Late Academy Award–winning director Anthony Minghella made his Met debut on Opening Night of the 2006–07 season, with a now-classic staging of Puccini’s perennial heartbreaker Madama Butterfly. This documentary follows the production’s creation—from the Met’s subterranean rehearsal rooms to the main stage and on to the premiere—as Minghella worked with the opera’s stars, soprano Cristina Gallardo-Domâs as Cio-Cio-San and tenor Marcello Giordani as Pinkerton.

With Cio-Cio-San, the young Japanese geisha at the heart of his Madama Butterfly, Giacomo Puccini created one of the most commanding soprano roles in the operatic repertoire. In this telecast from the Live from Met series, acclaimed American soprano Catherine Malfitano rises to the challenges, traversing a wide emotional range and delivering a vocal performance that is as dramatic as it is beautiful. Tenor Richard Leech is Lt. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, the callous American sailor who takes advantage of Cio-Cio-San’s trusting naiveté, with baritone Dwayne Croft as the stern yet compassionate U.S. consul Sharpless. Daniele Gatti takes the podium to conduct Giancarlo Del Monaco’s production, with its picturesque depiction of turn-of-the-century Japan.

Communism seen through the eyes of a young girl who watches her beloved uncle struggle with the oppressive government .

John Turturro goes back to the land of his ancestors.

A year after his fiancée's death, a playwright schedules a rehearsal for his new play, which proves to be a trap for her killer.

From catastrophic flood in Haiti to a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture, there are many moments of man's life captured in Pulitzer winning news photography since 1917 when the institute is established in New york. There is however one single photo in the entire history of Pulitzer prizes whose photographer remained anonymous for almost three decades. Jahangir Razmi the photographer of a scene of execution of political prisoners in Iran, fearing his life, hides his identity for twenty seven years while his photo possesses the dramatic life of its own around the globe. An artist living in Canada intends to remake the photo of Razmi after three decades of its birth through an international cast.

Two seconds into the bubbling synth sounds of its theme song will have a child of the 1980s or ‘90s exclaiming “Reading Rainbow!” Such is the beloved and ubiquitous nature of the classic children’s literary television show that introduced millions of kids to the wonder and importance of books. Not only did the series insist on having kids speak to kids about their favorite stories, but Reading Rainbow introduced the world to one of the most adored television hosts of all time in LeVar Burton. Thanks to his direct, non-patronizing and, most importantly, kind delivery, Burton became a conduit to learning for children of every background—an entrancing guide to subjects unknown.

Anthology series of plays where various disparate characters meet in the city of London.

A cab driver takes in a young woman who claims to be a reluctant bride, and becomes involved in the search for a stolen necklace.

First-year acting student Stanley mines his girlfriend's family scandal as material for the end-of-year show at drama school. The result is a moral minefield.