Town Hall Theater regularly broadcasts operas from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. On Saturday, Feb. 3, the Middlebury theater will screen a new documentary on the creation of the New York opera house itself.
“The Opera House,” a new film by award-winning documentary filmmaker Susan Froemke, surveys a remarkable period in the Metropolitan Opera’s rich history and a time of great change for New York. Featuring rarely seen archival footage, stills, recent interviews and a soundtrack of extraordinary Met performances, the film chronicles the creation of the Met’s storied home of the last 50 years against the backdrop of the artists, architects, and politicians who shaped the cultural life of New York City in the ’50s and ’60s.
Among the notable figures in the film are famed soprano Leontyne Price, who opened the new Met in 1966 in Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra;” Rudolf Bing, the Met’s imperious General Manager, who engineered the move from the old house to the new one; Robert Moses, the unstoppable city planner who bulldozed an entire neighborhood to make room for Lincoln Center; and Wallace Harrison, whose quest for architectural glory was never fully realized.
Saturday’s film begins at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15, $10 students + ($2/ $1 ticket fee) and may be purchased at townhallteater.org, by calling (802) 382-9222, at the THT box office (Monday-Saturday, 12-5 p.m.) or at the door, if available.