Tonight is your chance to catch two of opera’s brightest stars live and up close. Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna will sing popular arias and duets at Prospect Park this evening, Friday June 20th at 8pm. The event is free. The stage will be located near the baseball fields of the Long Meadow (see map).

Gheorghiu and Alagna aren’t strangers to each other. The pair performed together in Charles François Gounod’s “Romeo & Juliette,” which appeared on GREAT PERFORMANCES. Learn more about the opera right here, and then watch clips of an interview with Gheorghiu and Alagna in which the two stars discuss the rigors of performing.

The Met also posted a Q&A with Gheorghiu and Alagna. Here’s an excerpt:

The Met Summer Concert is a special event, but it’s hardly the first time you’ve sung outdoors for tens of thousands of people.
Angela Gheorghiu: I’ve sung large public concerts many times, all over the world in parks and stadiums, for the Queen of England in Buckingham Palace Park, and in Amsterdam for Queen Beatrix’s anniversary. The most recent one was in Hyde Park in London for the Last Night of the Proms.
Roberto Alagna: I did “Michael Jackson and Friends” a few years ago, and I sang for the Pope. Also, every summer I sing at the Chorégies d’Orange Festival in France at the ancient theater in Orange. But this will be my first outdoor concert in the U.S. Read more…

Listen online

If you can’t make it to the park tonight, the performance will be broadcast live on WQXR (96.3 FM) and streamed live on the Met’s Web site.

Gheroghiu and Alagna will also perform together later this year in Puccini’s La Rondine, which hasn’t been staged at the Met since 1936.

For more information about Met performances on PBS visit GREAT PERFORMANCES online.

Image courtesy the Metropolitan Opera.