Live at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live, high definition (HD) opera transmissions to theaters around the world, concludes its 2024-25 season at the 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center on Saturday at 1 p.m., with the Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville).

Live at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live, high definition (HD) opera transmissions to theaters around the world, concludes its 2024-25 season at the 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center on Saturday, May 31, at 1 p.m., with the Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville).

Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina headlines a winning ensemble as the feisty heroine, Rosina, alongside American tenor Jack Swanson, in his Met debut, as her secret beloved, Count Almaviva.

Moldovan baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky stars as Figaro, the ingenious barber of Seville, with Hungarian bass-baritone Peter Kálmán as Dr. Bartolo and Russian bass Alexander Vinogradov as Don Basilio rounding out the principal cast. Giacomo Sagripanti conducts Bartlett Sher’s madcap production.

Regarded as perhaps the greatest comedy in all of opera, Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia features solos of astounding speed in tongue-twisting patter forms, especially the title role’s well-known Act I showstopper, “Largo al factotum.” The production runs three hours, 35 minutes with one intermission.

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.

Individual tickets to each of the operas in the Live at the Met season are $20, ($18 Opera House members, $10 students). Tickets may be purchased in person at the Opera House Box Office or by phone at 716-679-1891, Tuesday-Friday, noon to 4:30 p.m., at the door, or online anytime at www.fredopera.org.

Part of the Arts in the Afternoon at the Opera House, 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.