Metropolitan Opera

Saturday, September 19 @ 9:55am

Twenty Years of the Met in Cinemas is a celebration of the Met’s two decades of onstage glory as experienced in movie theaters, featuring highlights from the company’s collection of more than 185 extraordinary onscreen performances.

Hosted by star soprano Renée Fleming, this special presentation will showcase unforgettable moments from some of opera’s greatest stars, culled from the series’ vast archive of transmissions, featuring such remarkable artists as Lise Davidsen, Natalie Dessay, Joyce DiDonato, Elīna Garanča, Dmitri Hvorostovsky,  Jonas Kaufmann, Peter Mattei, Matthew Polenzani, Nadine Sierra, and, of course, Fleming herself.

Saturday, October 3 @ 9:55am – Cosi Fan Tutte

World premiere: Vienna, Court Theater, 1790. The third and final collaboration between Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte is a fascinating paradox: a frothy comedy of manners with an intensely dark take on human nature; an old story (it has antecedents in Boccaccio, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, among others) with a startlingly modern tone; and a beautiful score depicting questionable behavior. Così fan tutte was only moderately successful at its premiere and remained just outside the standard repertoire for more than a century. Così still poses unique challenges, and correspondingly unique rewards, for the public today. Every possible impression of love—from the loftiest to the basest—is explored in this extraordinary opera.

Saturday, October 17 @ 9:55am – Macbeth

World Premiere: Teatro della Pergola, Florence, 1847. Revised version: Théâtre Lyrique, Paris, 1865. Verdi’s opera is a powerful musical interpretation of Shakespeare’s timeless drama of ambition and its personal cost. Raising questions of fate, superstition, guilt, and power, it marks an important step on the composer’s path from his more conventional earlier efforts to the integrated musical dramas of his mature years.

Saturday, December 5 @ 9:55am – Samson et Dalila

World premiere: Grand Ducal Theater, Weimar, 1877. The source of this popular opera is a single chapter in the biblical Book of Judges, and the brevity of the tale did nothing to prevent it from becoming one of the world’s great stories of love (or at least passion)—as well as the archetypal depiction of a man betrayed by an immoral woman. Saint-Saëns’s opera, along with other artistic renderings across multiple genres, has had an important role in the popularization of this tale. Despite tepid success early on, Samson et Dalila eventually conquered the operatic world and has proven itself a magnificent evening of theater.

Saturday, January 23 @ 9:55am – La Fanciulla de West

World premiere: Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1910. Puccini’s “American” opera, based on David Belasco’s play The Girl of the Golden West, had its glamorous and highly publicized world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, with the composer in the audience. The drama is set during the California Gold Rush, and the girl of the title is one of Puccini’s most appealing heroines—a strong, independent woman determined to win the man she loves. Although it fell out of favor with audiences for a few decades following its original success, Fanciulla has rebounded in popularity in recent years and is now counted among Puccini’s best works.

Saturday March 20 @ 9:55am – Silent Night

Following his smash-hit company debut with The Hours, composer Kevin Puts returns to the Met with his Pulitzer Prize–winning first opera, inspired by the true events of the 1914 Christmas truce, when soldiers spontaneously set aside the horrors of the First World War and crossed the trenches to mingle, exchange gifts, and sing carols with the enemy. A poignant depiction of shared humanity in the most inhumane circumstances, Puts’s grand, cinematic opera—with a libretto by Mark Campbell based on the film Joyeux Noël—has been widely acclaimed since its 2011 premiere, hailed as “an overwhelming emotive experience” by The Guardian. Silent Night receives an evocative staging by James Robinson that takes the audience directly to the battlefields of the Western Front. The star-studded cast, featuring soprano Elza van den Heever and tenors Ben Bliss and Rolando Villazón, among many others, is conducted by debuting maestro Dalia Stasevska.

Saturday, April 3 @ 9:55am – Manon

World premiere: Opéra-Comique, Paris, 1884. A sublime take on the quintessentially French tale of the beautiful young woman who is incapable of forsaking both love and luxury, Massenet’s Manon features one of the truly unforgettable, irresistible, and archetypal female characters in opera. While the story is firmly set in class and gender issues of the past, the character of Manon herself is timeless, convincing, and familiar. The opera has been a success ever since its premiere, championed by a diverse roster of singers who have cherished its dramatic opportunities, exalted style, and ravishing music.

Saturday, April 24 @ 9:55am – Otello

World premiere: Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1887. Often cited as Italian opera’s greatest tragedy, Otello is a miraculous union of music and drama—a masterpiece as profound philosophically as it is thrilling theatrically. Shakespeare’s tale of an outsider, a great hero who can’t control his jealousy, was carefully molded by the librettist Arrigo Boito into a taut and powerful libretto. All three lead roles are demanding—making the opera a challenge to produce—but the role of Otello in particular requires an astounding natural instrument capable of both powerful and delicate sounds, superb musical intelligence, and impressive acting abilities.

Saturday, June 5 @ 9:00 ****Early start time – Parsifal

World premiere: Festspielhaus, Bayreuth, 1882. Wagner’s final opera is a musical journey unlike any other. The composer preferred to call his mature works “music dramas,” but he set Parsifal even further apart by naming it a Bühnenweihfestspiel, a “festival play for the consecration of a stage”—the stage in question being that of his Bayreuth Festival House. The opera tells the tale of a young man who is destined to renew a brotherhood of knights charged with guarding the relics of Christ’s last days. The psychological, mythical, and mystical possibilities of such a story are obvious, and Wagner’s accomplishment results in an air of reverence that surrounds this piece.