NaN/100 votes#1 - Star-Spangled Spectacular
Season 42 Episode 1 - Aired 9/13/2014
John Lithgow hosts a two-hour event with Grammy-, Emmy- and Tony-winning performers, along with co-host Jordin Sparks on September 13 at 8 pm, live from Baltimore's harbor. Performers celebrating the 200th anniversary of our national anthem include Kristin Chenoweth, Melissa Etheridge, Denyce Graves-Montgomery, Little Big Town, Pentatonix, Smokey Robinson, Kenny Rogers, and Train.
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8.3/10113 votes#2 - 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.
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NaN/100 votes#3 - Cats: The Musical
Season 42 Episode 3 - Aired 11/21/2014
This special encore presentation of the original 1998 broadcast of "Cats" on Great Performances. Let the "Memory" live again, but this time see Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical in high definition and digital sound!
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NaN/100 votes#4 - 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. The Vienna State Ballet 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.
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NaN/100 votes#5 - 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.
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NaN/100 votes#6 - GP 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.
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NaN/100 votes#7 - Macbeth
Season 42 Episode 7 - Aired 2/1/2015
Director Rupert Goold's gripping stage production of Macbeth, set in a nameless 20th-century militaristic society and starring Sir Patrick Stewart in his Tony-nominated performance as the ambitious general, and Kate Fleetwood as his coldly scheming wife, has been rethought in vivid filmic terms.
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NaN/100 votes#8 - Great Performances at the Met: Carmen
Season 42 Episode 8 - Aired 2/22/2015
Acclaimed director Richard Eyre’s production of Carmen stars Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili in the title role of the seductive gypsy, a part she has sung to acclaim at many of the world’s leading opera houses. Aleksandrs Antonenko sings the obsessed soldier Don José. Pablo Heras-Casado conducts.
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NaN/100 votes#9 - La Dolce Vita: The Music of Italian Cinema
Season 42 Episode 9 - Aired 2/27/2015
Conducted by 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.
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NaN/100 votes#10 - Bryan Adams in Concert
Season 42 Episode 10 - Aired 3/1/2015
Canadian born singer-songwriter Bryan Adams has been one of the most successful international performers in contemporary rock music, selling over 65 million records in a career that has spanned more than three decades. Filmed at Toronto’s Elgin Theater in July 2014, songs in this concert include “Here I Am,” “Summer of ‘69,” “Heaven,” and “Straight from the Heart.”
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NaN/100 votes#11 - Great Performances at the Met: Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Season 42 Episode 11 - Aired 3/22/2015
Rossini’s classic comedy Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) features some of the most instantly recognizable melodies in all of opera. The dynamic young cast includes Lawrence Brownlee; Isabel Leonard; and Christopher Maltman in his first Met performances of Figaro, the title barber whose skills extend far beyond hair-cutting.
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NaN/100 votes#12 - Mark Morris Dance Group: L'Allegro
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 poetry by Milton. This performance was filmed July 2014 at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Spain.
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8.1/1026 votes#13 - 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.
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NaN/100 votes#14 - Great Performances at the Met: Meistersinger
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.
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NaN/100 votes#15 - Great Performances at the Met: Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Season 42 Episode 15 - Aired 4/17/2015
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.
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NaN/100 votes#16 - Boston Symphony Orchestra: Andris Nelsons' 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.
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NaN/100 votes#17 - 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.
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NaN/100 votes#18 - Great Performances at the Met: Iolanta and Bluebeard’s Castle
Season 42 Episode 18 - Aired 7/12/2015
Polish film director Mariusz Treliński 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.
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8.0/10238 votes#19 - Driving Miss Daisy
Season 42 Episode 19 - Aired 7/17/2015
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.
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NaN/100 votes#20 - 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. 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.
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NaN/100 votes#21 - 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.
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NaN/100 votes#22 - 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.
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- NaN/100 votes
#23 - Great Performances at the Met: Cavalleria Rusticana and 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. Check local listings.
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The Best Episodes of Great Performances Season 42
Every episode of Great Performances Season 42 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of Great Performances Season 42!
The best in the performing arts from across America and around the world including a diverse programming portfolio of classical music, opera, popular song, musical...
Genres:ComedyDocumentaryDrama
Network:PBS
Season 42 Ratings Summary
"Star-Spangled Spectacular" is the best rated episode of "Great Performances" season 42. It scored N/A/10 based on 0 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 9/13/2014. This episode is rated NaN points higher than the second-best, "Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek LIVE!".