Mary Jo Heath Named Metropolitan Opera Radio Host
The longtime Senior Radio Producer for the Met will become the
fourth full-time announcer in the company’s history, beginning in September
New York, NY (August 13, 2015) – The Metropolitan Opera announced that Mary Jo Heath, who has worked as a producer and guest host for the company over the past nine seasons, will become the fourth full-time radio host in the company’s history this September. Heath’s responsibilities as the “voice of the Met” will include hosting the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera Radio Saturday matinee broadcasts—the longest-running classical music series in American broadcast history—as well as the live broadcasts that air on the Met’s Sirius XM channel each week during the season. Since the inception of the Saturday matinee broadcast series in 1931, the Met has had three full-time hosts: Milton Cross, Peter Allen, and Margaret Juntwait, who passed away in June. Heath will officially assume her new role with the first Sirius broadcast of the season, the opening night performance of Verdi’s Otello on Monday, September 21.
Mary Jo Heath is currently the Senior Radio Producer at the Met, a position she has held for nine seasons. She has produced nearly 1,000 Met broadcasts during her time with the company. In addition, she anchored the majority of last season’s broadcasts, when Margaret Juntwait’s illness made her unable to host. In total, she has hosted 65 Met broadcasts during her time with the company. She is also familiar to Met audiences from the behind-the-scenes interviews with Met staff and artists she has conducted for both radio broadcasts and Live in HD transmissions to movie theaters. She has worked for more than 25 years in various facets of the music industry, from radio stations to record companies to researching and writing. She earned a Ph.D. in music theory from the Eastman School of Music and both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in music from the University of Oklahoma in her hometown of Norman, Oklahoma.
