Thursday, December 26, 2024

New opera ‘Grounded’ set for Saturday

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Live at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live, high definition (HD) opera transmissions to theaters around the world, continues its 2024-25 season at the 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center at 1 p.m. Sunday, with the new opera Grounded. Canadian mezzo soprano Emily D’Angelo stars as the hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world.

Live at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live, high definition (HD) opera transmissions to theaters around the world, continues its 2024-25 season at the 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center on Saturday at 1 p.m., with the new opera “Grounded.”

Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera premieres at the Met and wrestles with often-overlooked issues created by 21st-century war-making: the ethical conflicts created by the use of modern military technology and the psychological and emotional toll supposedly safe remote technology takes on our servicepersons.

Canadian mezzo soprano Emily D’Angelo stars as the hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. American tenor Ben Bliss costars as the Wyoming rancher Eric in a production by Michael Mayer that brings this story to life in a high-tech staging which presents a variety of perspectives on the action.

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to conduct Tesori’s kaleidoscopic opera, transmitted live from the Met stage.  The most prolific female composer in theater history, Tesori has written a diverse catalog for Broadway, opera, film, and television; her most recent musical, Kimberly Akimbo, earned five Tony Awards (of eight nominations), including Best Musical and Best Original Score.

The Met: Live in HD is the Metropolitan Opera’s Peabody and Emmy Award-winning series of opera performances transmitted live from the stage of the Met in New York into movie theaters and event spaces worldwide. The series has made the Met the world’s leading provider of alternative cinema content and the only arts institution with an ongoing global series of this scale. When the series launched in 2006, the Met was the first arts company to experiment with alternative cinema content. Since then, the program has expanded, with more than 31 million tickets sold to date, and has been seen in virtually every important world capital from Paris to Cairo, as well as in towns and villages spread across six continents.

The production runs two hours, 45 minutes with one intermission.

Individual tickets to each of the operas in the Live at the Met season are $20, ($18 Opera House members, $10 students). A flexible subscription of eight tickets which can be used however you want – one at a time to eight different operas, all at once for eight people, or anything in between – is available for $142. Tickets may be purchased in person at the Opera House Box Office or by phone at 716-679-1891, Tuesday-Friday, 12-4:30 p.m., at the door, or online anytime at www.fredopera.org.

Part of Arts in the Afternoon, which is sponsored by Dr. James M. & Marcia Merrins, Live at the Met is underwritten with support from Daniel S. Kaufman and Timothy W. Beaver

The 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center is a member-supported not-for-profit performing arts center with a mission to “present the performing arts for the benefit of our community and region … providing access to artistic diversity … and high quality programming at an affordable price.” It is located in Village Hall in downtown Fredonia. For a complete schedule of events, visit www.fredopera.org.

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