Lincoln Center’s Intimate Apparel Streams Free This Week on PBS

Filmed live in performance in March 2022, the Bartlett Sher-directed musical-opera will air as part of PBS' Great Performances series. "Intimate Apparel" has music by Ricky Ian Gordon, and a libretto by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage.

Here's how to stream Lincoln Center's "Intimate Apparel" this month:

Set in Manhattan in 1905, Intimate Apparel tells the story of Esther (Kearstin Piper Brown), an African American seamstress who makes elaborate corsets and ladies’ underclothing. Esther develops a relationship with a mysterious man from Panama Canal through letter-writing and eventually marries, but soon discovered the relationship is not what either of them expected.

Through this complicated relationship, her close friendships with her clients, and a Jewish man who sells fabrics to her, Esther realizes that only her self-reliance will see her through life’s challenges.

The filmed production of Intimate Apparel airs on PBS stations tomorrow, September 23 at 9 PM ET. The live capture will also be available to stream freely online for 30 days on the same date. Following this, the production will be available as part of PBS' paywall, PBS Passport.

The opera was filmed earlier this year at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. The cast includes Justin Austin (George Armstrong), Adrienne Danrich (Mrs. Dickson), Arnold Livingston Geis (Mr. Marks), Naomi Louisa O’Connell (Mrs. Van Buren), and Krysty Swann (Mayme).

In her TheaterMania review, Hayley Levitt said: "Of course, just because a story feels operatic does not mean it can instantly and effortlessly assume the form of an opera — making Intimate Apparel's transfiguration at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater all the more impressive. Directed by Bartlett Sher as more a chamber piece than anything Wagnerian (the performers are accompanied by only a pair of pianos, conducted by Steven Osgood), Intimate Apparel in its new musical form is allowed to keep its delicacy while also cutting enough seams to let its content soar to the rafters."