The Met’s 2016–17 season of Live in HD movie-theater transmissions features ten presentations, beginning October 15 with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

Visit the Metropolitan Opera website for the complete 2016-2017 live broadcast schedule, descriptions and video trailers.

2016-2017 Season

RICHARD WAGNER
"Tristan und Isolde"
ENCORE PERFORMANCE
SAT, OCT 15, 2016 12:00 PM

Wagner’s breathtaking meditation on love and death holds a unique place in the opera world. Its music has astounded, infuriated, and inspired audiences since it was first heard, and the title roles are acknowledged as among the most extraordinarily demanding in opera. The vocal challenges, the sumptuous symphonic scale of the orchestral writing, and the mystical nature of the story, with its opportunities for creative visual design, make this awe-inspiring work a phenomenon of the repertory.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
"Don Giovanni"
LIVE PERFORMANCE
SAT, OCT 22, 2016 12:55 PM

Aided by his ingenious librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart approached his operatic retelling of the Don Juan myth from a point of view that is neither tragic nor entirely comic, but rather lighthearted, urbane, and ironic. We follow the title character and his earthy comic sidekick, Leporello, through a series of encounters that begins with a fatal duel, moves back and forth between the humorous and the sentimental, and ends with the protagonist being dragged down to hell.

KAIJA SAARIAHO
L’Amour de Loin
LIVE PERFORMANCE
SAT, DEC 10, 2016 12:55 PM

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s breakthrough opera was described by the New York Times as “transfixing…a lushly beautiful score.” Commissioned by the Salzburg Festival, where it was first seen in 2000, it will now finally have its Metropolitan Opera premiere in a dazzling new production by Robert Lepage, featuring glimmering ribbons of LED lights that extend across the length of the stage and over the orchestra pit. Eric Owens is the knight on a quest of love and Susanna Phillips is his lover on the other side of the sea. Conductor Susanna Mälkki makes her Met debut.

GIUSEPPE VERDI
"Nabucco"
LIVE PERFORMANCE
SAT, JAN 07, 2017 12:55 PM

Perhaps the most enduringly successful of the many operatic settings of the world’s consummate love story, Roméo et Juliette is an excellent example of French Romanticism, a tradition that values subtlety, sensuality, and graceful vocal delivery over showy effects. In the opera there is a slight shift of focus away from the word games of the original play and a greater focus on the two lovers, who are given four irresistible duets, including a brief final reunion in the tomb scene that does not appear in the play.

CHARLES GOUNOD
"Roméo et Juliette"
LIVE PERFORMANCE
SAT, JAN 21, 2017 12:55 PM

Perhaps the most enduringly successful of the many operatic settings of the world’s consummate love story, Roméo et Juliette is an excellent example of French Romanticism, a tradition that values subtlety, sensuality, and graceful vocal delivery over showy effects. In the opera there is a slight shift of focus away from the word games of the original play and a greater focus on the two lovers, who are given four irresistible duets, including a brief final reunion in the tomb scene that does not appear in the play.

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
"Rusalka"
LIVE PERFORMANCE
SAT, FEB 25, 2017 12:55 PM

The only one of Dvořák’s operas to gain an international following (so far), Rusalka is in many ways a definitive example of late Romanticism—containing folklore, evocations of the natural and the supernatural worlds, and even a poignant interpretation of the idea of a love-death. The story has a strong national flavor as well as universal appeal, infused by the Romantic supernaturalism of Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s novella Undine (previously set as an opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Tchaikovsky, and others) and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.

GIUSEPPE VERDI
"La Traviata"
LIVE PERFORMANCE
SAT, MAR 11, 2017 12:55 PM

Verdi’s La Traviata survived a notoriously unsuccessful opening night to become one of the best-loved operas in the repertoire. Following the larger-scale dramas of Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, its intimate scope and subject matter inspired the composer to create some of his most profound and heartfelt music. The title role of the “fallen woman” has captured the imaginations of audiences and performers alike with its inexhaustible vocal and dramatic possibilities—and challenges. Violetta is considered a pinnacle of the soprano repertoire.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
"Idomeneo"
LIVE PERFORMANCE
SAT, MAR 25, 2017 12:55 PM

Like many stories from Greek myth, Idomeneo explores the motivations and emotions of humans whose fates seem beyond their own control. The opera casts these issues within the framework of the opera seria genre, a stylized format popular in the 18th century that is characterized by a succession of arias and recitatives and a cast of noble characters. Long neglected along with other works of this era, Idomeneo now holds a firm place in the repertoire as the first of Mozart’s operatic masterpieces.

PETER TCHAIKOVSKY
Eugene Onegin
LIVE PERFORMANCE
SAT, APR 22, 2017 12:55 PM

Tchaikovsky’s many moods—tender, grand, melancholy—are all given free rein in Eugene Onegin. The opera is based on Pushkin’s iconic verse novel, which re-imagines the Byronic romantic anti-hero as the definitive bored Russian aristocrat caught between convention and ennui; Tchaikovsky, similarly, took Western European operatic forms and transformed them into an authentic and undeniably Russian work. At the core of the opera is the young girl Tatiana, who grows from a sentimental adolescent into a complete woman in one of the operatic stage’s most convincing character developments.

RICHARD STRAUSS
Der Rosenkavalier
LIVE PERFORMANCE
SAT, MAY 13, 2017 12:30 PM

Set in an idealized Vienna of the past, Strauss’s most popular opera concerns a wise woman of the world who is involved with a much younger lover but ultimately forced to accept the laws of time, giving him up to a pretty young heiress. Hofmannsthal’s fascinating libretto deftly combines comedy, dreamy nostalgic fantasy, genuine human drama, and light but striking touches of philosophy and social commentary. Strauss’s magnificent score, likewise, works on several levels, combining the refinement of Mozart with the epic grandeur of Wagner.

The Ramsdell Theatre began bringing the Metropolitan Opera to Manistee on October 13, 2012. Made possible by an anonymous donor, the shows are simulcast live in high definition and shown on the theatre's state-of-the art projection system