Denyce Graves

Come one, come all for Sesame Street's 35th anniversary musical gathering! Is there one song the whole world can sing together? Find out when Super Grover embarks on an outrageous mission. There's musical mayhem when Oscar the Grouch gets a song stuck in Big Bird's head and our yellow-feathered friend begins his own search for someone to help him name that tune.

The Gershwins’ modern American masterpiece has its first Met performances in almost three decades, starring bass-baritone Eric Owens and soprano Angel Blue in the title roles. Director James Robinson’s stylish production transports audiences to Catfish Row, a setting vibrant with the music, dancing, emotion, and heartbreak of its inhabitants.

Composer Nico Muhly unveils his second new opera for the Met with this gripping reimagining of Winston Graham’s novel, set in the 1950s, about a beautiful, mysterious young woman who assumes multiple identities. Director Michael Mayer and his creative team have devised a fast-moving, cinematic world for this exhilarating story of denial and deceit, which also inspired a film by Alfred Hitchcock. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings the enigmatic Marnie, and baritone Christopher Maltman is the man who pursues her—with disastrous results. Robert Spano conducts.

A documentary exploring the life, career, art and legacy of Marian Anderson.

Renée Fleming makes her highly anticipated return to the Met in the world-premiere production of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Kevin Puts’s The Hours, adapted from Michael Cunningham’s acclaimed novel. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and made a household name by the Oscar-winning 2002 film version starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, the powerful story follows three women from different eras who each grapple with their inner demons and their roles in society. The exciting premiere radiates with star power, with Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato joining Fleming as the opera’s trio of heroines. Phelim McDermott directs this compelling drama, with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium to conduct Puts’s poignant and powerful score.

Ballou , a documentary film, follows the talented Washington, DC, Ballou Senior High School Marching Band, as they overcome their negative environment filled with guns, drugs, and violence, and uplift the community with music, dedication, and personal sacrifice. This Washington, DC, High School Marching Band--from an impoverished community just 3 miles away from the US Capitol building--is on its way to the national band competition. They are a family with heart and soul that use hard work, discipline, and compassion to overcome all obstacles. Political leaders and celebrities including Rev. Jesse Jackson, Gen (ret) Colin Powell, Congressman John Lewis, Marion Barry, Denyce Graves, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chuck Brown are featured in the film to show the importance of a small marching band in the lives the band members and in the community.

“Kaufmann is performing the title role for the first time, and it’s hard to imagine him bettered. His striking looks make him very much the Romantic and romanticised outsider of Giordano’s vision. His voice, with its dark, liquid tone, soars through the music with refined ease and intensity: all those grand declarations of passion, whether political or erotic, hit home with terrific immediacy.” – The Guardian Presented in its Covent Garden premiere in January 2015, this staging – directed by David McVicar and conducted by the Royal Opera’s Music Director, Sir Antonio Pappano – shows a bloody tricolour daubed with the words “Even Plato banned poets from his Republic” – written by Robespierre on the death warrant of the historical Chénier, a poet and journalist sent to the guillotine in 1794 for criticising France’s post-revolutionary government.

A priest comes under suspicion for abusing a boy at his parish school.

Jacques Offenbach's opera Les contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffman) shown in the Teatro alla Scalla

A documentary on the making of the opera 'Margaret Garner' (2005) created by Toni Morrison and Richard Danielpour. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison was inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner in writing her novel Beloved. Garner was a slave in pre-Civil War America who escaped and killed her own daughter rather than see her return to slavery. Morrison later wrote the libretto for Margaret Garner, an opera composed by Richard Danielpour and commissioned by the Michigan Opera Theatre, the Cincinnati Opera and the Opera Company of Philadelphia in 2005. By recounting Garner's tale in conjunction with the story behind this "black opera" and the harsh Washington upbringing of its mezzo soprano, Denyce Graves, the film Margaret Garner re-examines a tragic historical moment while addressing racial issues that are still prevalent today.

Performance by American Mezzo Soprano Denyce Graves. Recorded in June, 2003, at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia and broadcast on PBS. Featuring Patti Labelle and Take 6.