PBS to Air THE EYES OF THE WORLD Concert Featuring Broadway Alums

American History Unbound and American Public Television (APT) has announced The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day, performed with the Boston Pops, will begin airing on public television stations nationwide and streaming on PBS.org and the PBS app (PBS Passport) beginning Friday, November 1, 2024. This symphonic and visual journey, capturing the dramatic final months of World War II in Europe, commemorates Veterans Day and the 80th Anniversary of D-Day this year.

The performance was recorded on two sold-out nights at Boston Symphony Hall in May 2024. 

In The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day, hosted by award-winning journalist and best-selling Author Katie Couric, historian and writer John Monsky weaves together music, meticulously researched history and rare film and photographs from the National Archives. The words and images of Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger, Vogue-model-turned-photojournalist Lee Miller, daredevil war photographer Robert Capa and the heroic 761st Tank Battalion bring Monsky’s powerful narrative to life. Flags that were carried onto the beaches and paved the way to victory further illuminate these stories often lost to history. 

The Boston Pops’ Keith Lockhart conducts the famed orchestra, featuring top Broadway vocalists Shereen Ahmed (My Fair Lady), Kate Rockwell (Mean Girls), Nicholas Rodriguez (Company) and Daniel Yearwood (Hamilton, Sweeney Todd). Lockhart leads the Boston Pops in a stirring mix of music that captures the essence of the times, featuring compositions from Glenn Miller, Richard Rodgers, Edith Piaf, Frank Loesser, and more.

In the production, Monsky guides the audience through the Battle of the Hedgerows, the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, the horrors of the Hürtgen Forest, Germany’s spiderweb of concentration camps and Munich, through the letters, journal entries and photographs of his witnesses. Along the way, as their journeys unfold in breathtaking fashion, they meet in the most unlikely of places and cross paths with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Pablo Picasso, Marlene Dietrich, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion and Hemingway’s estranged wife, trailblazing war correspondent Martha Gellhorn.

The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day distributed to public television stations by APT, is produced by American History Unbound Inc., with the Boston Pops and Bright Blue Group.