JOEL MESLER: MILES OF SMILES

Installation view of Joel Mesler: Miles of Smiles, Guild Hall, East Hampton, August 3 – October 26, 2025. Photo: Francine Fleischer. Image Courtesy of Guild Hall.

IN-PROCESS: LOVE LETTERS: CAGE TO CUNNINGHAM

Guild Hall William P. Rayner Artists-in-Residence, Site-Specific Dances (artistic directors: Michael Spencer Phillips and Dino Kiratzidis) share an in-process presentation of their new dance-theater work, Love Letters: Cage to Cunningham.

Love Letters: Cage to Cunningham is a dance/media-performance work by Site-Specific Dances, based on selected letters from Love, Icebox. These letters reveal the interwoven nature of John and Merce’s artistic and personal lives. They contain moments of flirtation, humor, insecurity, joy, longing, arousal, and jealousy, emotions specific to the letters but also universal to human experiences of love and longing.

The piece unfolds as a series of vignettes that follow the emotional arc of the letters, combining media and live music with a new ensemble dance suite by Michael Spencer Phillips. The set design is an assemblage of various media elements drawn from the text of the letters and curated by Dino Kiratzidis in collaboration with videographer Emma Kazaryan and graphic designer Riley Hooker. Adam Tendler joins the team as a John Cage specialist, performer and adviser, alongside collaborating composers Phong Tran and Matthew Ricketts.

The in-process presentation will be followed by a conversation between the creative team.

THE MET: LIVE IN HD—EL ÚLTIMO SUEÑO DE FRIDA Y DIEGO

Estimated Run Time: 2 hours and 50 minutes with one intermission

On May 30, the Metropolitan Opera’s 2025–26 Live in HD season comes to a close with a live transmission of American composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s first opera, a magical-realist portrait of Mexico’s painterly power couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, with libretto by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Nilo Cruz. Fashioned as a reversal of the Orpheus and Euridice myth, the story depicts Frida, sung by leading mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, leaving the underworld on the Day of the Dead and reuniting with Diego, portrayed by baritone Carlos Álvarez. The famously feuding pair briefly relive their tumultuous love, embracing both the passion and the pain before bidding the land of the living a final farewell. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Met-premiere staging of Frank’s opera, a “confident, richly imagined score” (The New Yorker) that “bursts with color and fresh individuality” (Los Angeles Times). The vibrant new production, taking enthusiastic inspiration from Frida and Diego’s paintings, is directed and choreographed by Deborah Colker.

This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

THE MET: LIVE IN HD—EUGENE ONEGIN

Estimated Run Time: 4 hours and 5 minutes with two intermissions

Following her acclaimed 2024 company debut in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, soprano Asmik Grigorian returns to the Met as Tatiana, the lovestruck young heroine in this ardent operatic adaptation of Pushkin, which will be transmitted live from the Metropolitan Opera stage to cinemas worldwide on May 2. Baritone Igor Golovatenko is the urbane Onegin, who realizes his affection for her all too late. The Met’s evocative production, directed by Tony Award–winner Deborah Warner, “offers a beautifully detailed reading of … Tchaikovsky’s lyrical romance” (The Telegraph).

Read synopsis here.

This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

THE MET: LIVE IN HD—TRISTAN UND ISOLDE

Estimated Run Time: 5 hours 10 minutes with two intermissions

After years of anticipation, a truly unmissable event arrives in cinemas worldwide on March 21 as the electrifying Lise Davidsen tackles one of the ultimate roles for dramatic soprano: the Irish princess Isolde in Wagner’s transcendent meditation on love and death. Heroic tenor Michael Spyres stars opposite Davidsen as the love-drunk Tristan. The momentous occasion also marks the advent of a new, Met-debut staging by Yuval Sharon—hailed by The New York Times as “the most visionary opera director of his generation” and the first American to direct an opera at the famed Wagner festival in Bayreuth—as well as Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s first time leading Tristan und Isolde at the Met. Mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova reprises her signature portrayal of Brangäne, alongside bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny, who sings Kurwenal after celebrated Met appearances in Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer and Ring cycle. Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green makes an important role debut as King Marke.

Read synopsis here.

This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

THE MET: LIVE IN HD—I PURITANI

Estimated Run Time: 3 hours and 45 minutes with one intermission

For gorgeous melody, spellbinding coloratura, and virtuoso vocal fireworks, I Puritani has few equals. On January 10, the first new Met production of Bellini’s final masterpiece in nearly 50 years—a striking staging by Charles Edwards, who makes his company directorial debut after many successes as a set designer—arrives in cinemas worldwide. The Met has assembled a world-beating quartet of stars, conducted by Marco Armiliato, for the demanding principal roles. Soprano Lisette Oropesa and tenor Lawrence Brownlee are Elvira and Arturo, brought together by love and torn apart by the political rifts of the English Civil War, with baritone Artur Ruciński as Riccardo, betrothed to Elvira against her will, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as Elvira’s sympathetic uncle, Giorgio.

Read synopsis here.

This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

THE MET: LIVE HD—ANDREA CHÉNIER

Estimated Run Time: 3 hours and 30 minutes with two intermissions

Giordano’s passionate tragedy stars tenor Piotr Beczała as the virtuous poet who falls victim to the intrigue and violence of the French Revolution. Following their celebrated recent partnership in Giordano’s Fedora in the 2022–23 Live in HD season, Beczała reunites with soprano Sonya Yoncheva as Chénier’s aristocratic lover, Maddalena di Coigny, with baritone Igor Golovatenko as Carlo Gérard, the agent of the Reign of Terror who seals their fates. Met Principal Guest Conductor Daniele Rustioni takes the podium to lead Nicolas Joël’s gripping staging, which will be transmitted live from the Met stage to cinemas on December 13.

Read synopsis here.

This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

THE MET: LIVE IN HD—ARABELLA

Estimated Run Time: 4 hours and 10 minutes with two intermissions

On November 22, Strauss’s elegant romance brings the glamour and enchantment of 19th-century Vienna to cinemas worldwide in a sumptuous production by legendary director Otto Schenk that “is as beautiful as one could hope” (The New York Times). Soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen stars as the title heroine, a young noblewoman in search of love on her own terms. Radiant soprano Louise Alder is her sister, Zdenka, and bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny is the dashing count who sweeps Arabella off her feet.

Read synopsis here.

This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

THE MET: LIVE IN HD—LA BOHÈME

Estimated Run Time: 3 hours and 30 minutes with two intermissions

With its enchanting setting and spellbinding score, the world’s most popular opera is as timeless as it is heartbreaking. Franco Zeffirelli’s picture-perfect production brings 19th-century Paris to the Met stage as Puccini’s young friends and lovers navigate the joy and struggle of bohemian life. Soprano Juliana Grigoryan is the feeble seamstress Mimì, opposite tenor Freddie De Tommaso as the ardent poet Rodolfo. Keri-Lynn Wilson conducts the November 8 performance, which will be transmitted live from the Met stage to cinemas worldwide.

Read synopsis here.

This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe. 

THE MET: LIVE IN HD—LA SONNAMBULA

Estimated Run Time: 3 hours and 15 minutes with one intermission

Following triumphant Live in HD performances in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Verdi’s La Traviata, and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Nadine Sierra summits another peak of the soprano repertoire as Amina, who sleepwalks her way into audiences’ hearts in Bellini’s poignant tale of love lost and found. In his new production, Rolando Villazón—the tenor who has embarked on a brilliant second career as a director—retains the opera’s original setting in the Swiss Alps but uses its somnambulant plot to explore the emotional and psychological valleys of the mind. Tenor Xabier Anduaga co-stars as Amina’s fiancé, Elvino, alongside soprano Sydney Mancasola as her rival, Lisa, and bass Alexander Vinogradov as Count Rodolfo. Riccardo Frizza takes the podium for one of opera’s most ravishing works, which will be transmitted live from the Met stage to cinemas on October 18.

Read synopsis here.

This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe. A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera, Opéra de Nice Côte d’Azur, Semperoper Dresden, and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE: MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION

Mrs. Warren’s Profession
by Bernard Shaw
directed by Dominic Cooke

Five-time Olivier Award winner Imelda Staunton (The Crown) joins forces with her real-life daughter Bessie Carter (Bridgerton) for the very first time, playing mother and daughter in Bernard Shaw’s incendiary moral classic.

Vivie Warren is a woman ahead of her time. Her mother, however, is a product of that old patriarchal order. Exploiting it has earned Mrs. Warren a fortune – but at what cost?

Filmed live from the West End, this new production reunites Staunton with director Dominic Cooke (Follies, Good), exploring the clash between morality and independence, traditions and progress.