The BEST episodes of Great Performances season 45
Every episode of Great Performances season 45, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Great Performances season 45!
Great Performances, a television series devoted to the performing arts, has been telecast on PBS since 1972. The show is produced by WNET in New York City. It is one of the longest running performing arts anthologies on television, second only to Hallmark Hall of Fame. Great Performances presents concerts, ballet, opera, an occasional documentary, and plays. The series has also won many television awards, including an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and an Image Award, with nods from the Directors Guild of America and the Cinema Audio Society.
#1 - Great Performances at the Met: Semiramide
Season 45 - Episode 22 - Aired 7/8/2018
Experience Rossini’s masterpiece starring Angela Meade as Queen Semiramide and Elizabeth DeShong as Arsace, the Queen’s fiancé and her own son. Javier Camarena, Ildar Abdrazakov and Ryan Speedo Green complete the cast. Maurizio Benini conducts.
#2 - Great Performances at the Met: Norma
Season 45 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/26/2018
Conducted by Carlo Rizzi, Bellini's ``Norma'' features Sondra Radvanovsky, Joyce DiDonato and Joseph Calleja.
Watch Now:Amazon
#3 - Great Performances at the Met: L’Elisir d’Amore
Season 45 - Episode 17 - Aired 4/29/2018
In Bartlett Sher’s production, the beautiful and wealthy Adina draws the attention of Nemorino, the poor but good-hearted country boy, as well as Sergeant Belcore, who immediately asks Adina to marry him. To win her love, Nemorino spends all his money on a magic elixir of love sold by the traveling “doctor” Dulcamara. Believing he is irresistible to Adina after drinking the potion, Nemorino feigns indifference, but his actions leave her surprised, hurt and ready to wed Belcore. At the wedding, a single tear on Adina’s cheek is all Nemorino needs to know her true feelings, and at long last, they confess their love for one another. Domingo Hindoyan conducts. Soprano Susanna Phillips hosts.
#4 - Great Performances at the Met: Luisa Miller
Season 45 - Episode 25 - Aired 8/12/2018
Verdi's "Luisa Miller,'' a tragedy of fatherly love, features Placido Domingo, Sonya Yoncheva and Piotr Beczala.
#5 - Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2018
Season 45 - Episode 26 - Aired 8/17/2018
Enjoy the world-renowned Vienna Philharmonic’s annual open-air concert from Austria’s Imperial Schönbrunn Palace, featuring conductor Valery Gergiev and internationally acclaimed soprano Anna Netrebko as a guest soloist.
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#6 - She Loves Me
Season 45 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/20/2017
Two feuding store clerks find solace in each other as anonymous romantic pen pals.
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#7 - Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn
Season 45 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/24/2017
The festive Roundabout Theatre Company production of Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn - The Broadway Musical comes to PBS Friday, November 24 at 9 p.m. (check local listings). The musical continues the Great Performances marathon within the Broadway’s Best lineup on PBS.
Watch Now:Amazon
#8 - The Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed Live
Season 45 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/25/2017
The Moody Blues perform the ``Days of Future Passed'' album in its entirety in Toronto.
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#9 - Great Performances at the Met: La Boheme
Season 45 - Episode 18 - Aired 5/20/2018
See the classic Puccini opera starring Sonya Yoncheva as Mimì and Michael Fabiano as Rodolfo. In 1830s Paris, the budding romances of two couples are tested by jealousy, poverty and illness. Marco Armiliato conducts.
#10 - The Opera House
Season 45 - Episode 19 - Aired 5/25/2018
Explore the rich history of the Met Opera’s Lincoln Center home and the cultural life of 1950s-60s New York City. Features famed soprano Leontyne Price, the Met’s general manager Rudolf Bing, city planner Robert Moses and architect Wallace Harrison.
Watch Now:Amazon
#11 - Great Performances at the Met: Tosca
Season 45 - Episode 20 - Aired 6/15/2018
Puccini’s thrilling classic, with Sonya Yoncheva, Vittorio Grigolo and Željko Lučić.
Watch Now:Amazon
#12 - Noël Coward's Present Laughter
Season 45 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/3/2017
A revival of Noël Coward's ``Present Laughter'' features Kevin Kline, Kate Burton, Kristine Nielsen and Cobie Smulders.
#13 - In The Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams
Season 45 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/10/2017
As part of its Broadway’s Best lineup, Great Performances airs a special encore presentation of In the Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams – Friday, November 10 at 9 p.m. ET (check local listings) – showcasing the 2008 musical that launched Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rise to stardom.
Watch Now:Amazon
#14 - GRAMMY Salute To Music Legends® 2017
Season 45 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/13/2017
The Recording Academy honors Lifetime Achievement Award recipients Shirley Caesar, Ahmad Jamal, Charley Pride, Jimmie Rodgers, Nina Simone, Sly Stone, producer Thom Bell, record executive Mo Ostin, Ralph S. Peer and the Velvet Underground.
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#15 - will.i.am and Friends Featuring the Black Eyed Peas
Season 45 - Episode 16 - Aired 4/20/2018
International superstar will.i.am performs from London’s historic Royal Albert Hall in a one-night-only concert event. The Grammy-, Emmy- and Latin Grammy-winning artist, writer and producer reunites with members of the Black Eyed Peas on stage for the first time in over six years, plus special guests Pia Mia, Eva Simons and Lydia Lucy (“The Voice UK”).
Watch Now:Amazon
#16 - Ellis Island: The Dream of America with Pacific Symphony
Season 45 - Episode 21 - Aired 6/29/2018
THIRTEEN’s Great Performances and Pacific Symphony, led by music director Carl St.Clair, pay tribute to America’s history with a performance of composer Peter Boyer’s “Ellis Island: The Dream of America,” a Grammy-nominated contemporary classical work celebrating the historic American immigrant experience.
#17 - The Chris Botti Band in Concert
Season 45 - Episode 27 - Aired 8/18/2018
With this new special, Great Performances puts the spotlight on Botti and his band, capturing one of today’s leading jazz trumpeters at his peak.
#18 - Great Performances at the Met: Così fan tutte
Season 45 - Episode 23 - Aired 7/29/2018
Enjoy a new production of Mozart’s comedy of the sexes set in 1950s Coney Island. Stars Kelli O’Hara, Amanda Majeski, Serena Malfi, Ben Bliss, Adam Plachetka and Christopher Maltman. David Robertson conducts.
#19 - Great Performances at the Met: Exterminating Angel
Season 45 - Episode 15 - Aired 3/25/2018
The Exterminating Angel was inspired by the classic Luis Buñuel film of the same name, and stars John Tomlinson and Alice Coote. Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham is the host. Thomas Adès’s production is set in a luxurious mansion at the beginning of a fancy party. Inexplicably, all the servants, except the butler Julio, escape the De Nobile mansion while guests enjoy their meal. The guests feel no motivation to go home and instead make themselves comfortable for the night. When morning comes and the guests realize they can’t leave, panic sets in and two visitors take their own lives, while another, who was ill, dies. Suddenly, Leticia realizes that everyone is in exactly the same place as when their captivity began. They repeat their actions from the first night and are ultimately able to escape, but their freedom will not last long.
#20 - From Vienna: The New Year's Celebration 2018
Season 45 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/1/2018
The Vienna Philharmonic performs Strauss family waltzes, accompanied by the Vienna City Ballet; host Hugh Bonneville.
#21 - Chicago Voices
Season 45 - Episode 24 - Aired 8/10/2018
A tribute to Chicago vocalists features performances by Renée Fleming, Jessie Mueller, Kurt Elling, Michelle Williams, Matthew Polenzani, Shemekia Copeland, The Handsome Family, John Prine, Lupe Fiasco and the Voices of Trinity Mass Choir.
#22 - Hitman: David Foster & Friends
Season 45 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/25/2017
David Foster has generated some of the biggest hits in popular music, and collaborated with a veritable “Who’s Who” of superstars in a career spanning more than three decades. In this special encore presentation, Foster’s achievements, including 14 Grammy Awards, are celebrated in an all-star concert.
#23 - Nas Live From the Kennedy Center: Classical Hip-Hop
Season 45 - Episode 13 - Aired 2/2/2018
Two decades after the album’s critically acclaimed release, Nas teamed up with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, to stage a symphonic rendition of “Illmatic,” one of the most revered albums in hip-hop history.
#24 - Havana Time Machine
Season 45 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/6/2017
A performance documentary outlines the evolving cultural scene in Cuba; host Raul Malo.
#25 - Foo Fighters – Landmarks Live in Concert
Season 45 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/10/2017
Multi-Grammy-winning rock band Foo Fighters delivers an electrifying, historic performance at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, in the latest installment of Landmarks Live in Concert for GREAT PERFORMANCES. Captured this past July, Foo Fighters – Landmarks Live in Concert: A Great Performances Special premieres nationwide Friday, November 10 at 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings).