The Met’s ‘Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci’ to be Broadcast Live at CCA

The Met: Live in HD’s broadcast of “Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci” will be shown at the University of Maine Collins Center for the Arts at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, April 25.

“Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci” is opera’s most enduring tragic double bill and in Sir David McVicar’s evocative new production the action takes place across two time periods in the same Sicilian village.

Marcelo Álvarez plays the dual tenor roles of Turiddu in “Cavalleria Rusticana” and Canio in “Pagliacci.” The unlucky heroines are Eva-Maria Westbroek playing Santuzza and Patricia Racette as Nedda. Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi is on the podium and Rae Smith designed the moodily atmospheric 1900 village square setting of “Cavalleria,” which transforms to a 1948 truck stop for the doomed vaudeville troupe of “Pagliacci.”

This is one of 10 of the Met’s Emmy and Peabody Award-winning live performance transmissions to movie theaters and art centers around the world. The Met: Live in HD was developed to reach existing audiences and to introduce new audiences to opera through technology.

Tickets, which are $28 for adults and $8 for students, are available online or by calling 581.1755, 800.622.TIXX.

Esther Rauch will lecture about the opera at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 22, at the Brewer Public Library and at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 23, at the Orono Public Library.