Opera House Met season continues

Live at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live, high definition (HD) opera transmissions to theaters around the world, continues at the 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center on Saturday at 1 p.m., with Terence Blanchard's celebrated contemporary opera Champion.

Six-time Grammy Award-winning composer Terence Blanchard brings his first opera to the Met after his Fire Shut Up in My Bones triumphantly premiered with the company to universal acclaim in 2021. Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green stars as the closeted young hat maker-turned-prizefighter, Emile Griffith, who rises from obscurity to become world champion and, in one of the great tragedies in sports history, kills his homophobic archrival in the ring. Bass-baritone Eric Owens portrays Griffith's older self, haunted by the ghosts of his past.

Soprano Latonia Moore is Emelda Griffith, the boxer's estranged mother, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe is the bar owner Kathy Hagan. Yannick Ne¥zet-Se¥guin takes the podium for Blanchard's second Met premiere, also reuniting the director-and-choreographer team of James Robinson and Camille A. Brown.

Sung in English with English subtitles, this production runs two hours, 50 minutes with one intermission.

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.

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.