News Article

Angela Gheorghiu will be heard as Violetta and Jonas Kaufmann will make his Met broadcast debut as Alfredo in the Feb. 11 broadcast of Verdi’s “La Traviata” over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network. This live broadcast from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House will begin at 10:30 a.m. (Pacific Time) and will be broadcast over Gonzaga University’s radio station, KAGU, 88.7 FM.

Gheorghiu’s performances of Violetta at the Met this month are her first of that role in New York. However, when she sang Violetta at Covent Garden in 1994, Gheorghiu was quickly proclaimed a star. The London Financial Times noted, “it is as if she has been singing the music all her life…. Every dot and dash in Verdi’s score, every tone color, was there.” A New York Sun critic recently wrote, “[there is] no getting around it — [she] is one of the best singers in the world.”

German tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who made his Met debut as Alfredo on Feb. 4, has been called by London’s The Guardian, “arguably the finest tenor Germany has produced in the past half-century.” Completing the cast for the broadcast will be Anthony Michaels-Moore as Germont. The announcer is Margaret Juntwait.

The 21-week-long 2005-2006 broadcast season celebrates 75 years of live radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, the longest-running classical music series in U.S. broadcast history.

Toll Brothers, a luxury home-builder, is the corporate sponsor. The Annenberg Foundation and the Vincent A. Stabile Foundation provide long-term support for the broadcasts.

For more information, see the Met’s Web site at www.metopera.org.