The Met Summer Series.

The Met is going to run some of their HD broadcasts from the past again this summer. I didn’t get to see nearly as many from the last season, but these are bound to please everyone:

Verdi’s Aida – Wednesday June 16 & Thursday June 17
Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette – Wednesday June 23 & Thursday June 24
Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin – Wednesday July 7 &Thursday July 8
Puccini’s La Bohème – Wednesday July 14 & Thursday July 15
Puccini’s Turandot – Wednesday July 21 & Thursday July 22
Bizet’s Carmen – Wednesday July 28 & Thursday July 29

Met Opera Broadcasts Reruns.

Met Opera HD Broadcasts that I wrote about more when they just got around to it and which now became a sort of a regular thing to expect are reruning two operas from previous seasons in the next couple of weeks. Actually, the first date is tonight (Wednesday, July 29th) and the second date is August 5th.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia – July 29, 2009
The Magic Flute – August 5, 2009

If you happen to live in New York, you can also attend Summer HD Festival in August:

Selected Met Broadcasts Out on DVD

Some of the HD Broadcasts are out on DVD or are coming out very soon: 

The First Emperor Medium: DVD Date: 2008-09-16	Hansel and Gretel Medium: DVD Date: 2008-09-16	Peter Grimes Medium: DVD Date: 2008-09-16
Macbeth Medium: DVD Date: 2008-09-16	La Boheme Medium: DVD Date: 2008-09-16	Manon Lescaut Medium: DVD Date: 2008-09-16

Was There A Certain Amount of Excitement? Met’s Peter Grimes Is Coming Soon!

First to the Met itself on 2/28 and then to the movie theater next door in HD broadcast on 3/15. Let’s all put on some Britten and lean forward expectedly. New York Times shares some information about the upcoming (new) production of Peter Grimes at the Met:

The game is constantly afoot in Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes.” Everyone, it seems, is hunting for something or someone in this opera, most spectacularly in the third and last act, when the entire little fishing community on the harsh North Sea coast of England transforms itself into a vicious mob on the track of Grimes himself, “the borough criminal” who must be caught and destroyed. One of the most terrifying scenes in opera, it is likely to chill audiences once more when the Metropolitan Opera unveils its new staging on Thursday evening. This is the company’s third production since it introduced this compelling work in 1948, just three years after the world premiere at the Sadler’s Wells Opera in London. Read the rest.

Alex Ross pitches in with his always enlightening remarks as well: