“Guys,” the video director said, speaking through a headset to his cameramen, “I need audience shots. Up front, the ushers handed out programs and guided people to their seats. We could see the Ukrainian soprano Maria Guleghina backstage, getting ready to play the sadistic Chinese princess-the title role. Inside the opera house, 13 cameras captured every detail in high definition the feeds were relayed to us in the truck. A matinee performance of Puccini’s Turandot was about to be transmitted, live, from the Met in New York City to 1,014 movie theaters across the country and around the globe.

Lew Harder served on the applied music faculty of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, and she is the co-director of Medicine + Music, a co-curricular program at Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University that works closely with medical students through coachings, rehearsals, workshops, and performance opportunities to enhance their happiness and development as physicians.One Saturday afternoon in early November 2009, I joined Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, inside a satellite truck parked behind Lincoln Center. She practiced as an emergency room physician before earning a second doctorate in music from the Ohio State University, where she studied piano with the American virtuoso Earl Wild. Lew Harder holds Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine degrees from Kent State University and Northeast Ohio Medical University. She has also recorded two solo piano albums. She is a concert pianist who has performed with orchestras and in recitals, including at Wigmore Hall in London, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago, and Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.

She hosted and produced a range of programming across WRTI on-air and digital platforms, such as Midday Classics and Saturday Morning Classical Coffeehouse, in addition to serving as an artist interviewer for the Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts.

Meet the Hostĭebra Lew Harder joined the on-air staff of WRTI in 2016. Learn more about advertising and sponsorship on WFMT.

Metropolitan opera house 1883 pictures