Photo by Ken Howard
Next up in the Met Live in HD Summer Encores series, at 7 p.m. on July 16: The Enchanted Island, a Met world premiere combining Baroque music with a new, English-language libretto, featuring characters from Shakespeare's The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The three-hour performance includes selections from more than 30 operas, cantatas, and oratorios by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and other masters of the Baroque period. The story, by the English theater artist Jeremy Sams, combines two of Shakespeare's best-known plays.
The four young lovers from A Midsummer Night's Dream find themselves shipwrecked on Prospero's island from The Tempest, leading to a tortuous web of comic and dramatic romantic entanglements. The cast includes Joyce DiDonato as the sorceress Sycorax; David Daniels as her nemesis, Prospero; Danielle de Niese as the air spirit Ariel; Luca Pisaroni as the monstrous but soft-hearted Caliban; Lisette Oropesa as Prospero's daughter Miranda; Anthony Roth Costanzo as the noble Ferdinand; Layla Claire, Elizabeth DeShong, Paul Appleby, and Elliot Madore as the Midsummer lovers; and, in a cameo, Plácido Domingo as Neptune, god of the seas. William Christie, an early music specialist of worldwide acclaim, conducts. The visually spectacular production is by Phelim McDermott (Satyagraha).
A list of venues is on the Fathom Events website. The local theater carrying the telecast is San Francisco Cinearts Empire 3.