Random Acts
The Met in HD’s Il trovatore; nouveau flamenco guitarist Ottmar Liebert and Luna Negra; musical Something Light to Carry; Zach Condon with his eclectic world-beat band Beirut
This week The Met: Live in HD begins its 10th season of simulcasts from the stage of New York’s Metropolitan Opera to theaters around the world, including the Lensic Performing Arts Center (211 W. San Francisco St.). Ten broadcasts will take place between Saturday, Oct. 3, and the end of April on selected Saturday mornings (on into the afternoons), and the Lensic will also repeat all but three of them on the same evenings. The first offering is Verdi’s Il trovatore, which sports a musical score as magnificent as its libretto is ludicrous. We hear good things about Russian soprano Anna Netrebko as Leonora and South Korean tenor Yonghoon Lee as Manrico, and mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick will most likely provide her usual as Azucena, the Gypsy who mistakenly throws her baby into a flaming pyre instead of … oh, never mind. Anyway, the magnificent Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky (aka “the Silver Fox”) is taking a break from his treatments for a brain tumor long enough to sing just three performances as the Count di Luna; after this broadcast, he heads back to his doctors in London. The broadcast begins at 11 a.m. (encore at 6 p.m.). Tickets ($22 to $28 in the morning; $22 in the evening) are available by calling 505-988-1234 or visiting www.ticketssantafe.org. — James M. Keller