Met Opera’s 2019 Summer HD Fest: Goodbye to Summer Free Films

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Met Opera’s 2019 Summer HD Fest: Goodbye to Summer Free Films

Details: Parent Category: Film Festivals; Category: Previews; Published on Wednesday, 14 August 2019 17:00; Written by Donna Cheng

You can leave your opera glasses at home, and savor the arias and sunsets at the 2019 Summer HD Festival (August 23–September 2) ending Labor Day weekend. Metropolitan Opera is screening, free to the public, ten of their past filmed opera performances from their Met’s Live in HD series of cinema transmission. Bizet's Carmen and Wagner's Das Rheingold (the first of The Ring Cycle with avant-garde sets by Robert LePage) will be the most popular.

You and 3,000 other casual opera fans, seated on the fountain plaza, will be humming along to “L’amour” of Carmen’s “Habanera” aria. Get there early before the 7:45 / 8:00 pm screening times, as those without a seat will have to stand. (Free culture seekers in NYC know this rule, especially with the closing night of Lincoln Center's Out of Doors Festival that featured David Crosby.)

A free pre-festival screening of Stanley Donen’s Funny Face, featuring songs by George and Ira Gershwin and a co-presentation with Film at Lincoln Center, will be shown on August 23. And if you want more free films, sidle down the plaza to the Walter Reade Theater for their free summer-long Mixtape double features that are ending soon: August 22 (demonlover, Elle), August 29 (Velvet Goldmine, Her Smell), September 5 (Three Times, Moonlight), or September 11 (Esther Kahn, Cries and Whispers). All except September 11 are sold-out and standby only, but don't feel completely shut out. You can arrive 20 minutes to an hour earlier than the screen times of 6:00 pm and 8:30 pm for the standby lines. You may get lucky.