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March 22: Wozzeck

Cory Weaver
/
Metropolitan Opera

The 2013-14 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues with a live broadcast of Wozzeck conducted by Met Music Director James Levine Saturday, March 22 at noon on KLRE Classical 90.5.

Levine has led more performances of Berg’s dark opera than any other conductor in Met history. Thomas Hampson and Deborah Voigt are singing their first-ever performances of the leading roles this season: Wozzeck, a hapless soldier crushed by society, and Marie, his unfaithful mistress. This performance will also star Simon O’Neill as the Drum-Major, Peter Hoare as the Captain, and Clive Bayley as the Doctor. Wozzeck will be heard live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network at 12:00 p.m. CT on Saturday, March 22.

James Levine has conducted an unparalleled number of Met performances over the course of his 43-year Met career, including this season’s revival of Mozart’s Così fan tutte (which will be broadcast live on April 26) and new production of Verdi’s Falstaff. He has championed both of Berg’s operas at the Met, also conducting 30 performances of Lulu, including its 1977 Met premiere. Among the many other highlights of his work with the company are the first-ever Met performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito; Gershwin’sPorgy and Bess; Stravinsky’sOedipus Rex; Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani, I Lombardi and Stiffelio; Weill’sRise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny; Schoenberg’sErwartung and Moses und Aron; Rossini’s La Cenerentola; and Berlioz’sBenvenuto Cellini, as well as the world premieres of John Corigliano’sThe Ghosts of Versailles and John Harbison’sThe Great Gatsby.

Thomas Hampson's recent performances at the Met have included many of the great Verdi baritone roles, specifically Iago in Otello, the title role in Macbeth, Giorgio Germont in La Traviata, Rodrigo in Don Carlo, the title role in Simon Boccanegra, and Carlo in Ernani. His extensive repertory with the company also includes numerous Mozart roles, most frequently the title character in Don Giovanni, Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Guglielmo in Così fan tutte; the Wagner roles of Amfortas in Parsifal and Wolfram in Tannhäuser; and the title roles in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Britten’s Billy Budd, Busoni’s Doktor Faust, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and the baritone version of Massenet’s Werther.

Soprano Deborah Voigt has sung nearly 250 performances with the Met in a varied repertory that has encompassed major Wagner roles, such as Brünnhilde and Sieglinde in Der Ring des Nibelungen, Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer, Elsa in Lohengrin, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, and Isolde in Tristan und Isolde; Richard Strauss roles, such as the title characters in Die Ägyptische Helena and Ariadne auf Naxos, the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten, and Chrysothemis in Elektra; and Verdi heroines like Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera, Leonora in La Forza del Destino, and the title role in Aida. Last season at the Met, she sang Brünnhilde in the Ring cycle and Cassandra in a revival of Berlioz’s Les Troyens.

Tenor Simon O’Neill made his Met debut in 2006 as the High Priest in Idomeneo and sang Siegmund in Die Walküre with the company in 2008 and 2013. Tenor Peter Hoare made his Met debut in 2009, singing the role of Shapkin in the company premiere of Janá?ek’s From the House of the Dead. Bass Clive Bayley makes his Met debut this season as the Doctor, a role he has also sung in recent seasons with the Bavarian State Opera and Welsh National Opera.

Wozzeck is performed without an intermission.