Featuring an all-star cast at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, including Michael Ball, Daniel Dae Kim, Maria Friedman, Audra McDonald, Julian Ovenden and more.

Great Performances: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 80th Anniversary airs Saturday, January 25 at 3 p.m. WXXI-TV

Beginning with their first collaboration on “Oklahoma!” in 1943, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II revolutionized Broadway by integrating music and dance with well-crafted storylines to create a cohesive new form of musical theater.  With a string of blockbusters including “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I,” “Flower Drum Song” and “The Sound of Music,” the duo garnered 34 Tony Awards along with 15 Academy Awards for their film adaptations. Directed and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 80th Anniversary features an all-star cast at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, including Michael Ball, Joanna Ampil, Lucy St. Louis, Daniel Dae Kim, Maria Friedman, Audra McDonald, Julian Ovenden, Aaron Tveit, Marisha Wallace and Patrick Wilson, with additional surprise appearances by Rita Moreno and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Travel guru Rick Steves shares with you Iceland’s majestic landscapes and hardy culture. 

Rick Steves’ Iceland airs Saturday, October 26 at 3 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

In Reykjavik, a world capital with a small-town feel, Rick tours the endearing sights, browses for sweaters, tastes fermented shark, learns Icelandic insights with a local, and then finally takes a dip in a thermal swimming pool.

Explore the making of San Francisco Opera’s “Girls of the Golden West,” which tells the turbulent story of the California Gold Rush.

Great Performances “Land of Gold” airs Friday, November 1 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

With the opera’s title referencing Puccini’s 1910 romantic opera “The Girl of the Golden West,” Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams and famed director Peter Sellars’ opera tells a harsher and more complex story through the letters of writer Louise Clappe who lived in a miners’ settlement in 1850. Spotlighting the behind-the-scenes action during the opera’s rehearsal process, the documentary highlights the creative process as actors and creative team grapple with the historical significance of the material and bringing it to the stage. Two stories are told: One on stage in the present day, and one in the past through the opera. Soprano Julia Bullock stars in the opera as Louise Clappe with mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges as Josefa Segovia, two women among the many men caught up in the quest for wealth in the lawless mountains.