The Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series is coming to UPAC in Kingston on Saturday, June 6, and the opera on screen is one of the most-discussed Met premieres of the season. Showtime is 1:00 PM. Quick note: this screening was rescheduled from May 30 — so if you had the original date marked, your night out moved one week.
About the Event
Gabriela Lena Frank is an American composer known for weaving Latin American folk and indigenous traditions into classical forms. El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego is her first opera, and she chose a subject with serious weight: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, reimagined through the Orpheus and Eurydice myth.
On the Day of the Dead, Frida rises from the underworld to find Diego. The famously turbulent pair relive their passionate love before saying a final farewell to the living. The production draws visual inspiration from both artists’ own paintings and is rooted in Mexican folk traditions.
Libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, sung in Spanish with English subtitles. Yannick Nézet-Séguin — the Met’s Music Director — conducts. Deborah Colker directs and choreographs. The cast: mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard as Frida, baritone Carlos Álvarez as Diego, Gabriella Reyes as Catrina, and Nils Wanderer as Leonardo.
Critics landed on the work decisively: “confident, richly imagined score,” with music that “bursts with color and fresh individuality.” Runtime is 2 hours and 48 minutes. The Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Live in HD format captures the full performance through up to 12 cameras — onstage and backstage.
About the Venue
UPAC — the Ulster Performing Arts Center — sits at 601 Broadway in Kingston. It’s one of the anchor performance venues in the Hudson Valley, and Kingston is the kind of city worth building a little extra time around if you can. Full venue information at bardavon.org.
Tickets
Tickets are available via Ticketmaster. The screening moved from May 30 to June 6 — double-check your date before you head out.
Get Tickets via Ticketmaster →