The BEST episodes of Great Performances season 46

#1 - Great Performances at the Met: La Fille du Régiment

Season 46 - Episode 26 - Aired 7/7/2019

Watch Donizetti’s romantic comedy about a budding military relationship starring Pretty Yende and Javier Camarena in a feast of bel canto vocal fireworks. Special guest Kathleen Turner makes her Met debut. Enrique Mazzola conducts.

#2 - The Cleveland Orchestra Centennial Celebration

Season 46 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/11/2019

Great Performances: The Cleveland Orchestra Centennial Celebration commemorates the centennial of the orchestra’s founding with a gala concert conducted by music director Franz Welser-Möst featuring works touching on more than a century of Viennese musical traditions. World-renowned, Grammy-nominated pianist Lang Lang joins the orchestra in a special performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24. The concert also features “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” (The Woman Without a Shadow), Symphonic Fantasy by Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel’s viscerally cataclysmic “La Valse (The Waltz),” which dramatically evokes the changing artistic worlds between the 19th and 20th centuries.

#3 - Orphée et Eurydice from Lyric Opera of Chicago

Season 46 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/18/2019

Reimagine Christoph Willibald Gluck’s enduringly popular opera based on the famous Greek myth. From Lyric Opera of Chicago in collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet. Starring Dmitry Korchak, Andriana Chuchman and Lauren Snouffer.

#4 - Leonard Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood

Season 46 - Episode 9 - Aired 12/28/2018

In honor of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, Tanglewood—the famed summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra—dedicated its entire 2018 season to the iconic composer, conductor, performer, educator and humanitarian.

#5 - Doubt from the Minnesota Opera

Season 46 - Episode 14 - Aired 1/25/2019

Doubt unfolds as suspicion ignites a battle of wills at a Bronx Catholic school in 1964. The charismatic and progressive Father Flynn is trying to loosen the grip of St. Nicholas Church School’s strict customs, which are fiercely guarded by its iron-fisted principal, Sister Aloysius Beauvier. When the young and naïve Sister James shares her suspicion with the principal that Father Flynn may be abusing the school’s only African-American student, Sister Aloysius embarks on a personal crusade to discover the truth about the priest. With no proof besides her moral certainty, Sister Aloysius engages in a battle of wills with Father Flynn in this new opera.

#6 - Great Performances at the Met: Samson et Dalila

Season 46 - Episode 21 - Aired 3/24/2019

Watch Saint-Saëns’s biblical epic based on the tale of Samson and Delilah from the Book of Judges. Starring tenor Roberto Alagna and mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča in the title roles. Sir Mark Elder conducts.

#7 - Great Performances at The Met: Aida

Season 46 - Episode 10 - Aired 1/20/2019

Conducted by Nicola Luisotti, Aida stars vocal powerhouses Anna Netrebko in the title role and Anita Rachvelishvili as Amneris as they go toe to toe in this classic love story featuring a number of Verdi’s most celebrated arias. Aleksandrs Antonenko, Dmitry Belosselskiy and Ryan Speedo Green round out the cast. Sonja Frisell’s production is set in ancient Egypt, where Ethiopian princess Aida has been enslaved, but her royal identity remains a secret. The captured princess is in love with Radamès, the great warrior who dreams of leading the Egyptians to victory over the Ethiopians as a war between the two nations is on the horizon. Trouble arises as the Egyptian Pharaoh’s daughter Amneris sets her sights on winning Radamès’s love, but suspects he is infatuated with another woman after the warrior does not return her feelings. A rivalry ensues when Aida confesses her love for Radamès and Amneris vows revenge. Torn between a love for one another and loyalty to their respective countries, Aida and Radamès must battle public duties and private feelings in this epic love story. Isabel Leonard hosts.

#8 - Great Performances at the Met: Marnie

Season 46 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/1/2019

With conductor Robert Spano, singers Isabel Leonard and Christopher Maltman star in composer Nico Muhly's reimagining of Winston Graham's "Marnie," a novel about a beautiful, but mysterious woman who assumes multiple identities.

#9 - Tony Bennett & Diana Krall – Love Is Here to Stay

Season 46 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/24/2018

#10 - Great Performances at the Met: La Traviata

Season 46 - Episode 23 - Aired 4/5/2019

Conducted by new Metropolitan Opera music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, La Traviata stars Diana Damrau in the pinnacle soprano role of Violetta alongside Juan Diego Flórez as her hapless lover Alfredo and Quinn Kelsey as his father Germont. Michael Mayer’s new production follows courtesan Violetta Valéry, who knows she will die soon and wishes to leave her professional life for a chance at love. After meeting the charming Alfredo Germont at a party, the two begin a relationship and move to the country in an effort to enjoy their love away from society. A tumultuous visit from Alfredo’s father, the bourgeois Giorgio Germont, casts doubt in Violetta’s heart for the future of their relationship, causing her to abandon their love nest. After seeing Violetta on the arm of a baron, a jealous Alfredo must fight for his love and reunite with her before it is too late. Anita Rachvelishvili hosts.

#11 - Sound of Music

Season 46 - Episode 3 - Aired 11/9/2018

A U.K. production of "The Sound of Music," the long-running musical about the von Trapp Family Singers and their escape from Austria at the height of Nazism.

#12 - Julius Caesar from Donmar

Season 46 - Episode 22 - Aired 3/29/2019

Set in a women’s prison, Great Performances: Julius Caesar offers a powerful dramatization of the catastrophic consequences of a political leader’s extension of power beyond constitutional confines through an all-female lens. In this acclaimed Donmar Warehouse production directed Phyllida Lloyd (“The Iron Lady,” “Mamma Mia!”), Shakespeare’s famous discourse on power, loyalty and tragic idealism is heightened against the backdrop of female incarceration.

#13 - Michael Bublé: Tour Stop 148

Season 46 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/24/2018

#14 - Great Performances at the Met: Carmen

Season 46 - Episode 25 - Aired 6/16/2019

Mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine reprises her remarkable portrayal of opera’s ultimate seductress, a triumph in her 2017 debut performances, with impassioned tenor Roberto Alagna as her lover, Don José. Louis Langrée conducts Sir Richard Eyre’s powerful production, a Met favorite since its 2009 premiere.

#15 - Great Performances at the Met: Dialogues des Carmélites

Season 46 - Episode 30 - Aired 9/1/2019

Poulenc’s classic Dialogues des Carmélites. Metropolitan Opera Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts this devastating story of faith and martyrdom starring Isabel Leonard in the touching role of Blanche de la Force alongside Adrianne Pieczonka as Madame Lidoine, Erin Morley as Sister Constance, Karen Cargill as Mother Marie and Karita Mattila, returning to the Met as Madame de Croissy, the prioress of the monastery.

#16 - Great Performances at the Met: Die Walküre

Season 46 - Episode 27 - Aired 8/11/2019

Experience a Wagnerian event for the ages starring Christine Goerke as the willful warrior Brünnhilde alongside Stuart Skelton, Eva-Maria Westbroek and Greer Grimsley. Philippe Jordan conducts.

#17 - From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2019

Season 46 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/1/2019

Great Performances continues the cherished tradition of ringing in the new year with the Vienna Philharmonic at the opulent Musikverein. Under the baton of guest conductor Christian Thielemann, the celebration features favorite Strauss Family waltzes and the dancing of the Vienna State Ballet. Downton Abbey’s Earl of Grantham, Hugh Bonneville, returns as host.

#18 - k. d. lang – Landmarks Live in Concert

Season 46 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/14/2018

#19 - Harold Prince: The Director’s Life

Season 46 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/23/2018

Revisit the legendary career of the pioneering Broadway producer and director, winner of 21 Tony Awards, with this retrospective celebration featuring Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Mandy Patinkin, John Kander, Susan Stroman, and Angela Lansbury.

#20 - John Leguizamo’s Road to Broadway

Season 46 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/16/2018

Go behind-the-scenes of John Leguizamo’s Tony-nominated one-man show, Latin History for Morons, a comic but pointed look at how Hispanic culture has been portrayed and repressed throughout American history.

#21 - An American in Paris The Musical

Season 46 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/2/2018

The 2017 production of George Gershwin's "An American in Paris" features Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope.

#22 - GRAMMY Salute to Music Legends® 2018

Season 46 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/5/2018

A concert honors Neil Diamond, Tina Turner, Queen, conductor John Williams, The Meters and other recipients of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement, Trustee and Music Educator awards.

#23 - Movies for Grownups Awards with AARP The Magazine 2019

Season 46 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/15/2019

#24 - Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration

Season 46 - Episode 19 - Aired 3/2/2019

The songs of legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s are among the most sublime musical landscapes of human emotion ever created. Mitchell’s unique musical and lyrical gifts are an unprecedented marriage of intimacy and universality, creating a sound that is incomparable, yet relatable to all.

#25 - Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2019

Season 46 - Episode 29 - Aired 8/9/2019

Enjoy the world-renowned Vienna Philharmonic’s annual concert from Schönbrunn Palace with guest conductor Gustavo Dudamel and famed pianist Yuja Wang playing works including Gershwin’s "Rhapsody in Blue" and Sousa’s "The Stars and Stripes Forever."