Renée Fleming as Hanna Glawari in Lehár’s The Merry Widow Photo credit: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
The Met Live in HD presents two of The Metropolitan Opera’s most popular Live in HD productions – The Merry Widow on 22nd July and Aida on 5th August – in its 2026 Summer Encores series.
Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow stars soprano Renée Fleming in the title role, baritone Nathan Gunn as Danilo and Broadway legend Kelli O’Hara as Valencienne. This 2105 production is directed and choreographed by Tony winner Susan Stroman, and Andrew Davis is the conductor.
The libretto of The Merry Widow, by Leo Stein and Viktor Léon was based upon L’Attaché d’ambassade, a comic play from 1861 by Henri Meilhac. Franz Lehár wrote some orchestral music, but he is remembered mainly primarily for his operettas, especially The Merry Widow, which was hugely successful, and his later work The Land of Smiles from 1929. The Merry Widow was the biggest success of the composer’s career, and premiered at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, in 1905.
Kelli O’Hara as Valencienne with the Grisettes in Lehár’s The Merry Widow Photo credit: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Set in Paris around the turn of the last century, the story tells of the wealthy young widow, Hanna Glawari, from a fictional Eastern European country, Pontevedro, and the attempts of its ambassador to find her a new husband in order to keep her fortune in the country and save it from bankruptcy. Whilst in Paris, Hanna has an unexpected reunion with a former admirer, Danilo Danilowitz, also a Pontevedrian, who initially plays hard to get, but they eventually fall in love, and Hanna learns that her fortune will pass to her new husband, so all ends well.
The role of Hanna is sung by five-time Grammy-winning artist Renée Fleming who according to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has “Possibly the most beautiful soprano voice in the world”. She is regarded as one the most beloved and celebrated sopranos of our time.
Nathan Gunn, as Danilo Danilowitz, “… commands an operatic baritone whose mighty heft and richness confer an outsize authority on everything it touches …” says The New York Times. An artist and musician, he has performed on the greatest stages in the world, as well as on television, radio and video recording.
Kelli O’Hara is best known as a multi-award winning star of Broadway, having appeared in twelve different productions. With this production of The Merry Widow she made history as the first artist to make the crossover from Broadway to Opera, returning to the Met in 2018 as Despina in Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte. She was last seen at the Met as Laura Brown in the world premiere of Kevin Puts’ The Hours which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Opera Recording.
A scene from Lehár’s The Merry Widow Photo credit: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
The operetta is sung in English, with Met titles in English, German and Spanish.
Andrew Davies leads the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus in a Live in HD broadcast in US cinemas on July 22nd. Additional participating countries include Aruba, Colombia, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, South Africa, Spain and Sweden.
Further information can be found on The Metropolitan Opera website.
Tickets are available for US cinemas on the Fathom Entertainment website.
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