Opera season to end on high note

New York’s Metropolitan Opera will present two screenings at the city’s Eye Cinema as part of the Met Live series, before the current season concludes.

Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux will be presented this Saturday, April 16, and Strauss’ Elektra will be screened on, Saturday April 30. AWith almost exactly 100 years between them, they are very different in style. However both involve intense emotional journies by formidable aristocratic women.

In Roberto Devereux, a tormented and ageing Queen Elizabeth I is forced to sign the death warrant of the nobleman she loves. Following her critically acclaimed portrayals of Anne Boleyn and Mary Stuart earlier this season, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky will sing Elizabeth I in this final opera from Donizetti’s Tudor trilogy. For this production the Met stage will be transformed into a re-imagined Tudor court, featuring a giant replica of Hampton Court’s astronomical clock. More than 3,000 fake pearls and 500 yards of fabric have gone into creating the costumes.

Richard Strauss’ Elektra, first performed in 1909, is a Greek tragedy that portrays the daughter of King Agamemnon as she seeks revenge for her father’s murder. The story takes place some years after theTrojan War and the drama unfolds in a single act before coming to its famously bloody and violent close. Soprano Nina Stemme is Elektra in a work that unites Greek tragedy with the unsettling insights of early-20th-century Freudian psychology.

■ Both operas will be broadcast live from the Met’s Saturday matinée in New York to the Eye Cinema at 6pm. Tickets at www.eyecinema.ie.