektra with Michigan Opera Theatre, the title role in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos with Opéra de Toulon, and Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s Macbeth with the Opéra National de Lorraine and the Palm Beach Opera.
Joseph Colaneri made his Met debut in 2000 leading La Bohème. The American conductor has led performances of 15 operas for the company including Norma, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Lucia di Lammermoor, Verdi’s Rigoletto and Nabucco, and Puccini’s Turandot. From 1987 to 1998 he was a conductor with New York City Opera, and he has been a member of the conducting staff at the Met since 1998. Maestro Colaneri is Artistic Director of Opera at the Mannes School of Music at the New School, and since 2013 has served as Music Director of the Glimmerglass Festival.
The intermissions will include live backstage artist interviews, as well as interviews with the Met’s General Manager Peter Gelb, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director.
THE STARS OF MEFISTOFELE
About the Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts
The Metropolitan Opera celebrates its 88th season of Saturday Afternoon Radio Broadcasts—the longest-running classical music series in American broadcast history. Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts have brought opera into millions of homes and enriched the lives of many, playing a vital and unparalleled role in the development and appreciation of opera in this country. Mary Jo Heath hosts, joined each week in the broadcast booth by commentator Ira Siff.
The broadcasts are heard worldwide, reaching millions of opera lovers in more than 35 countries.
Listeners can visit https://www.metopera.org/season/radio/saturday-matinee-broadcasts/ for a wealth of information about the Met broadcasts. For details about all Met performances this season, as well as ticket information, visit the Met’s website at www.metopera.org.
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Contact: Meg Boyle
Metropolitan Opera
(212) 870-7457
mboyle@metopera.org
