SCOTT SIMON, host:
Every Saturday afternoon for the past 80 years, the Metropolitan Opera has broadcast the work of such composers as Verdi, Wagner, and Mozart. The Met broadcasts are now the longest-running classical music program in the United States. But opera on the radio goes back even further, more than 100 years.
As Keith Brand reports, it too began at the Met.
KEITH BRAND: The marriage of opera and broadcasting began January 13th, 1910, at the Metropolitan Opera. It was an experimental broadcast, a decade before the appearance of the first radio stations in the U.S.
Mr. MARK SCHUBIN (Engineering consultant): The inventor who had arranged for the broadcast, Lee de Forest, had asked the radiotelegraph operators if they could kindly refrain from transmitting during the January 12th experiment, and they did.
BRAND: Mark Schubin is the Met's unofficial historian of media history.
Mr. SCHUBIN: But on the 13th, the inventor of the equipment that was used to pick up the opera decided that he should invite the press. But one of the radiotelegraph operators did not abide by the silence code, and there was crackles of static...
(Soundbite of crackling noise)
Mr. SCHUBIN: ...coming from his transmission of Morse code. And one of the reporters asked what the Morse code said, and it was, I have just taken my beer and now I take my seat.
BRAND: That first full opera, broadcast on January 13th, might very well have sounded like this...
(Soundbite of static) (Soundbite of opera music and singing)
BRAND: It took a number of years and some sober minds before regular opera broadcasts commenced on Christmas Day 1931. The Met was struggling financially because of the Depression, and the broadcasts provided access to a large audience - thus, the very first fundraising appeal.
Mrs. AUGUST BELMONT: We all realize that opera has grown from a private luxury to a national necessity. And the responsibility must pass from a limited group to an unlimited group...
BRAND: Mrs. August Belmont was the first woman on the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera, and it was through these appeals that their finances were stabilized. But if it was one voice more than any other that ensured their success, it was Milton Cross.
Mr. MILTON CROSS (Radio announcer): Ladies and gentlemen, this afternoon, the Radio Corporation of America has the honor to present a performance by the Metropolitan Opera Company of Richard Wagners celebrated music drama Siegfried.
BRAND: From his seat at the old Metropolitan Opera House at 40th and Broadway, Cross brought the drama and spectacle of grand opera to millions of radio listeners across the country.
(Soundbite of music)
BRAND: Ned Eckhardt lived in Greenwich Village during the 1960s and remembers walking into a barbershop on a Saturday afternoon in New York when the broadcast was playing.
Mr. NED ECKHARDT: There were about 75 people in the barbershop; three barbers were singing the aria all together.
(Soundbite of opera music and singing)
Mr. ECKHARDT: And it was just such a great cacophony of wonderful sound. And when the aria was over, everybody cheered and went bravo and the three barbers took bows.
(Soundbite of music) (Soundbite of applause)
Ms. MARGARET JUNTWAIT (Host, Metropolitan Opera): One of the things that you hope to bring into a broadcast is a real sense of what we are all experiencing here at the Met.
BRAND: Margaret Juntwait is the current host of the Saturday broadcast and is only the third person to hold that job after Milton Cross and Peter Allen.
Ms. JUNTWAIT: If you are sitting in your home, you want to be able to meet the broadcast halfway with your imagination. You want to be able to picture what things look like on the stage. That's something that I got from Peter Allen and from Milton Cross, is creating an experience in the mind.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. JUNTWAIT: In her dream, a mother and daughter sit together, embracing each other. The father rushes in with other men, grabs the daughter.
BRAND: While the Met plans to continue the radio broadcasts, it has also recently been simulcasting some performances into movie theaters around the country.
For NPR News, I'm Keith Brand.
(Soundbite of opera music and singing)
SIMON: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.