Metropolitan Opera Live in HD returns to Town Plaza Cinema

New York high society returns to Southeast Missouri with the second year of the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD at Town Plaza Cinema.

"I think it's really amazing that they're doing this in Cape," said Barbara Herbert, who hosts Southeast Public Radio's "Sunday Night at the Opera" and provides synopses of opera plots to SE Live during the Town Plaza Cinema opera season.

Town Plaza joins about 800 theaters worldwide to simulcast 11 opera productions through May 2009, up from eight broadcasts last year. The season opens at 5:30 p.m. Monday with the Opening Night Gala. The opening night gala includes scenes from three different operas.

Renee Fleming will sing the second act of Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata." She will then perform Act III of Jules Massenet's "Manon" and conclude with the final scene from Richard Strauss's "Capriccio."

Aside from the Monday night opening gala, the operas are broadcast live on Saturday afternoons each month with an occasional Sunday encore. Herbert said if she had to recommend one production, "Lucia di Lammermoor" by Gaetano Donizetti, a story about a woman forced to marry a man she does not love, would be the one to see. But she said any of them would be worth the ticket price.

"That's why this is wonderful, because it's so cheap," she said. "You're going to see a live production in real time in high definition."

Tickets are $22 for adults, $15 for children, $20 for seniors and $18 for students. If the language barrier keeps you at bay, the foreign operas have subtitles.

"If you can read, you can figure out what's going on," Herbert said.

She said last year anywhere from 20 to 45 people would attend the showings at Town Plaza, with "La Boheme" being the most popular.

The music, the costumes and the story all play an important role in the opera, but the entire event is a social affair.

"We all talk during the intermissions and get to know each other," Herbert said.