Toscanini served as the Met's principal conductor ( but with no official title ) from 1908 to 1915, leading the company in performances of Verdi, Wagner and others that set standards for the company for decades to come.

Since September 2006 she has also served as host for all of the live and recorded broadcasts on the Met's Sirius satellite radio channel.

Gheorghiu also performed at the Met as Liù in Turandot in 2000 ; as Violetta in La traviata opposite Jonas Kaufmann in 2006 and 2007 ; as Amelia in Simon Boccanegra in 2007 ; as Mimì in La bohème in 2008 ; as Magda in the 2008 / 09 season in the ROH / SFO production of La rondine, the Met's first performance of the opera since 1936 ; and for the 2009 / 10 season she appeared as Violetta, replacing her previous engagement as Marie Antoinette in a rare revival of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles which was replaced due to the recession.

Margaret Juntwait, an announcer and classical music host at WNYC for 15 years who left for the Metropolitan Opera in September 2006, is now the announcer for the Met's Saturday Afternoon Radio Broadcasts and is only the third regular announcer of the long-standing broadcast series launched in 1931, and is also the first woman to hold the position.

He has also appeared on television and video productions of the Met's productions of Carmen and Bluebeard's Castle, San Francisco's production of Mefistofele, Glyndebourne's production of The Rake's Progress and Salzburg's production of Don Giovanni.

Flagstad also feuded with the Met's general manager, Edward Johnson, after conductor Artur Bodanzky's death, when she asked to be conducted for a few performances by her accompanist, Edwin McArthur, rather than by the Met's new conductor Erich Leinsdorf.

From 1 October 1872 the GWR also ran a half-hourly middle circle service from the Met's Moorgate Street station to Mansion House via Paddington and Earl's Court.

Between 1917-1924 he also frequently played the piano for the Met's Sunday Night Concert Series, and he also portrayed the minor role of Boleslao Lazinski in Umberto Giordano's Fedora on the Met stage between 1924-1926.

Her work was documented in thirty-five live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts of complete operas ( a number of which, including roles she never recorded commercially — Giulietta, Brangäne, Waltraute, Geschwitz — have been restored in recent years for the Met's satellite radio channel ); she also starred in broadcasts from San Francisco Opera ( including Poppea and Caesar ), Lyric Opera of Chicago ( including Romeo and the Rheingold Fricka ), and other houses.

In addition, the Met's online archive database provides links to all Rhapsody, Sirius XM, and Met Player operas, with complete program and cast information.

The Met's experiments with television go back to 1948 when a complete performance of Verdi's Otello was broadcast live on ABC-TV with Ramón Vinay, Licia Albanese, and Leonard Warren.

The complete Porgy and Bess was broadcast live from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera three times as part of the Met's regular radio broadcast series.

Tessitura uses a single database of information to record, track and manage all contacts with the Met's constituents, conduct targeted marketing and fund raising appeals, handle all ticketing and membership transactions, and provide detailed and flexible performance reports.

The solution was now a new branch of the Bakerloo line from Baker Street to serve St John's Wood and Swiss Cottage, thereby rendering the existing stations of Lord's, Marlborough Road and Swiss Cottage on the parallel route redundant, and negating the need for the Met's extension from Edgware Road station ( it should be noted, however, that Swiss Cottage ( Metropolitan ) was proposed to remain open during peak hours for interchange with the Bakerloo, and that Lord's station would further open for special cricketing events.

There is some evidence that the sets for the Met's production had been taken from some of their other operas, and at the second performance that season the work was given in concert, with the ballet sequences omitted ; in this form the work traveled to Boston, where it was performed on 3 March 1895.

Following Abbey's inaugural season which had resulted in very large deficits, the Met's directors turned to Leopold Damrosch as General Manager for its second season.

The Met's six German seasons were especially noted for performances by the celebrated conductor Anton Seidl whose Wagner interpretations were noted for their almost mystical intensity.

Theater directors Bartlett Sher, Mary Zimmerman, and Jack O ' Brien have joined the list of the Met's directors along with Stephen Wadsworth, Laurent Pelly, Luc Bondy and other opera directors to create innovative new stagings for the company.

The Met's fate was essentially sealed when, as part of the AFL-NFL Merger, the NFL declared that stadiums smaller than 50, 000 were inadequate for its needs ; the Met only seated 48, 700 for football.

Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, said that her frequent cancellations have become " an increasingly difficult problem for ( the Met ).

He is usually found near Mr. Met's Kiddie Field where fans can meet and pose for pictures with him.

Since about 80 percent of Met's costs are fixed, revenue needs to cover far more than operating expenses if it is going to pay for all costs.

It was designed as the second car in a two car family, for Mom taking the kids to school or shopping or for Dad to drive to the railroad station to ride to work: the " commuter / shopping car " with resemblance to the big Nash, but the scale was tiny as the Met's wheelbase was shorter than the Volkswagen Beetle's.

The gala featured all of the Met's current stars as well as appearances by 26 of the Met's veteran stars of the past.

Only days later she cancelled all her performances in the scheduled new production of Faust during the Met's 2011 / 2012 season.

Moving into the heavier Verdi repertoire in the 1970s, she sang Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, Elisabetta in Don Carlo, Luisa Miller, Lady Macbeth, Leonora in Il trovatore and the Requiem, all under the baton of the Met's music director James Levine.

The Met's chairman and three other directors were on the board of the District, John Fowler was the engineer of both companies and the construction works for all of the extensions were let as a single contract.

Podleś made her Metropolitan Opera debut on February 14, 1984, singing the title role in Handel's Rinaldo, but only for a few performances that year ( from which only two were in the Met's House ), and was notably absent from the Met for more than 24 years, since then pursuing her career elsewhere and performing regularly at all other major opera houses in Europe and America.

Two of the building's most characteristic features – the huge exterior banners announcing current shows, and the broad plaza and steps leading from Fifth Avenue to the Met's entryway – are products of Hoving's tenure.

During the Met's early years, the company annually presented a dozen or more opera performances in Philadelphia throughout the season.

Increasing the number of new productions every season to keep the Met's stagings fresh and noteworthy, Gelb has partnered with other opera companies to import productions and he has engaged directors from the realms of theater, circus and film to produce the Met's own original productions.

" Due to the height of the Met's proscenium, it was not feasible to have titles displayed above the stage, as is done in most other opera houses.

Metropolitan Opera Radio is a 24-hour opera channel on Sirius XM Radio, which presents three to four live opera broadcasts each week during the Met's performing season.

While musicologist Philip Gossett notes that between 1962 and 1990 " some seventy opera houses have included the work in one or more seasons ", it was not until the Met's 1990 revival after almost 100 years that a production based on a new critical edition was mounted.

* Ruffling the Met's feathers-' Parterre Box ,' a gay opera magazine.

The opera is a favorite of the Met's music director James Levine, who has conducted it a total of 44 times from 1976 to 2003.

Lyric Opera of Chicago staged the opera in the 1995 / 1996 season in the first performances outside of the Metropolitan Opera, in a lightly revised version that cut some expensive aspects of the Met's production, including an onstage orchestra.

* Online review of Corella in the Met's opera La Gioconda-Dance of the Hours ( Sep. 2006 )

WETA airs opera programming on Saturday afternoons, including the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts during the Met's regular December – April broadcast season.

The Guild recruited members through subscriptions to its magazine, Opera News, and through Mrs. Belmont's weekly appeals on the Met's radio broadcasts it raised money to help keep the struggling company afloat.

To further engage new audiences Gelb has initiated live high-definition video transmissions to cinemas worldwide and regular live satellite radio broadcasts on the Met's own SiriusXM radio channel.