The Met puts Verdi’s ‘Don Carlos’ on the big screen

Above: The Met Live in HD presents Verdi's "Don Carlos" on Saturday and Wednesday. (Photo/The Metropolitan Opera)

Opera lovers rejoice. The Met Live in HD will screen its production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Don Carlos” three times over the next few days.

The 5-hour-and-15-minute event will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, at Regal’s Northtown Mall and Riverstone Stadium in Coeur d’Alene. Two second showings at Northtown only will begin on Wednesday at noon and at 6:30 p.m.

This is The Met’s first presentation of the full five-act French version of Verdi’s opera. Under the music direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the production features the voices of tenor Matthew Polenzani, soprano Sonya Yoncheva and mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton.

First performed in 1867 in Paris, the opera has been performed over the centuries in various forms in both French and Italian. Verdi based the work on Friedrich Schiller’s stage play “Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien.”

Writing in the New York Times, critic Zachary Woolfe praised Nézet-Séguin’s conception – “long-breathed, patient, light-textured” – that he says “embodies the vast elegance of French grand opera.”

Of particular note is the performance of Polenzani, whose portrayal of the title character “is not the swaggering, trumpeting Franco Corelli-style tenor generally associated with the part – though he rises, stylishly, to fiery intensity – but rather a vocalist of refinement, inwardness and melancholy.”

One thing is clear: If you have the endurance to take on such a lengthy work, you’ll be seeing a bit of operatic history.