Free summer festival screens recent Met performances outside in HD (photo by Richard Termine/Metropolitan Opera)
Lincoln Center, Josie Robertson Plaza
Columbus Ave. at 63rd St.
August 28 – September 7, free, starting time between 7:30 and 8:00
212-769-7028
www.metopera.org
Catching an opera at the Met can be a tough ticket, but you’ll have no such worry at the fabled institution’s annual Summer HD Festival, ten days of free screenings of works that graced the opera house’s stage between 2007 and 2015, now shown outside by the fountain in Josie Robertson Plaza. The series kicks off August 28 with a bonus film, Robert Wise’s West Side Story, much of which was filmed in the pre-Lincoln Center neighborhood. There will be 3,100 first-come, first-served seats available each night, featuring such “The Met: Live in HD” presentations as Bizet’s Carmen, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and starring Elīna Garanča and Roberto Alagna; Verdi’s Macbeth, with Anna Netrebko as Lady Macbeth and Željko Lučić as her ill-fated husband; Puccini’s Il Trittico, a triple bill directed by Jack O’Brien and conducted by James Levine; and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, directed by Michael Grandage and conducted by Fabio Luisi.