Tonight is the premiere of The Metropolitan Opera production of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, starring soprano Anna Netrebko.
This is the 2012 season opener of THIRTEEN’s Great Performances at the Met. at 9 p.m. on WNET.
The opera, covers the tragic final days of Anne Boleyn whose husband Henry VIII spurns her and has her sentenced to death. The director is David McVicar and conductor Marco Armiliato.
The cast includes Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova as Anna’s romantic rival, Giovanna (Jane Seymour); Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov as the cruel Enrico (Henry VIII); American tenor Stephen Costello as Anna’s first love, Lord Percy; and American mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford as the queen’s devoted page Smeton.
The telecast was originally seen live in movie theaters on October 15 as part of the series, The Met: Live in HD, which transmits live performances to more than 1600 movie theaters and performing arts centers in 54 countries around the world.
Generally considered one of Donizetti’s finest operas, Anna Bolena is the first in a trilogy of works based on the lives of Tudor-era queens that David McVicar will direct at the Met over the next few seasons (the other two are Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux). McVicar, whose production of Il Trovatore aired on Great Performances at the Met in August, has created a historically detailed setting for the opera, which re-emerged as a musical and dramatic showpiece for extraordinary sopranos when Maria Callas starred in a famous 1957 La Scala revival of the work.
Renée Fleming, who will star in Handel’s Rodelinda later this year on Great Performances at the Met, hosts. Gary Halvorson directs the telecast.
Comments