Ster-Kinekor: Brooklyn Nouveau

When mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča and tenor Roberto Alagna joined forces for a new production of Carmen at the Met, the results were electrifying. Now this star duo reunites for another sensual French opera when they open the season in the title roles of Saint-Saëns’s biblical epic Samson et Dalila. Darko Tresnjak, who won a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 2014 for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, makes his Met debut directing a vivid, seductive staging, featuring a monumental setting for the last-act Temple of Dagon, where the hero crushes his Philistine enemies. Sir Mark Elder conducts the first new Met production of the work in 20 years.

An advertising executive jumps back and forth in time between 21st century London and 17th century La Mancha, where Don Quixote mistakes him for Sancho Panza.

Soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek sings Puccini’s gun-slinging heroine in this romantic epic of the Wild West, with the heralded return of tenor Jonas Kaufmann in the role of the outlaw she loves. Tenor Yusif Eyvazov also sings some performances. Baritone Željko Lučić is the vigilante sheriff Jack Rance, and Marco Armiliato conducts.

In what should be a highlight of the new season, soprano Anna Netrebko sings her first Met Aida, going toe-to-toe with mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili as Amneris. Later in the season, a second star-studded cast takes over, with Sondra Radvanovsky and Dolora Zajick as the leading ladies.Tenors Aleksandrs Antonenko and Yonghoon Lee alternate as Radamès, and Nicola Luisotti and Plácido Domingo take the podium for the Met’s monumental production.

The multi-award winning and critically acclaimed Lincoln Center Theater’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King And I comes to cinemas in this unmissable event recorded live from London’s iconic Palladium.

“The Secret Survivor” is the eye witness account by 92 year old Veronica Phillips - Hungarian Jew, born 9 November 1926, Budapest. She lives in Johannesburg today. After nearly 70 years of silence Veronica tells her story of surviving the Holocaust to film director, Johnathan Andrews. She remembers Budapest as teenager, waiting in line to get a Swiss letter of protection - possible through the efforts of Carl Lutz - the Arrow Cross, the Nazis, the concentration camps where she was held, a death march, and finding her way back home to Budapest. The film includes war time archival footage and interviews with historians and diplomats.