Met Live Summer Encores Kick Off With 'Madama Butterfly"

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Soprano Patricia Racette plays Cio-Cio San in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” which will be screened in the Met Live Summer Encore series at Potsdam’s Roxy Theater at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, June 20.

The Met: Live in HD will kick off the 2011 Summer Encores line-up with one of the most beloved operas of all time-"Madama Butterfly" by Giacomo Puccini.

Academy Award-winning film director Anthony Minghella's critically acclaimed production of Puccini's classic opera stars Patricia Racette in the title role as Cio-Cio San. Marcello Giordani is her lover, the callous Pinkerton, and Dwayne Croft sings the role of Sharpless. Patrick Summers conducts.

You're invited to spend "Monday at the Met" with the screening of "Madama Butterfly," offered at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, June 20 at Potsdam's Roxy Theater. The opera will be performed in Italian, with English subtitles. The expected running time is two hours, 41 minutes.

Set in Nagasaki in 1904, the opera follows the wedding of Pinkerton, a U.S. naval officer, to Cio-Cio San, a charming Japanese girl he is infatuated with and who has converted her religion for him. After three years with no contact, he finally returns-with a new wife, and comes for the son Butterfly bore. The New York Times said that this production of Puccini's tragic opera "shamelessly tugs at the heartstrings."

The Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live performance transmissions to movie theaters around the world will return to Potsdam this summer through the third season of The Met: Live in HD Summer Encores. The 2011 Summer Encore season will celebrate the masters of Italian opera, with productions of works by Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti and Rossini.

In the North Country, SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music and J.S. Cinemas sponsor the 2010-11 season of The Met: Live in HD.

Special summer ticket pricing is discounted: $13 for adults, $11 for senior citizens, $9 for students and $7 for youths aged 18 and under.

Tickets are available by calling the Community Performance Series Box Office at (315) 267-2277, or visiting the Roxy Theater or Northern Music & Video in downtown Potsdam or the CPS Box Office in the lobby of Sara M. Snell Music Theater. You can also reserve tickets online by visiting www.cpspotsdam.org.

For more information on the 2010-11 The Met: Live in HD season, visit the Metropolitan Opera website at http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/broadcast/hd_events_next.aspx.

To learn more about The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, visit www.potsdam.edu/crane.

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Founded in 1886, SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music has a long legacy of excellence in music education and performance. Life at Crane includes an incredible array of more than 300 recitals, lectures and concerts presented by faculty, students and guests each year. The Crane School of Music is the State University of New York's only All-Steinway institution, and is celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2011.

-www.potsdam.edu/crane-