Enchanting at the Met this weekend!

Joyce DiDonato

The Enchanted Island received its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera (heard Saturdays at noon on KPAC & KTXI) on New Year’s Eve and runs through the end of this month. It is a pastiche: creative use of leftovers, a "Franken-opera" formed from other operas by Vivaldi & Handel. It stars Joyce DiDonato, David Daniels and Plácido Domingo.

The live HD screening of The Enchanted Island is this Saturday January 21st (locally seen at Cielo Vista 18, Fiesta 16 Theatres, & Cinemark McCreeless Mall) at 11:55am. Joyce DiDonato, Sycorax, is joined by Luca Pisaroni who plays her son, Caliban, to answer a few questions from a class in Utah:

Here is the trailer for The Enchanted Island:
And from the second act of The Enchanted Island with Joyce:

Classical HD?

Perhaps some good news for HD Classical fans:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/14/all-classical-music-concert-hd-channel-in-the-works/

Poised to take advantage of the dearth of classical music television stations in the U.S., Unitel Classica is planning a worldwide classical channel formatted for HDTV. The German production company already supplies HD concerts via satellite in Europe on SES Astra, and the Classica standard definition opera and classical channel in several countries. The new channel will launch in Germany first in the fourth quarter, before potentially making the jump over here. With that much experience behind them, and the enthusiastic response to opera and classical broadcasts already available, Unitel should be ready to give the classical fans what they've been waiting for sometime in 2009.