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Great Performances

Arts and Music Series / 5 Seasons

Great Performances brings the best in the performing arts from across America and around the world to a US television audience. It presents a diverse programming portfolio of classical music, opera, popular song, musical theater, dance, drama, and performance documentaries.

Watch Latest: S52 E14

54m 24s / TV-G

John Williams Recording His Great Performances Theme Music

5m 10s

Watch the great composer John Williams at work at Royce Hall in Los Angeles, CA, recording the theme song he wrote for Great Performances. The theme won the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music and has been heard on Great Performances broadcasts since its debut on King Lear, starring Ian McKellen, March 27, 2009.

John Williams Conducts "The Imperial March" from Star Wars

2m 25s

Gustavo Dudamel hands the stage off to John Williams to conduct "The Imperial March" from his score to "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back." The march is also known as "Darth Vader's Theme." This is an excerpt from "Dudamel Conducts a John Williams Celebration with the LA Phil."

Driving Miss Daisy - Preview

35s

Alfred Uhry’s classic play is a searing, funny, and hopeful meditation on race relations in America, told through the complex relationship between two of popular culture’s most enduring characters. Daisy Werthan (Angela Lansbury) is a widowed, 72-year-old Jewish woman living in midcentury Atlanta, and Hoke Colburn (James Earl Jones) is an African American man who works as her chauffeur.

Driving Miss Daisy: Hoke Gets a Raise

2m 56s

Hoke Colburn (James Earl Jones), a chauffeur for Daisy Werthan, asks her son Boolie Werthan (Boyd Gaines) for a raise after he receives a competing job offer. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play stars five-time Tony Award winner and three-time Academy Award nominee Angela Lansbury and two-time Tony Award winner and Academy Award winner James Earl Jones as Daisy Werthan and Hoke Colburn.

Driving Miss Daisy: Leaving Georgia

2m 8s

As chauffeur Hoke Colburn (James Earl Jones) and his employer Daisy Werthan (Angela Lansbury) set out on a long drive, Daisy reminisces about a family trip she took as a child, expressing something personal in an unguarded moment with Hoke. Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Driving Miss Daisy stars Tony-winners Angela Lansbury, James Earl Jones and Boyd Gaines.

Driving Miss Daisy: A Christmas Critique

2m 45s

Daisy Werthan (Angela Lansbury) and her daughter-in-law Florine are both Jewish, but it is only Florine who celebrates the Christmas holiday with relish. Miss Daisy complains about Florine to her chauffeur Hoke Colburn (James Earl Jones) while on her way to her son and Florine's Christmas party. Miss Daisy brings along coconuts for the ambrosia.

GP at the Met: Iolanta and Bluebeard’s Castle, a Double Bill

35s

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.

GP at the Met: The Merry Widow - Renée Fleming & Nathan Gunn

1m 22s

Renée Fleming (Hanna) and Nathan Gunn (Danilo) perform an excerpt of their Act II duet "Hello, Here's a Soldier Bold" from Lehár's The Merry Widow. Costumes are by William Ivey Long and the new production in English is directed by Tony Award-winning choreographer and director Susan Stroman.

Great Performances at the Met: The Merry Widow

34s

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.

Twilight: Los Angeles - The Beverly Hills Hotel

3m 3s

Elaine Young, a real estate agent to Hollywood stars, and Henry "Keith" Watson, a co-assailant of Reginald Denny, are two of the real people depicted in Anna Deveare Smith's one-woman show Twilight: Los Angeles, about the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. See Smith transform from one person to the next, using Young's and Watson's own words.

Twilight: Los Angeles Preview

34s

On the 23rd anniversary year of the Los Angeles riots, Great Performances presents a special encore of Twilight: Los Angeles. Anna Deveare Smith provides a new introduction to her landmark piece as its themes continue to reverberate powerfully within the context of today’s current events.

Twilight: Los Angeles - Latasha Harlins

2m 47s

In 1991, Soon Ja Du, a Korean store owner, received a light sentence in the shooting death of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old African-American. Anna Deveare Smith portrays an African-American community activist who repudiates defense attorney Charles Lloyd and draws a parallel between Latasha and Rodney King. Smith also portrays a Korean liquor store owner describing tensions with young customers.

"Pines of Rome" with Andris Nelsons, BSO Music Director

Composed in 1924 by Ottorino Respighi, "Pines of Rome" is the second orchestral work in his "Roman trilogy." "Fountains of Rome" (1917) is the first and "Roman Festivals" (1926) is the third. The four movements of "Pines of Rome" depict the city's trees in different locations at different times of the day. Boston Symphony Orchestra: Andris Nelsons’ Inaugural Concert airs May 29 at 9 pm.

Boston Symphony Orchestra: Andris Nelsons’ Inaugural Concert

35s

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.

Jonas Kaufmann and Kristine Opolais: "Tu, tu, amore? Tu?"

2m 59s

Jonas Kaufmann and Kristine Opolais—both frequent collaborators with conductor Andris Nelsons, Opolais' husband—join Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra to perform the duet “Tu, tu, amore? Tu?” from Puccini’s opera Manon Lescaut. In an interview, Kaufmann jokes that performing a physically passionate duet on stage with Opolais while her husband conducts is simply part of the opera business.

Jonas Kaufmann and Kristine Opolais: La Boheme Act I Finale

2m 47s

Tenor Jonas Kaufmann and soprano Kristine Opolais join Andris Nelsons at his inaugural concert as as Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director to perform "O Soave Fanciulla," the Act I Finale from Puccini's opera La Boheme. Born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, Nelsons began his career as a trumpeter in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra before studying conducting.

Andris Nelsons Conducts Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana

2m 12s

Cavalleria rusticana is a one-act opera by Pietro Mascagni, which received its U.S. premiere in 1891 in Philadelphia. The tragic love story is set in a Sicilian village. Its symphonic Intermezzo has been heard outside opera houses in film soundtracks including Raging Bull and The Godfather Part III. Andris Nelsons conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra in his inaugural concert with the BSO.

GP at the Met: Les Contes d'Hoffmann

34s

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 Sunday, May 10 at 12 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). 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.

GP at the Met: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

34s

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.

Annie Lennox: Nostalgia Live in Concert

39s

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.

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