On Saturday, February 11th, beginning at 9:00 am, the Metropolitan Opera's production of Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung will be screened live in HD at the Cinearts Empire 3 (85 West Portal Avenue) and Century 9 (835 Market Street). Robert Lepage’s technologically advanced new staging of Wagner’s Ring cycle comes to an epic climax with Götterdämmerung (“The Twilight of the Gods”). The Met's Principal Conductor, Fabio Luisi, leads one of opera’s most thrilling dramas starring Deborah Voigt as "Brünnhilde", the warrior-maiden-turned-mortal whose actions lead to global apocalypse. Jay Hunter Morris, who stepped into the title role of Wagner’s Siegfried earlier this season to great acclaim, again sings the role of the doomed hero. The distinguished cast of Wagnerians also includes the American soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer as the princess "Gutrune"; the German mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier as "Waltraute", a Valkyrie messenger of doom; German bass Hans-Peter König as the greedy villain "Hagen"; American bass-baritone Eric Owens as Hagen’s father, the evil dwarf "Alberich"; and Scottish bass-baritone Iain Paterson as the cowardly human king "Gunther". San Francisco Opera favorite, soprano Patricia Racette, will host the transmission. Click here to purchase tickets on line: Götterdämmerung
MEET THE ARTISTS
Conductor Fabio Luisi will lead his first Met performances of Wagner’s epic conclusion to the Ring cycle. Earlier this season, he led the new production premieres of Siegfried and Don Giovanni, and will conduct the first complete cycles of Robert Lepage’s Ring staging beginning this April. His future Met engagements this season also include the new production premiere of Massenet’s Manon and a revival of Verdi’s La Traviata. Lepage’s Ring production features a unique, technologically advanced set is capable of assuming many configurations and receiving video projections. The production opened the Met’s 2010-11 season
Soprano Deborah Voigt, long acclaimed for her Wagner performances at the Met, is singing her first "Brünnhilde" in this production of the Ring. Götterdämmerung will be the seventh Wagner opera in her Met repertory, which also includes "Brünnhilde" in Siegfried; both "Brünnhilde" and "Sieglinde" in Die Walküre; "Isolde" in Tristan und Isolde; "Elsa" in Lohengrin; "Elisabeth" in Tannhäuser; and "Senta" in Der Fliegende Holländer.
Tenor Jay Hunter Morris took over the title role in the new production premiere of Siegfried with only a week’s notice and enjoyed a major success. Audiences at San Francisco Opera cheered Mr. Morris' appearances last season as "Siegfried" in the complete Ring cycle. Throughout his career, he has starred in numerous world premieres, including John Adams’s Doctor Atomic; Howard Shore’s The Fly; Elliott Goldenthal’s Grendel; Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking; and André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire.
Soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer, who sang "Freia" in the new production premiere of Das Rheingold, will make her Met role debut as the lovelorn Gibichung princess "Gutrune". Meier will add the role of "Waltraute", Brünnhilde’s fatalistic sister, to her Met repertory which includes "Sieglinde", "Isolde", "Venus" in Tannhäuser, and "Kundry" in Parsifal. Last season at the Met, she sang her first performances as "Marie" in Wozzeck.
Bass-baritone Iain Paterson made his Met debut as "Gunther" in the 2008-09 season. Bass-baritone Eric Owens was critically acclaimed for his role debut as "Alberich" in the premieres of Lepage’s Das Rheingold and Siegfried. Bass Hans-Peter König has appeared in all three of Lepage's Ring premieres, singing "Fafner" in Das Rheingold and "Siegfried" and "Hunding" in Die Walküre.
The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live transmissions to movie theaters around the world, has expanded its worldwide distribution to 1,600 theaters in 54 countries, the largest global audience the initiative has ever reached. The newest countries to sign on for Live in HD transmissions include Russia, Israel, China, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Morocco, Slovenia, and the territory of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Last year, a record of more than 2.6 million Live in HD tickets were sold to opera lovers across the globe, effectively quadrupling the Met’s paying audience (approximately 800,000 people attend performances in the opera house in a Met season).
Click here to purchase tickets on-line for performances at the Cinearts Empire 3 and Century 9: Götterdämmerung
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