The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala

Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. He catches up with them on his Uncle’s farm, and joins them the next day as they head for California and a new life... Hopefully. A stage presentation by The Steppenwolf Theater Company's production featuring the original Broadway cast.

Candide falls in love with the beautiful but materialistic Cunegonde. Her barron father doesn't approve of the affair so Candide wanders, meeting all the misfortunes along the way.

Plácido Domingo accomplishes the rare feat of singing both leads on the same night at the Met in 1978 on opera's most popular double-bill.

Leonora plans to elope with Don Alvaro, but he accidentally shoots and kills her father, who curses them as he dies. The lovers go on the run, but get separated. Bent on revenge, Leonora's brother Don Carlo, hunts them down. Verdi painted an immense canvas with this dark but tuneful opera, vividly brought to life in John Dexter’s production, with sets by the great Eugene Berman. The legendary Leontyne Price is seen in one of her greatest roles, Leonora. Price’s soaring voice encompasses every nuance of Leonora’s emotion as she moves from joy through resignation to ultimate heartbreak. James Levine’s brilliant leading of the Met orchestra and chorus is a lesson in Verdi style. Giuseppe Giacomini is Alvaro, the man Leonora loves, and Leo Nucci is Don Carlo, the dark instrument of their Fate.

In this rousing satire a native upstate New York clerk comes to 1920s Manhattan with dreams of making in big on Tin Pan Alley.

This program features the music of Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim in a 1992 performance at Carnegie Hall. An American Musical Theatre writer for over 40 years, Stephen Sondheim has created the scores for hits such as Passion, Assassins, Bounce, Into The Woods, Sunday In The Park With George, Merrily We Roll Along, Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overtures. Featuring: Liza Minnelli, Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters, Glenn Close and many more.

Long-running anthology program sponsored by Hallmark Cards. Beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2019, the series received 80 Emmy Awards, 24 Christopher Awards, 11 Peabody Awards, 9 Golden Globes, and 4 Humanitas Prizes. Early seasons were a weekly live drama, eventually transitioning to videotaped and then filmed productions broadcast as occasional specials.

This telecast offers a rare opportunity to see the legendary Joan Sutherland in the role that first catapulted her to international stardom. She drove audiences wild by the way her opulent voice caressed the music’s long phrases and sprinted effortlessly through the fiendish runs, trills, embellishments and stratospheric high notes. One of the glories of the operatic world, her portrayal of Donizetti’s hapless heroine is a multifaceted and moving characterization. The incomparable tenor Alfredo Kraus is Edgardo, the man Lucia loves but cannot have. (Performance taped November 13, 1982. Broadcasted September 28, 1983.)

Willy Loman, an aging, failing salesman, struggles to accept reality and his failure to achieve the American Dream.

All the throbbing eroticism—and ultimate heartbreak—of Puccini’s youthful score is unleashed by James Levine and his top-flight cast. Plácido Domingo is Des Grieux, the handsome, headstrong young aristocrat who falls head over heels for the enticing, impetuous Manon Lescaut (Renata Scotto). Manon returns his love, but her obsession with luxury ruins them both. Gian Carlo Menotti’s opulent production, with sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley, superbly captures the colorful world of 18th century France.

On the day in 1965 that the Pope visits New York and masses of people line the streets in adulation, Artie, a zookeeper living in Sunnyside, Queens, thinks it's time for his life to be blessed, too. He desperately wants to escape his lower middle-class existence and become a popular singer and songwriter, but his life is complicated by an ambitious mistress, a crazy wife and a bomb-making son.

Dramatist Luigi Pirandello's mordant comedy of manners tells the tale of upper-crust Italians Silia Gala and her sneering spouse, Leone, who finds his impassivity tested when he has to duel his wife's frustrated paramour.

The historic, original, live airing of what would become an annual Christmas tradition throughout the 1950s, this opera tells the story of Amahl, a crippled shepherd boy, and his destitute mother, who provide temporary shelter to three men who are following a star to the newly-born Christ child.

Puccini’s heartbreaking story of young love in the garrets of Belle Epoque Paris has attracted many famous singers through the years. But with James Levine at the helm and the starry duo of Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Scotto as Rodolfo and Mimi, every bit of emotion in the score pours across the footlights and seduces the audience. In this case, the audience was in the millions since this was the very first in the “Live from the Met” series of telecasts. The evocative production is by Fabrizio Melano, designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi.

NET Playhouse is an American dramatic television anthology series produced by National Educational Television. NET subsequently merged with WNDT Newark, New Jersey to form WNET and was superseded by the Public Broadcasting Service. American television anthology series of wide range of genres, from history and drama, to fantasy, and science fiction. Fiction novels, stories, stage plays, fairytales, and historic events are dramatized in each episode.

Donald Moffat stars in Moliere's classic comedy about lovable scoundrel Tartuffe, who befriends the wealthy Orgon and then attempts to seduce both his new friend's wife and daughter in this TV presentation from the Broadway Theatre Archive. Tartuffe pretends to be a pious man whose faith convinces Orgon and his family to succumb to his influence, but he's undone when his womanizing ways make it clear that his piety is a charade.