(Promos from the front page of The Metropolitan Opera's website found here)
OC will be there. Will you?! If not, luckily it won't be that difficult to keep track of opening night festivities of The Metropolitan Opera's 2007-08 season. With its marked success from last year's new Minghella production of Madama Butterfly, the NYC Metropolitan Opera will once again broadcast live to Times Square the September 24, 2007 opening night/la prima/evening gala performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, while a simultaneous relay will be played on a giant screen at Lincoln Center’s Josie Robertson Plaza. Although the event at Robertson Plaza is free, advance tickets are required for attendance to the broadcast in Lincoln Center Plaza, and were available first-come, first-serve at the Metropolitan box office from 12 noon yesterday, Sunday, September 23, 2007.
If you’re feeling more social, you can head down to Times Square, where the simulcast, live from the MET, can be seen on the following outdoor plasmas starting at 6:30 pm: Toys “R” Us, Reuters, NASDAQ, and Panasonic’s AstroVision screen, all @ broadway between 43rd and 45th streets. Approximately 1,500 seats will be available for the public on a first-come first-served basis in the <3 of Times Square, with additional standing room provided. RUN!!! The Times Square relay is free, and tickets are not required. Thank you, Deutsche Bank!
For those who aren't in NYC, the performance will also be broadcast live on Sirius's channel 85 (you must be a subscriber) as well as being streamed live from The Metropolitan Opera’s website, (you don’t have to be a subscriber, but the trade-off is that you will have to install the bloated Realplaya software). If all else fails, you can try to catch a silent peek on a Times Square webcam.
We must admit that we've been reading The Metropolitan Opera's clever new production countdown blog for Lucia di Lammermoor since the inaugural entry on September 11th. Featuring daily interviews and insight from cast and crew, we feel it has brought us closer to the lol Lucia madness lol that is currently making NYC hysterical. EEYSTERICAL!
With fifteen hours to go until la prima, and running out of promos, Saturday's entry focused on the opera's furriest stars, the two Irish Wolfhounds that appear at the beginning of Act I. Tomorrow will mark the theater debut for Murphy and Gracie, the 2 1/2-year-old Irish sweeties owned by Robin Coen. The dogs will be in black tie for tonight's performance, of course.
(Photo credit: Marty Sohl, taken from http://blog.metoperafamily.org)