Opera on WNED Classical

Enjoy complete performances of world famous operas from Verdi, Puccini, Mozart and many more Saturdays at 1pm.

For many years, radio broadcasts from "The Metropolitan Opera" have been a Saturday tradition in many American households. Met Opera broadcasts are usually performed live from Lincoln Center in New York City and can be heard from December through May on WNED Classical.    

The WFMT Radio Network Opera series complements the Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts, filling in the schedule to complete the year. From Milan to New York, Barcelona to Chicago, you'll have  a front-row seat to performances from some of the world’s greatest opera companies and performers.

The 2024-2025 The Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast Series, runs December 7 through June 7, 2025. listeners can hear thrilling performances by today’s most celebrated artists as well as legendary stars from the past, captured in live broadcasts spanning nine decades of Met history. 

Broadcasts can be heard on WNED Classical at 1pm every Saturday except as noted.

Tune in at 94.5 FM in Buffalo or anywhere in the world our website's live player or WNED Classical app.

See what’s coming up below:

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to lead Strauss’s grand mythological epic, a tour de force for orchestra and soloists alike. A spectacular trio of sopranos lead the ensemble cast, with Elza van den Heever as the otherworldly Empress, Lise Lindstrom as the Dyer’s Wife, and Nina Stemme as the Nurse. Following recent triumphs in Wagner’s Ring cycle and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, baritone Michael Volle is Barak, with tenor Russell Thomas as the Emperor and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as the Spirit Messenger. 

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MUSIC 

Strauss’s score calls for extraordinarily large musical forces, including an onstage orchestra of winds and brass (plus thunder machine and organ), in addition to a large pit orchestra with such augmentations as glass harmonica, two celestas, and an extravagant percussion section that features a slapstick, castanets, and Chinese gongs. The vocal writing is likewise remarkable, and all five lead roles require great strength, stamina, and musicality: beyond penetrating the dense orchestration, the singers are also expected to produce elegant and even delicate passages. 

Composer: Richard Strauss 

Libretto: Hugo von Hofmannsthal 

Conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin 

Venue: The Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts NYC 

CAST:  

Empress: Elza van der Heever 

Dyer’s Wife: Lise Lindstrom 

Nurse: Nina Stemme 

Emperor: Russell Thomas 

Barak: Michael Volle 

Spirit Messenger: Ryan Speedo Green 

Two-time Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded, commissioned by the Met and based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, has its awaited company premiere. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, one of opera’s most compelling young stars, headlines in the tour-de-force role of Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. As she adjusts to this new way of doing battle, she struggles under the pressure to be the perfect soldier, the perfect wife, and the perfect mother all at the same time. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium, leading a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as the Wyoming rancher who sweeps Jess off her feet. Michael Mayer’s high-tech staging, using a vast array of LED screens, presents a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above. 

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MUSIC 

Tesori’s score moves freely among the realistic, psychic, and technological aspects of the drama. The role of Jess, in particular, lives vibrantly in all these dimensions. Her music is dreamy and somewhat disembodied while she sings about the experience of flying her jet, conversational in her early interactions with the Commander, lush and flirtatious in her romance with Eric, and then, as her mental health degrades, detached from him and her world—so much so that her character is bifurcated with the introduction of the soprano role Also Jess, a kind of alter ego that helps process the trauma of her job. The splitting of Jess’s psyche also allows her to sing moving duets “with herself.” 

Composer: Jeanine Tesori 

Libretto: George Brant 

Conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin 

Venue: The Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts NYC 

CAST: 

Jess: Emily D’Angelo 

Also Jess: Ellie Dehn 

Eric: Ben Bliss 

Sensor: Kyle Miller 

Commander: Greer Grimsley 

A beloved New York holiday tradition, Mozart’s enchanting musical fairy tale returns in the Met’s abridged, English-language production by Julie Taymor—the Tony Award–winning director of Broadway’s The Lion King. With dazzling puppets and a colorful setting, the Met’s Magic Flute is one of the city’s ultimate seasonal sensations for family audiences. 

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MUSIC 

Mozart and his librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, created The Magic Flute with an eye toward a popular audience, but the varied tone of the work requires singers who can specialize in several different musical genres. The baritone Papageno represents the comic and earthy, the tenor Tamino and the soprano Pamina display true love in its noblest forms, the bass Sarastro expresses the solemn and the transcendental, and the Queen of the Night provides explosive vocal fireworks. 

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 

Conductor: J. David Jackson 

Venue: The Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts NYC 

CAST: 

Pamina: Emily Pogorelc 

Queen of the Night: Kathryn Lewek 

Tamino: Duke Kim 

Papageno: Sean Michael Plumb 

Speaker: Le Bu 

Sarastro: Peixin Chen 

Monostatos: Thomas Capobianco 

A deliciously festive holiday tradition, the Met’s English-language staging of Humperdinck’s sweeping interpretation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale returns, complete with giant cartoon chefs, singing trees, and a wicked witch’s kitchen you’ll never forget. Soprano Hera Hyesang Park and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong headline as the siblings lost in the woods, and tenor John Daszak (in fright wig and fat suit) appears as their over-the-top nemesis, the Witch. Edward Gardner conducts. 

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MUSIC 

The score of Hänsel and Gretel combines accessible charm with subtle sophistication. Like Wagner, Humperdinck assigns musical themes to certain ideas and then transforms the themes according to new developments in the drama. Unlike Wagner, however, Humperdinck uses separate songs (with real folk songs among them) within his scheme. The music, like the children, seems to grow up over the course of the evening. 

Composer: Engelbert Humperdinck 

Conductor: Thomas Fulton 

Venue: The Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts NYC 

CAST: 

Hänsel: Frederica von Stade 

Gretel: Judith Blegen 

Gertrud: Jean Kraft 

Peter: Michael Devlin 

Witch: Rsalind Elias 

Sandman: Diane Kesling 

Dew Fairy: Betsy Norden