Met Live's THE MAGIC FLUTE and HANSEL & GRETEL Get Holiday Encores

This holiday season, NCM Fathom and the Metropolitan Opera will present special encores of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel and Mozart's The Magic Flute from the award-winning series The Met: Live in HD. The operas, presented in abridged versions and sung in English, are designed to bring appeal of the opera to families with children and will screen in the United States through NCM's exclusive Digital Broadcast Network on December 21 and December 22.

Tickets for The Met: Live in HD Holiday Encore are available at www.FathomEvents.com, participating theater box offices or metopera.org/hdfamilyencores.

THE MAGIC FLUTE (Mozart)

Wednesday, December 21 - 6:30 p.m. local time
Conducted by James Levine
Production by Julie Taymor
Starring Ying Huang as Pamina, Erika Miklósa as the Queen of the Night, Matthew Polenzani as Tamino, Nathan Gunn as Papageno, and René Pape as Sarastro

In Julie Taymor's fantastical production of Mozart's classic opera, the hero Tamino teams up with the comical bird-catcher Papageno to win the hand of the beautiful princess Pamina. To find her, the two unlikely friends must navigate through a mysterious world of supernatural dangers and avoid the wrath of Pamina's vengeful mother, the evil Queen of the Night.

HANSEL AND GRETEL (Humperdinck)

Thursday, December 22 - 6:30 p.m. local time
Conducted by Vladimir Jurowski
Production by Richard Jones
Starring Christine Schäfer as Gretel, Alice Coote as Hansel, Rosalind Plowright as Gertrud, Philip Langridge as the Witch, Alan Held as Peter

In this English-language version of Humperdinck's opera, the famous fairy tale siblings wander into the forest in search of strawberries and find themselves in the clutches of an evil witch, who is determined to turn them into gingerbread cookies. The score includes the familiar "Evening Prayer," in which the children, alone in the forest, ask for fourteen angels to guard them as they sleep.

NCM operates NCM Media Networks, a leading integrated media company reaching U.S. consumers in movie theaters, online and through mobile technology. The NCM Cinema Network and NCM Fathom present cinema advertising and events across the nation's largest digital in-theater network, comprised of theaters owned by AMC Entertainment Inc., Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CNK), Regal Entertainment Group (NYSE: RGC) and other leading regional theater circuits. NCM's theater advertising network covers 176 Designated Market Areas® (49 of the top 50) and includes over 18,300 screens (17,300 digital). During 2010, approximately 700 million patrons attended movies shown in theaters in which NCM currently has exclusive, cinema advertising agreements in place. The NCM Fathom Events broadcast network is comprised of nearly 700 locations in 165 Designated Market Areas® (all of the top 50). The NCM Interactive Network offers 360-degree integrated marketing opportunities in combination with cinema, encompassing 42 entertainment-related websites, online widgets and mobile applications. National CineMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: NCMI) owns a 48.7% interest in and is the managing member of National CineMedia LLC. For more information, visit www.ncm.com or www.FathomEvents.com

The Met: Live in HD is the Metropolitan Opera's Peabody and Emmy award-winning series of opera performances transmitted live from the stage of the Met into movie theaters worldwide. More than ten high-definition cameras, including a dolly and robotics, are used to capture the live action onstage, giving a bird's-eye view and different perspective on the productions. Additional handheld cameras are backstage to capture live artist interviews and other behind-the-scene action. The Met: Live in HD is shown in more than 1,600 theaters in 54 countries this season, making the Met the only arts institution with an ongoing global art series of this scale, as well as one of the world's leading providers of alternative cinema content. Close to 3 million tickets are expected to be sold this season, alone; more than 8.5 million tickets have been sold since the series launched in 2006.

Now in its sixth season, The Met: Live in HD is seen in 54 countries; China, Cyprus, Israel, Italy, Morocco, Russia, Slovenia, and the territory of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands are joining the HD network for the first time. The 2011-12 series features 11 transmissions, including seven new productions, starring the opera world's most prominent artists. The live presentations resume January 21, 2012 with The Enchanted Island.