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Handel’s Rodelinda from 19th Jan
Renée Fleming returns to The Met: Live in HD in one of her greatest roles, the title character in Handel’s Rodelinda. In this Baroque showpiece, Fleming plays a queen who must fight treacherous enemies to keep her son safe and the memory of her exiled husband alive. Handel’s score gives her the opportunity to sing some of the most beautiful and challenging arias in her extensive repertoire. The all-star supporting cast includes two of the world’s most prominent countertenors, Andreas Scholl and Iestyn Davies, as the exiled king Bertarido and his friend Unulfo; versatile mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as the noblewoman Eduige; Joseph Kaiser as the usurper Grimoaldo; and Shenyang as Grimoaldo’s corrupt advisor, Garibaldo. Baroque specialist Harry Bicket, who led the 2004 Met premiere of Stephen Wadsworth’s fast-paced, fluid production, conducts. Deborah Voigt hosts the transmission.
Holiday Encores Strictly Limited Season
From Dec 21st, the Met’s annual holiday presentation offers an ideal opportunity for audiences of all ages to celebrate the season. Julie Taymor’s breathtaking and popular production of Mozart’s masterpiece, The Magic Flute, takes the stage in its abridged, English-language version, with Nathan Gunn as the irrepressible bird-catcher Papageno. Also up for this Christmas season is The Met’s wickedly funny production Hansel and Gretel returns as this season’s English-language holiday presentation for families, with special prices and midweek matinees. Aleksandra Kurzak is Gretel, with Kate Lindsey and Alice Coote alternating as Hansel. Robert Brubaker is the Witch who plots to bake them into gingerbread. With holiday prices — tickets start at just $10.
There are now 30 cinemas participating in the series in NZ, with seven new sites on board this season. For complete information on locations, sessions and ticket prices click here or contact your local cinema.
About the series
The Met’s enormously successful Peabody and Emmy Award-winning series of transmissions into movie theatres, which enters its sixth season in 2011-12, currently reaches more than 1,500 theaters in 53 countries.
Don’t miss the chance to experience the Met at your local movie theatre! Tickets for the 2011-12 series are now on sale and bookings are recommended to avoid disappointment.
The Metropolitan Opera’s 2011-12 stage season will feature the world’s leading singers, conductors, and stage directors in seven new productions and nineteen revivals, including a world premiere, a Met premiere, and the first complete performances of a new Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle directed by Robert Lepage.
The season includes the Met premiere of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, conducted by Marco Armiliato and directed by David McVicar (the beginning of an ambitious multiseason project to produce all three of Donizetti’s famous “Queen” operas directed by McVicar); The Enchanted Island, the world premiere of a Baroque pastiche with an original welcome… libretto by Jeremy Sams and set to the music of Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others, conducted by William Christie and directed by Phelim McDermott; the Met debuts of Tony Award winning directors Michael Grandage and Des McAnuff with new productions of Don Giovanni, led by Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi, and Faust, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin; a new production of Massenet’s Manon conducted Fabio Luisi and directed by Laurent Pelly; and Robert Lepage’s productions of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, the third and fourth installments of Wagner’s Ring cycle.
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