Met live season continues with Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier

FREDONIA - Live at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera's series of live, high definition opera transmissions to theaters around the world, continues at the 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center on Saturday at noon with Richard Strauss' grand Viennese comedy Der Rosenkavalier.

Set in an idealized Vienna of the past, Strauss's most popular opera concerns a wise woman of the world who is involved with a much younger lover but is ultimately forced to accept the laws of time, giving him up to a pretty young heiress. Strauss's score is lush, rich, and romantic to an extraordinary degree - perhaps surprisingly so, considering that the composer had written the disturbingly edgy and modern Elektra only two years earlier.

Soprano Lise Davidsen is the aristocratic Marschallin, opposite mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey as her lover, Octavian, and soprano Erin Morley as Sophie, the beautiful younger woman who steals his heart. Bass Gunther Groissbock returns as the churlish Baron Ochs, and Markus Bruck is Sophie's wealthy father, Faninal. Maestro Simone Young takes the Met podium to oversee Robert Carsen's fin-de-sie`cle staging.

Sung in German with English subtitles, this production runs four hours, 42 minutes with two intermissions.

Live at the Met is underwritten with support from Daniel S. Kaufman and Timothy W. Beaver.

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. Tickets may be purchased online anytime at www.fredopera.org.

The Opera House is equipped with assistive listening headsets for the hearing-impaired. Simply request one from any usher or Opera House staff member.