After a two-day hurricane delay, the Metropolitan Opera’s third annual Summer HD Festival, which presents previously recorded Met performances in glorious high-definition video in Lincoln Center Plaza, will begin tonight.
The canceled screenings, of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (1843) and Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra (1857), which were scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, respectively, will not be rescheduled, according to the Met’s press office. The Met Opera Guild, which organizes lectures that precede each screening, said that its accompanying programs for those days will not be rescheduled.
The ten-day festival, which has now been slimmed to eight days, provides seating for 3,000 people and is free to the public. Met officials advise arriving two hours before the screen lights up (start times vary, so check the schedule), in order to secure a spot.
Suddenly upgraded to the lead-off position in the festival is Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (1779), which hits the screen at 8:30 p.m. tonight. Other highlights this week include Puccini’s La Rondine (1917), on Tuesday at 8 p.m., and Bizet’s Carmen (1845), which will appear on Thursday at 7:45 p.m.
Alas, Thomas Ades’s 2004 version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest will not be shown, though the Met is planning to present the work for the first time during its 2012-2013 season.
