Grinnell College is welcoming back New York City's Metropolitan Opera for the remainder of the 2012-13 season. The spring semester will include six "Live in HD" performances at the Harris Center Cinema on the Grinnell campus. Shows start Saturdays at noon and will be preceded by a half-hour opera talk by select faculty and staff members at 11:30 a.m.
The Live in HD series will continue on Jan. 15. Below are the operas that will be featured:
- January 5: Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens is a French grand opera in five acts based on Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid andportraying characters from the Trojan War.
- January 19: Maria Stuarda, Gaetano Donizetti's tragic, two-act opera set in the Tudor period is loosely based on the lives of Mary, Queen of Scots and her cousin Queen Elizabeth I.
- February 16: Rigoletto is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunchbacked court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda.
- March 2: Parsifal, Richard Wagner's work loosely based on the 13th-century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail.
- March 16: Francesca Da Rimini, composed by Riccardo Zandonai, is a story of doomed lovers.
- April 27: George Frideric Handel's Giulio Cesare is the story of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.
The following encore presentations will take place at 6 p.m. in the Harris Center Cinema. All encore presentations will be recordings of an earlier live broadcast.
- Wed., Jan. 23: Donizetti's Maria Stuarda
- Thurs., Jan. 31: Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens
- Wed., Feb. 6: Verdi's Aida
- Wed., Apr. 10: Zandonai's Francesca Da Rimini
Synopses of the shows are available at http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/liveinhd/live-in-hd-schedule.aspx.
Tickets are now available for purchase at the Pioneer Bookshop in downtown Grinnell and the Grinnell College Bookstore: $15 for adults, $10 for students. Tickets will also be available at the Harris Center on the day of the show. Tickets for Grinnell College faculty, staff and students have been generously funded by the Office of the President and are available at no cost at all ticket locations.
Harris Center is located at 1114 10th Ave., with available parking east of the center on 10th Ave. Grinnell welcomes the participation of people with disabilities. Information on parking and accessibility is available on the college website. Accommodation requests may be made to Conference Operations at 641-269-3235 or calendar@grinnell.edu.
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