Kirk Browning

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.

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Antony and Cleopatra is an opera in three acts by American composer Samuel Barber. The libretto was prepared by Franco Zeffirelli. After an unsuccessful premiere, the opera was extensively revised, 9 years later, by Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti.

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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.

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Inspired by Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, a tangled web of affairs is weaved around actress Desirée Armfeldt and the men who love her: lawyer Fredrik Egerman and Count Carl-Magnus Malcom. When Desirée's show travels through Fredrik's town, the estranged lovers' passion rekindles.

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A Danish prince and university student avenges his father's murder by his uncle, who stole the crown and married his mother.

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A stage production of the classic musical, videotaped in front of a live audience at the Paper Mill Playhouse, New Jersey.

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This classic American play, performed on an almost-bare stage, is about the mundane but rather pleasant lives of the Gibbs family, the Webb family, and their neighbors in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, early in the 20th century.

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Opera greats Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland -- one of the most acclaimed tenors and one of the most beloved sopranos of the 20th century -- take the stage at the Met for a gala evening of opera scenes with special guest Leo Nucci. Filmed in 1987, the memorable program includes scenes from the first and third acts of Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor," the third act of Verdi's "La Traviata" and the third act of Verdi's "Rigoletto."

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A true story about one US and one USSR delegate who, during 1982 talks in Geneva between USA and USSR on limiting medium-range nukes in Europe, met by accident in a nearby forest while on a stroll and informally started a key discussion.

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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.

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The Franco Zeffirelli production of Puccini's "Turandot", recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera in April, 1987. Éva Marton stars as Turandot, with Plácido Domingo as Calaf, Leona Mitchell as Liù, Paul Plishka as Timur, and Hugues Cuenod as L'Imperatore Altoum. James Levine conducts.

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Live performance from the Metropolitan Opera, 31 December 1986.

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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.

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This enchanting, evening-length ode to Shakespeare’s comedy features Maria Calegari (Titania), Ib Andersen (Oberon), and Jean-Pierre Frohlich (Puck). Set to music by Felix Mendelssohn, this ballet weaves a tale of love and magic in delightful fashion. Robert Irving conducts the New York City Ballet Orchestra.

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An African-American musical version of Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. In 1985 PBS televised the original Brooklyn Academy of Music production, as presented by the American Music Theater Festival at the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia, as part of the Great Performances series.

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Live Metropolitan Opera performance March, 1985.

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A man from a family of rich snobs becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family.

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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.

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Verdi's early masterpiece is based on a Victor Hugo play with a complicated plot concerning a young woman and the three men vying for her affections—her elderly uncle, a king destined to become Holy Roman Emperor, and a bandit who is actually an overthrown nobleman. Though there is plenty of action arising from the various passions and grudges scattered among these characters, the opera is best appreciated as a feast of beautiful and dramatic Italianate singing. With virtuosic roles for a quartet of principals, the opera delivers one feat of heroic vocalism after another.

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From the elaborate Broadway revival of the 1932 Eva Le Gallienne/Florida Friebus production comes a whimsical retelling of the Lewis Carroll classic.

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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.)

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In celebration of its 100th anniversary in 1983, the Metropolitan Opera hosts a four-hour performance uniting some of the world's most spellbinding opera singers and conductors. The event includes a ballet from Samson et Dalila and boasts incredible classical performances from Kathleen Battle, Plácido Domingo, Jose Carerras, Leonard Bernstein, Marilyn Horne, Leona Mitchell, Luciano Pavarotti and many more.

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The Metropolitan Opera's performance of "Hansel and Gretel" features music by Engelbert Humperdinck and is conducted by Thomas Fulton. The Met's storybook production cheerfully evokes a magic world of woodland sprites and candy dreams and yet brings as well the entire apparatus of Wagnerian music and drama to bear on a German fairy tale. This production is sung in English, and features the Metropolitan Opera, Chorus, and Ballet.

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Ken Talley, a Vietnam vet who lost his legs in combat, lives in a farmhouse in rural Missouri with his lover, Jed. Traumatized and bitter, Ken struggles to find meaning in his life. As he contemplates selling the farmhouse, old friends and family members descend for a vacation. Originally broadcast as part of the series "American Playhouse" (season 1, episode 9).

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Vladimir Horowitz's piano recital in 1982 at Royal Festival Hall in London.

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A record of McKellen's one-man Broadway show about the Bard.

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This musical adaptation of the Studs Terkel book examines the average worker's viewpoint--showing that he or she is anything but average. Based on a series of interviews with real working people--construction workers, waitresses, firemen, secretaries, and cleaning women, Working is both an exploration of the individuals' occupations and a lament for lost hopes and dreams.

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American Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.

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"La Bohème" is one of Giacomo Puccini's most popular and timeless works and the second-most performed opera at New York's Metropolitan Opera. This production, directed by the legendary Franco Zeffirelli, features José Carreras, Teresa Stratas, Renata Scotto and Richard Stilwell. The opera is replete with extraordinary visual beauty as it presents the tragic story of young bohemians struggling to make it in the world.

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Opera royalty Luciano Pavarotti brings dignity and power to the title role in this 1982 production. During a squall at sea, Idomeneo -- the king of Crete -- swears to Neptune that if the monarch survives, he'll sacrifice the first person he encounters onshore. Tragically, that person ends up being his son, Idamante (Frederica Von Stade). Maestro James Levine masterfully conducts the orchestra and chorus of the Metropolitan Opera. A musical production that was designed for the "Live From the Met" series, this program was produced by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle.

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