The BEST episodes of Great Performances season 42

#1 - Great Performances at the Met: Il Barbiere di Siviglia

Season 42 - Episode 11 - Aired 3/22/2015

Isabel Leonard stars as Rosina in Rossini's classic comedy ``The Barber of Seville.''

#2 - Great Performances at the Met: La Donna del Lago

Season 42 - Episode 21 - Aired 8/2/2015

Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez headline Rossini’s bel canto tour-de-force "La Donna del Lago" on Great Performances at the Met (check local listings). Based on the work by Sir Walter Scott, DiDonato is Elena, the lady of the lake pursued by two men, with Flórez as Giacomo, the benevolent king of Scotland. Michele Mariotti conducts debuting Scottish director Paul Curran’s staging.

#3 - Boston Symphony Orchestra: Andris Nelsons' Inaugural Concert

Season 42 - Episode 16 - Aired 5/29/2015

The start of BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons’ tenure with the orchestra features two of the conductor’s close colleagues: his wife, the acclaimed Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais, and the outstanding German tenor Jonas Kaufmann, each singing selections from the Wagnerian and Italian verismo repertoires. The inaugural concert was filmed in September 2014.

#4 - Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2015

Season 42 - Episode 22 - Aired 8/28/2015

Led by guest conductor Zubin Mehta, the world-renowned Vienna Philharmonic returns for its 12th open-air summer concert, this time with a distinctly Scandinavian flavor, in the magnificent gardens of Austria’s Imperial Schönbrunn Palace. The varied program includes favorites by Grieg, Sibelius and Lumbye. The concert soloist is the internationally acclaimed Austrian piano virtuoso Rudolf Buckbinder.

#5 - Great Performances at the Met: Cavalleria Rusticana; Pagliacci

Season 42 - Episode 23 - Aired 9/6/2015

Sir David McVicar directs the first new Met production of the popular verismo double bill in 45 years: Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, both with Marcelo Álvarez as the male lead. Eva-Maria Westbroek and Patricia Racette also star. Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi leads the operas, both set in Sicily - one in a 1900 village square, the other at a 1948 truck stop.

#6 - Dudamel Conducts a John Williams Celebration With the LA Phil

Season 42 - Episode 20 - Aired 7/24/2015

Natalie Portman hosts Dudamel Conducts a John Williams Celebration with the LA Phil on Great Performances Friday, July 24 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Itzhak Perlman is the special guest in a gala opening night concert paying tribute to the prolific film composer. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel conducts.

#7 - Encores! Great Performances at the Met

Season 42 - Episode 3 - Aired 11/29/2014

#8 - Great Performances at the Met: La Cenerentola

Season 42 - Episode 24 - Aired 9/7/2014

Joyce DiDonato plays the title character in Rossini's ``La Cenerentola.''

#9 - Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek LIVE!

Season 42 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/24/2014

Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek LIVE! – featuring an evening of classic jazz standards in both vocal duets and solo performances. Filmed at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, in front of a live audience of invited guests, many of whom were students involved in arts programs in New York City public schools.

#10 - Star-Spangled Spectacular: Bicentennial of Our National Anthem

Season 42 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/13/2014

Musical performances celebrate the 200th anniversary of ''The Star-Spangled Banner'' live from Baltimore's harbor; hosts John Lithgow and Jordin Sparks.

#11 - From Vienna: The New Year's Celebration 2015

Season 42 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/1/2015

Stage and screen legend Julie Andrews returns for the sixth time to host the festive annual New Year’s celebration with the Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Zubin Mehta, from Vienna’s Musikverein. From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2015, featuring the infectious melodies of the Strauss Family and their contemporaries, aired on Great Performances, Thursday, January 1 at 2:30 p.m. ET on PBS with an encore performance that evening at 8 p.m. From Vienna: The New Year's Celebration 2015 with Zubin MehtaThis is the 77-year-old maestro’s fifth appearance on the podium for the New Year’s Concert. Following Willi Boskovsky, Clemens Krauss and Lorin Maazel, Mehta joins the list of these great maestros who have conducted the concert most often. The Vienna State Ballet heads back to school and dances to both the “Students Polka” and the “Wine, Women and Song Waltz” in the palatial main building of Vienna’s 650-year-old University on the city’s grand Ringstrasse. The venerable concert is the largest worldwide event in classical music reaching millions of people annually through radio and television in over 80 countries. The Vienna Philharmonic’s traditional New Year’s program has showcased Viennese musical culture at the highest level, and since the first television broadcast in 1959, sent the world a New Year’s greeting in the spirit of hope, friendship and peace. (The telecast marks the 31st broadcast of the event on PBS.)

#12 - Great Performances: Macbeth

Season 42 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/1/2015

Following a London West End run in December 2007, a sold-out limited engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in March 2008, and an eight-week run on Broadway, director Rupert Goold's stage production of Macbeth was filmed for television at the end of 2009 with Patrick Stewart in his Tony-nominated performance as the ambitious general, and Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood as his scheming wife.

#13 - Great Performances at the Met: Le Nozze di Figaro

Season 42 - Episode 6 - Aired 1/16/2015

The season nine premiere of Great Performances at the Met is Mozart’s elegant masterpiece of marital discord, Le Nozze di Figaro, conducted by Met Music Director James Levine and staged by Richard Eyre. Ildar Abdrazakov sings the title role, Marlis Petersen plays Figaro’s quick-witted bride-to-be, Susanna, and Peter Mattei is Count Almaviva.

#14 - Great Performances at the Met: The Merry Widow

Season 42 - Episode 17 - Aired 6/19/2015

The lavish new staging of Lehár’s effervescent operetta The Merry Widow is the Met debut of Broadway director and choreographer Susan Stroman. Soprano Renée Fleming adds a new character to her Met repertory as Hanna, the rich widow. Sir Andrew Davis conducts the cast that also includes baritone Nathan Gunn as Danilo; tenor Alek Shrader; baritone Sir Thomas Allen; and Broadway star Kelli O’Hara.

#15 - Great Performances at the Met: Iolanta; Bluebeard's Castle

Season 42 - Episode 18 - Aired 7/12/2015

Polish film director Mariusz Treli?ski makes his Met debut with the new production, inspired by noir films of the 1940s. Valery Gergiev conducts the two rarely performed one-acts: Tchaikovsky’s lyrical fairy tale Iolanta and Bartók’s harrowing Bluebeard’s Castle. Iolanta stars Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczala and Aleksei Markov. Bluebeard's Castle stars Nadja Michael and Mikhail Petrenko.

#16 - American Voices With Renée Fleming

Season 42 - Episode 5 - Aired 1/9/2015

World-renowned American opera singer Renée Fleming convenes a festival of special guests to celebrate the diverse range of America’s vocal artistry. Young artists receive mentoring from respected singers including Ben Folds, Dianne Reeves, Sutton Foster, Eric Owens, Kim Burrell and Alison Krauss. Also see performances by Josh Groban, Sara Bareilles and Norm Lewis.

#17 - Driving Miss Daisy

Season 42 - Episode 19 - Aired 7/17/2015

James Earl Jones and Angela Lansbury reprise the play about an elderly Southern white woman and her black chauffeur in mid-twentieth century Atlanta, GA.

#18 - Bryan Adams in Concert

Season 42 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/1/2015

The popular performer from the 80s and 90s performs songs from his 3-decade long career before an enthusiastic crowd in Toronto.

#19 - Great Performances at the Met: Les Contes d'Hoffmann

Season 42 - Episode 15 - Aired 5/10/2015

Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo stars as the tortured poet unlucky in love in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann on Great Performances at the Met. Offenbach based the opera on three stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann. The production is by Broadway director Bartlett Sher. Soprano Deborah Voigt hosts the broadcast.

#20 - Great Performances at the Met: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Season 42 - Episode 14 - Aired 4/12/2015

James Levine leads Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (“The Master-Singer of Nuremberg”) in its first Great Performances at the Met broadcast. Michael Volle is the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs, starring with Johan Botha as Walther, Annette Dasch as Eva, Johannes Martin Kränzle as Beckmesser, Hans-Peter König as Pogner, Paul Appleby as David, and Karen Cargill as Magdalene. Renée Fleming hosts.

#21 - Annie Lennox: Nostalgia Live in Concert

Season 42 - Episode 13 - Aired 4/3/2015

The concert of her Grammy-nominated album features Lennox’s takes on iconic American compositions by such artists as Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Billie Holiday and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, as she pays tribute to some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, interpreting compositions that have moved her, stripping them down to their emotional and musical core and making them her own.

#22 - Mark Morris Dance Group: L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato

Season 42 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/27/2015

Choreographer Mark Morris’s signature work comes to television for the first time, hosted by Mikhail Baryshnikov. Morris garnered international fame for this piece, set to George Frideric Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato with libretto based on John Milton's poetry. This performance of the Mark Morris Dance Group with live music was filmed at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Spain.

#23 - La Dolce Vita: The Music of Italian Cinema

Season 42 - Episode 9 - Aired 2/27/2015

Conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, selections include music by Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, Luis Bacalov, performed by the New York Philharmonic and featuring Joshua Bell, Renée Fleming and Josh Groban. The concert includes video projection with animated graphics and film clips related to the films La Dolce Vita, Cinema Paradiso, Once Upon a Time in the West, Il Postino and more.

#24 - Great Performances at the Met: Carmen

Season 42 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/22/2015

Director Richard Eyre’s production of Bizet’s Carmen stars Anita Rachvelishvili as Carmen. Aleksandrs Antonenko is the soldier Don José, Anita Hartig is Micaëla, and Ildar Abdrazakov is the toreador Escamillo.