ARMIDA Concludes 2009-2010 Season Of Thirteen's Great Performances At The MET

Soprano Renée Fleming triumphs as the vengeful sorceress in the title role of Gioachino Rossini's Armida, premiering in primetime on THIRTEEN on Thursday, August 19 at 8 pm. The Great Performances at The Met presentation also airs on PBS stations on Sunday, August 29 at 12 noon (check local listings), and will encore on THIRTEEN at 12:30 pm that day. Great Performances at The Met is a presentation of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG - one of America's most prolific and respected public media providers.

Directed by Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman and conducted by Riccardo Frizza, the production showcases Fleming's vocal prowess in what The New York Times describes as a "tour de force" role for the soprano who can "combine alluring long-spun lyrical singing with dazzling, sometimes demonic, coloratura flight." Fleming leads a cast of multiple tenors including Lawrence Brownlee as Rinaldo, a knight of the Crusade who falls into the clutches of Armida; Barry Banks and Kobie van Rensburg as Carlo and Ubaldo, two knights who attempt to rescue Rinaldo; and John Osborn as their commander Goffredo.

Armida is based on 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso's epic Gerusalemme Liberata ("Jerusalem Delivered"), a tale of the scorned seductress that has inspired more than 100 operas and ballets, including Handel's Rinaldo and Haydn's Armida. Rossini's opera is particularly noted for its six tenor roles, which were shared by four singers for the opera's 1817 premiere at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. (In this presentation, five tenors will sing these roles.) Armida garnered popular attention when Maria Callas sang the title role in Florence in 1952.

Great Performances at the Met: Armida is directed for television by Gary Halvorson and hosted by Deborah Voigt. Jay David Saks is the audio producer. Sets and costumes are by Richard Hudson, and the lighting is by Brian MacDevitt. Graciela Daniele is the choreographer and Daniel Pelzig is the associate choreographer. Great Performances at the Met: Armida is the tenth and final production airing during the 2009-2010 season of Great Performances at the Met. The performance is sung in Italian with English surtitles.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. Major support for the production was provided by the Sybil B. Harrington Endowment Fund. Corporate support for Great Performances at The Met is provided by Toll Brothers, America's luxury home-builder®.

Visit Great Performances online at www.pbs.org/gperf for additional information on this and other Great Performances programs. For the Met, Mia Bongiovanni and Elena Park are Supervising Producers, and Louisa Briccetti and Victoria Warivonchik are Producers. Peter Gelb is Executive Producer. For Great Performances, Bill O'Donnell is Series Producer; David Horn is Executive Producer.

About WNET.ORG

New York public media company WNET.ORG is a pioneering provider of television and web content. The parent of THIRTEEN, WLIW21 and Creative News Group, WNET.ORG brings such acclaimed broadcast series and websites as Need To Know, Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, Charlie Rose, Secrets of the Dead, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Visions, Consuelo Mack WealthTrack, Miffy and Friends, Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps and Cyberchase to national and international audiences. Through its wide range of channels and platforms, WNET.ORG serves the entire New York City metro area with unique local productions, broadcasts and innovative educational and cultural projects. In all that it does, WNET.ORG pursues a single, overarching goal - to create media experiences of lasting significance for New York, America and the world. For more information, visit www.wnet.org.

About the Met

Under the leadership of General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director James Levine, the Met has a series of bold initiatives underway that are designed to broaden its audience and revitalize the company's repertory. The Met has made a commitment to presenting modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, with highly theatrical productions featuring the greatest opera stars in the world. The Met's 2010-11 season will feature seven new productions, including the first two installments of a new Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage and conducted by Maestro Levine, and two company premieres (John Adams's Nixon in China directed by Peter Sellars, and Le Comte Ory directed by Bartlett Sher). The season also features new productions of three repertory classics by debuting directors-Boris Godunov by Peter Stein, Don Carlo by Nicholas Hytner, and La Traviata by Willy Decker.

Building on its 79-year-old international radio broadcast history - heard over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network - the Met uses advanced media distribution platforms and state-of-the-art technology to reach audiences around the world. The Met: Live in HD, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series of live performance transmissions to movie theaters around the world, returns for its fifth season in 2010-11. The series of 12 transmissions begins October 9 with Das Rheingold and ends with Die Walküre on May 14. The Met recently introduced Met Player, a new subscription service that makes much of its extensive video and audio catalog of full-length performances available to the public for the first time online, and in exceptional, state-of-the-art quality. Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS XM Radio broadcasts both live and rare historical performances; the Met on Rhapsody on-demand service offers audio recordings; and the Met presents free live audio streaming of performances on its website once every week during the opera season with support from RealNetworks®.

The Met has launched several audience development initiatives, including Open House dress rehearsals, a popular rush ticket program, reduced ticket prices, Gallery Met, and an annual Holiday Series presentation for families. For more information, please visit: www.metopera.org.