The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live performance transmissions, gives opera fans in the UK the opportunity to experience dazzling productions from one of the most spectacular opera houses in the world broadcast live to their local cinema.
With the first four productions now completed, the season continues on 18th March with a new production of Wagner’s Lohengrin, returning to the Met stage after an absence of 17 years with an atmospheric new staging by François Girard. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a cast led by tenor Piotr Beczała in the title role of the mysterious swan knight.
A highlight of the Live in HD season is seven-time Grammy Award-winning composer Terence Blanchard’s first opera, Champion, making its Met premiere. Based on the true story of world-champion boxer Emile Griffith, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green is the young Griffith who rises from obscurity to become one of the world’s greatest boxers, and bass-baritone Eric Owens portrays Griffith’s older self, haunted by the ghosts of his past. This follows the extraordinary success of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones which opened the Met’s 2021–22 season to universal acclaim.
Live in HD audiences will also have the chance to enjoy two Robert Carsen productions returning to the Met this season – Verdi’s Falstaff, with baritone Michael Volle singing the title role in his first Verdi opera at the Met, and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier with soprano Lise Davidsen and mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey as the Marschallin and Octavian. In May, Nathalie Stutzmann will conduct a Mozart doubleheader – new productions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Ivo van Hove and renowned English director Simon McBurney’s production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. The performances also mark the first time both directors are working with the Met.
The Live in HD season continues with Wagner’s Lohengrin (18th March), Verdi’s Falstaff (1st April), Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (15th April), Terence Blanchard’s Champion (29th April), Mozart’s Don Giovanni (20th May) and Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (3rd June). Tickets are on sale now at MetLiveInHD.co.uk.
