Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts 'Die Walküre' Feb.2

Conductor Lorin Maazel, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, will return to the Met Radio Broadcasts after a 45 year absence with Wagner's Die Walküre, which will be broadcast live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network at 12:30 pm EST on February 2, 2008. 

Maestro Maazel conducts at the Met this season for the first time since his last appearance with the company in 1963.  He leads a superb cast which includes sopranos Lisa Gasteen as Brünnhilde (in her Network Broadcast debut) and Deborah Voigt as Sieglinde, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as Fricka, Clifton Forbis as Siegmund, Mikhail Petrenko as Hunding, and James Morris as Wotan.

Intermission content will include the beloved Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera Quiz as well as live backstage interviews with Clifton Forbis and with all of the Valkyries just before they take the stage to sing their famous "Ride."

For more than seven decades, the Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts have brought opera into millions of homes and enriched the lives of many, playing a vital and unparalleled role in the development and appreciation of opera in this country.

Since 1940, the broadcasts have been heard in Canada, and in 1990 they expanded to include regular transmission to Europe.  Today worldwide coverage has grown to include not only more than 30 European countries, but also South America, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and China.

Listeners can visit www.operainfo.org for a wealth of information about the Met broadcasts.  For details about all Met performances this season, as well as ticket information, visit the Met's website at www.metopera.org

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