Metropolitan Opera Radio

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Metropolitan Opera Radio

Broadcast area	United States, Canada
Frequency	SIRIUS 85 DISH Network 6085
First air date	September 25, 2006
Format	Opera
Class	Satellite Radio Station
Owner	SIRIUS Satellite Radio
Website	www.sirius.com/metropolitanoperaradio

Metropolitan Opera Radio is an all-opera radio station on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 85 and DISH Network channel 6085. It carries live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera's current 2006-07 season on four evenings each week during the season in addition to archived broadcasts throughout the day from the 1,500 Metropolitan Opera's taped performances. The channel's announcer is Margaret Juntwait.

The channel was launched at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time on September 25, 2006, with a live broadcast of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, conducted by James Levine, the Met's Music Director, and directed by Anthony Minghella. It starred Chilean soprano Cristina Gallardo-Domâs as Cio-Cio-San, tenor Marcello Giordani as Pinkerton, and baritone Dwayne Croft as Sharpless.

Metropolitan Opera Radio replaced the existing "Classical Voices" channel in the Sirius channel lineup. While opera-oriented, the "Classical Voices" channel also offered some choral music and art songs programming (such as German lieder and French Chansons).

Many of the MET's historic archived broadcast tapes have been updated and re-mastered by Sirius and many of the original commentaries having been removed.

In conjunction with and parallel to the traditional Live From the MET Saturday radio broadcasts during the season, since December 2006 Sirius presented high definition sound to accompany the transmission via satellite of selected live broadcasts to movie theatres across North America and Britain.