Opera Stars Share ‘Great Moments’ on PBS

In the era of piled-high hairdos, pink formals and white-tie-and-tails, Ed Sullivan’s Sunday-night television variety show regularly broadcast live opera singers along with Sen~or Wences, jugglers, pop idols and ethnic dance troupes from around the world.

In “Great Moments in Opera,” a PBS compilation of performances by operatic stars of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, those stars, via excerpts from the defunct Sullivan show, shine again.

And they do shine.

Hosted by veteran Metropolitan Opera principals Roberta Peters and Robert Merrill, the show features arias and duets sung by Renata Tebaldi, Franco Corelli, Joan Sutherland, Jan Peerce, Maria Callas, Richard Tucker, Leontyne Price, Beverly Sills, Lily Pons, Dorothy Kirsten and Peters and Merrill, all of them looking younger than some viewers may remember.

The repertory is standard but representative of the individuals. Shortly after her Metropolitan Opera debut, the young Price sings “Vissi d’arte,” from Puccini’s “Tosca,” rather impassively and without the grandeur that would ultimately be hers. In evening clothes, Tebaldi and Corelli sing the closing scene from Giordano’s “Andrea Chenier.” Sutherland, svelte and fresh in 1966, offers a definitive, word-clear and impeccable “Sempre libera,” from Verdi’s “Traviata.”

With no less than Dimitri Mitropoulos leading the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, Callas, in costume as Floria Tosca, also sings “Vissi d’arte,” in her impassioned, probing way.

Indeed, all these performances showed a heat and thoroughness one does not always receive from operatic stars of the 1990s. Merrill, describing Joan Sutherland, often called “La Stupenda,” recalls that, as a singer, “she was amazingly secure.” Of course she was. They all were.

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“Great Moments in Opera” airs at 9:30 p.m. Sunday on KCET-TV Channel 28 and Thursday at 8 p.m. on KOCE-TV Channel 50.