The WFMT Opera Series

Saturdays at noon
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Radio Broadcast Series

Operas from the finest stages around the world

From Milan to New York, Barcelona to Chicago, WFMT gives you a front-row seat to performances from some of the world’s greatest opera companies and performers.

Strauss’s Salome

Met Opera | May 17, 2025

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts his first Met performances of Strauss’s white-hot one-act tragedy, which receives its first new production at the company in 20 years. Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story—already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play—a psychologically perceptive Victorian-era setting rich in symbolism and subtle shades of ...

John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra

Met Opera | May 24, 2025

The most recent opera by preeminent American composer John Adams—a glorious adaptation of Shakespeare’s immortal drama—has its Met premiere. Following her debut in the company premiere of Adams’s El Niño in 2024, soprano Julia Bullock stars as the irresistible Cleopatra, one of theater’s most complex and captivating characters, opposite bass-baritone Gerald Finley as the conflicted Antony. Adams himself takes the ...

Rossini’s Barber of Seville

Met Opera | May 31, 2025

Rossini’s effervescent comedy retakes the stage in Bartlett Sher’s madcap production. Star mezzo-sopranos Aigul Akhmetshina headlines a winning ensemble as the feisty heroine, Rosina, alongside high-flying tenor Lawrence Brownlee as her secret beloved, Count Almaviva. Baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky stars as Figaro, the inimitable barber of Seville, with bass-baritone Peter Kálmán as Dr. Bartolo and bass Alexander Vinogradov as Don Basilio ...

Season Finale: Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades

Met Opera | June 7, 2025

Tchaikovsky’s macabre thriller, set against the backdrop of Tsarist Russia, is back in the Met’s atmospheric staging. Soprano Sonya Yoncheva makes her highly anticipated role debut as Lisa, the young woman who embarks on a deadly love affair with the gambling-obsessed officer Hermann, sung by tenor Brandon Jovanovich. Baritone Igor Golovatenko reprises his moving portrayal of Lisa’s fiancé, Prince Yeletsky, ...