Lucia Di Lammermoor Starring Natalie Dessay Airs on THIRTEEN's Great Performances at the Met Sunday, June 26 at 12 p.m. ET on PBS

Lucia Di Lammermoor Starring Natalie Dessay Airs on THIRTEEN's Great Performances at the Met Sunday, June 26 at 12 p.m. ET on PBS

"Natalie Dessay and Joseph Calleja triumph as the ill-fated operatic lovers" (Associated Press) in Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman's production

NEW YORK, May 26, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Lucia di Lammermoor, with French soprano Natalie Dessay in one of her greatest roles as Donizetti's fragile heroine, will air on Great Performances at the Met Sunday, June 26 at 12 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings). In New York, THIRTEEN will air the production on Thursday, June 23 at 8 p.m. The telecast was originally seen live in movie theaters on March 19, 2011, as part of the groundbreaking series, The Met: Live in HD, which transmits live performances to more than 1,500 movie theaters and performing arts centers in 46 countries around the world.

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Great Performances at the Met is a presentation of THIRTEEN for WNET, one of America's most prolific and respected public media providers.

Dessay's acclaimed portrayal was first seen on the Met stage in the 2007 premiere of Mary Zimmerman's production, which was the Met's opening night gala of that season. For this broadcast, she stars opposite the remarkable young tenor Joseph Calleja as Edgardo. They are joined by Ludovic Tezier as Enrico and Kwangchul Youn as Raimondo. Patrick Summers, the Music Director of Houston Grand Opera, conducts.

Dessay's 2007 Met role debut, simulcast live on video screens in Times Square and Lincoln Center Plaza, earned the soprano excellent reviews that praised her dramatic commitment as well as her vocal performance in the demanding role. Now viewers nationally will be able to see the performance that the Associated Press called "a lesson in the art of a superb singing actress."Dessay's recent Great Performances at the Met appearances include Amina in La Sonnambula and Marie in La Fille du Regiment.

"Joseph Calleja was sensationally ardent as Lucia's lover, Edgardo" (The New York Times), the sixth role in his growing Met repertory. His performances in the house have included the title character in Bartlett Sher's new production of Les Contes d'Hoffmann (a Great Performances at the Met broadcast) and the lead tenor roles in this season's revivals of Rigoletto and La Boheme.

French baritone Ludovic Tezier sings Enrico, the villainous brother who forces Lucia into an arranged marriage for his own gain. Korean bass Kwangchul Youn is the chaplain Raimondo. Maestro Summers, who led the Iphigenie en Tauride broadcast in May, has conducted a varied repertory at the Met that includes recent revivals of Madama Butterfly,Salome, I Puritani, and Rodelinda.

Renee Fleming, who stars in the Great Performances at the Met telecast of Capriccio on August 14, is the host for Lucia di Lammermoor. Barbara Willis Sweete directs the broadcast and Jay David Saks is music producer.

Major funding for Great Performances at the Met: Lucia di Lammermoor was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Great Performances is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, and Joseph A. Wilson. Corporate support for Great Performances at the Met is provided by Toll Brothers, America's luxury home builder®.

Visit Great Performances online at www.pbs.org/gperf for additional information on this and other Great Performances programs. For the Met, Mia Bongiovanni and Elena Park are Supervising Producers, and Louisa Briccetti and Victoria Warivonchik are Producers. Peter Gelb is Executive Producer. For Great Performances, Bill O'Donnell is Series Producer; David Horn is Executive Producer.

About WNET New York Public Media
WNET New York Public Media is a pioneering provider of television and web content. The parent of THIRTEEN, WLIW21 and Creative News Group, WNET brings such acclaimed broadcast series and websites as Tavis Smiley, Need To Know, Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, Charlie Rose, Secrets of the Dead, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Visions, Consuelo Mack WealthTrack, Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps and Cyberchase to national and international audiences. Through its wide range of channels and platforms, WNET serves the entire New York City metro area with unique local productions, broadcasts and innovative educational and cultural projects. In all that it does, WNET pursues a single, overarching goal -- to create media experiences of lasting significance for New York, America and the world. For more information, visit www.wnet.org.

About the Met
Under the leadership of General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director James Levine, the Met has a series of bold initiatives underway that are designed to broaden its audience and revitalize the company's repertory. The Met has made a commitment to presenting modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, with highly theatrical productions featuring the greatest opera stars in the world. The Met's 2010-11 season features seven new productions, including the first two installments of a new Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage and conducted by Maestro Levine, and two company premieres (John Adams's Nixon in China directed by Peter Sellars, and Le Comte Ory directed by Bartlett Sher). The season also features new productions of three repertory classics by outstanding directors--Boris Godunov by Stephen Wadsworth, Don Carlo by Nicholas Hytner, and La Traviata by Willy Decker.

Building on its 80-year-old international radio broadcast history--heard over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network--the Met uses advanced media distribution platforms and state-of-the-art technology to reach audiences around the world. The Met: Live in HD, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning seriesof live performance transmissions to movie theaters around the world, returns for its fifth season in 2010-11. The series of 12 transmissions began October 9 with Das Rheingold and ends with Die Walkure on May 14. The Met recently introduced Met Player, a new subscription service that makes much of its extensive video and audio catalog of full-length performances available to the public for the first time online, and in exceptional, state-of-the-art quality. Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS XM Radio broadcasts live performances from the Met stage three times a week during the opera season, as well; the Met on Rhapsody on-demand service offers audio recordings; and the Met presents free live audio streaming of performances on its website once every week during the opera season.

The Met has launched several audience development initiatives, including Open House dress rehearsals, a popular rush ticket program, Gallery Met, and an annual Holiday Series presentation for families. For more information, please visit: www.metopera.org.

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CONTACT: Harry Forbes, +1-212-560-8027; ForbesH@wnet.org, Sam Neuman, +1-212-870-7457; sneuman@metopera.org

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