Metropolitan Opera's HD LIVE IN SCHOOLS Launches Sixth Season

The Met: HD Live in Schools, a national program that uses live transmissions of Metropolitan Opera performances to create cross-disciplinary educational experiences for students around the country, will reach children in a record 34 school districts in its sixth season. The program, which provides teachers and administrators with educational resources geared to select performances from The Met: Live in HD-the Met's award-winning series of live opera transmissions to movie theaters around the world-and arranges for students to attend the transmissions in their hometowns, is expected to reach approximately 15,000 students in 24 states during the 2013-14 season. The first HD Live in Schools transmission of the year, Verdi's Falstaff, is an operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and will be transmitted live from the Met stage on December 14.

Four new districts have joined the program this season: Columbia Public Schools in Columbia, Missouri; Dayton Public Schools in Dayton, Ohio; Newark Public Schools in Newark, New Jersey; and Sheridan School District in Sheridan, Wyoming. A complete list of participating districts appears below.

This season's featured operas are Falstaff; Dvo?ák's Rusalka, based on the legend of the Little Mermaid (February 8); Massenet's tragic romance Werther (March 15); Puccini's beloved classic La Bohème (April 5); and Rossini's sprightly adaptation of the Cinderella story, La Cenerentola (May 10).

Each opera was chosen based on a mixture of factors, including the opera's applicability to general curriculum, scheduling with school calendars, and entertainment value. In New York City, students will study all five featured operas, while school districts across the country will choose four titles from the list to focus on.

Major funding for HD Live in Schools is made possible by Bank of America, with program support provided through a partnership with the New York City Department of Education.

"Since the launch of the program in 2008, The Met: HD Live in Schools has reached more than 70,000 students across the country," said Rena DeSisto, International CSR and Global Arts and Culture executive at Bank of America. "The program not only brings many of these students their first experience of opera, it puts the libretti subject matter in an historical and/or a literature-related context."

The Met has created specially-designed HD Live in Schools Educator Guides for participating teachers and administrators that include classroom activities, musical highlights, story synopses, accompanying audio clips, post-opera activities, and student resources. The guides, designed to help students become familiar with the operas before viewing the transmissions, explain and align with the new national Common Core standards, making it easy for educators in diverse disciplines to enhance their curricula and engage their students in new and exciting ways. Earlier this season, the Met invited representatives from each school district to participate in a three-day teacher conference at the Metropolitan Opera. The conference focused on identifying and cultivating strategies for incorporating opera into a wide array of curricula, as well as identifying potential interdisciplinary collaborative opportunities. The conference itinerary included presentations from a variety of teaching artists, a backstage tour, an opera performance, and interactive workshops.

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