The 11 October matinee performance in New York launched the ninth season of the Met's Live in HD series and transmitted worldwide to more than 2000 cinemas in 68 countries around the world.
Anna Netrebko sings her first North American performances of the charismatic villainess of Verdi's Macbeth this season, in a starry cast that also includes Željko Lucic as Macbeth, Joseph Calleja as Macduff, and René Pape as Banquo.
Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi led all seven performances of the opera, in a revival of noted Shakespeare director Adrian Noble's 2007 production.
Anna Netrebko, who sang in the Met's opening night performance for the last three years in a row, this season takes on the challenging new role of Verdi's Lady Macbeth.
She has previously sung the role in only two performances at the Bavarian State Opera this past summer. The Russian soprano made her Met debut in 2002 as Natasha in the Met premiere of Prokofiev's War and Peace and has since sung 14 more roles including new production premieres of Donizetti's Anna Bolena, Don Pasquale, and L'Elisir d'Amore; Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin; and Massenet's Manon. Netrebko sings the title role in another Met premiere, Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, this coming January.
Serbian baritone Željko Lucic sang the title role in Macbeth when the current production premiered in 2007. He also sang the new production premiere of Verdi's Rigoletto in 2013 and has performed numerous dramatic baritone roles at the Met, including Barnaba in Ponchielli's La Gioconda, Carlo Gérard in Giordano's Andrea Chénier, Germont in Verdi's La Traviata, Count di Luna in Verdi's Il Trovatore, and the title role in Verdi's Nabucco. He adds a new role to his Met repertory when he sings Alfio in the new production of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana later this season.
Following his Met debut as the Duke in Rigoletto in 2006, Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja has appeared regularly with the company in the many of the iconic roles of the lyric tenor repertory: Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème, Nemorino in L'Elisir d'Amore, Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and the title roles of Gounod's Faust and Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann.
Among the most celebrated basses of today, René Pape has sung a wide variety of roles to great acclaim at the Met. Particularly known for such Wagnerian parts as Gurnemanz in Parsifal, King Marke in Tristan und Isolde, and King Heinrich in Lohengrin, he has also sung Mozart's Leporello in Don Giovanni, Gounod's Méphistophélès in Faust, Philip in Verdi's Don Carlo, and the title role of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov at the Met. This season he sings a solo recital on the Met stage on September 27 and Sarastro in a revival of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.
Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi made his Met debut with Verdi's Don Carlo in 2005 and has since led an eclectic repertory of 24 operas as well as five concerts with the MET Orchestra. Among his most notable performances have been Wagner's entire cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen, a new production of Richard Strauss's rarely heard Die Ägyptische Helena, Berlioz's epic Les Troyens, and new productions of Un Ballo in Maschera, Don Giovanni (in which he also played the harpsichord for recitatives), and Manon. Maestro Luisi returns this spring to conduct the new production of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.
Although Verdi operas have always been a staple of the Met's repertory, the company didn't perform Macbeth until 1959, in its 74th season. The Met premiere performances were originally planned to bring Maria Callas's celebrated interpretation of Lady Macbeth to New York for the first time, but after the soprano quarrelled with Met management, she was famously fired from the engagement. Instead, Leonie Rysanek made her Met debut in the role, in a cast that also included Leonard Warren, Carlo Bergonzi, and Jerome Hines, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf.
Adrian Noble's production is the third staging of Macbeth in Met history. The premiere production was directed by Carl Ebert in his company debut, and Peter Hall directed a new production of the opera in 1982.
The next transmission will be the Met's spirited new production of Mozart's masterpiece The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) on Saturday, 22 November, conducted by Met Music Director James Levine.
Carmen, the much-loved opera from Bizet, can be seen on the big screen from Saturday, 29 November and Rossini's popular Il Barbiere di Siviglia can be seen from 20 December.
On 20 February 2015, Susan Stroman makes her Met debut directing a new production of Lehár's The Merry Widow, with Renée Fleming in the title role and Andrew Davis conducting. Two double bills of one-act operas also receive new productions this season: Iolanta, with Anna Netrebko in the title role, and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, conducted by Valery Gergiev and directed by Mariusz Trelinski, release on 21 March next year.
The last production of this season, releasing on Saturday, 23 May, 2015, sees Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, conducted by Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi and directed by David McVicar, receive its first new Met production in 45 years.
The Met: Live in HD, the Met's award-winning series of live transmissions to cinemas around the world, has expanded its worldwide distribution to more than 2000 theatres in 69 countries this season, the largest global audience the initiative has ever reached. The Met was the first arts company to experiment as an alternative content provider, beginning on a modest scale in 2006. Since then, its programme has grown every season with more than 16 million tickets sold to date.
Each of these entertaining operas is a glorious production that will be screened exclusively at Cinema Nouveau and select Ster-Kinekor theatres countrywide, including: Gateway Nouveau, Durban; V&A Waterfront Nouveau and Ster-Kinekor Blue Route in Cape Town; Rosebank Nouveau and Ster-Kinekor Bedford in Johannesburg; and at Brooklyn Nouveau, Pretoria. Their release onto the big screen affords South African lovers of opera the unique opportunity to become an integral part of these 'near live' and breathtaking performances.
For booking information on The Met: Live in HD season, go to www.cinemanouveau.co.za or sterkinekor.mobi, or call Ticketline on 0861-Movies (668 437). Follow on Twitter @nouveaubuzz and on Facebook at Cinema Nouveau. You can also download the Ster-Kinekor App on any Nokia, Samsung Android, iPhone or Blackberry smart phone for updates, news and to make bookings.
The approximate running time of the screening is 3hrs, 13mins, with one intermission.
For more opera and live theatre on the big screen, go to www.writingstudio.co.za.
