Live broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera to debut at Yale thanks to a gift from Frederick Iseman ’74

Starting this fall, the Yale University community will have the unique opportunity to view the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD broadcasts on campus free of charge through a gift from Frederick Iseman, Yale College alumnus of the Class of 1974. This generous gift will fund Yale’s access to the twelve operas scheduled for live transmission during 2010–2011, as well as the installation of new sound and projection technology in Sprague Hall, where the performances will be shown.

Additionally, Mr. Iseman’s gift will enable area high school students to experience the Met’s performances by providing 200 tickets for the Live in HD series presented at the Branford 12 movie theater. Ticket distribution to the high schools will be administered through the Music in Schools program at Yale School of Music.

The Met @ Yale: the Iseman Broadcasts of The Met Live in HD season will begin on October 9 with Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold, the first production in the Met’s widely anticipated new Ring Cycle. Succeeding broadcasts will include five other new productions: Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (October 23), Verdi’s Don Carlo (December 11), Adams’s Nixon in China (February 12), Rossini’s Le Comte Ory (April 9), and the second installment in the new Ring Cycle, Die Walküre (May 14). Further transmissions will bring works by Verdi, Strauss, Puccini, Gluck, and Donizetti to Yale and to audiences worldwide.

Nine former students of the Yale School of Music are among the singers performing in the twelve operas being simulcast this year. Das Rheingold, the first broadcast, will include Tamara Mumford (Flosshilde) and Adam Diegel (Froh).