Met Opera's HD Live in Schools Series Enters Fifth Season With Widest Reach Ever

The Met: HD Live in Schools, a national program that provides students, teachers, and administrators with educational resources tied to select live transmissions of Metropolitan Opera performances, and arranges for students to attend the live Met HD transmissions locally, will reach more students and teachers in its fifth season than ever before. The program, which provides educational resources geared to select performances from The Met: Live in HD-the Met's award-winning series of live opera transmissions to movie theaters around the world-will reach approximately 15,000 students in 29 school districts in 21 states during the 2012-13 season.

Five new districts have joined the program this season: North Clackamas Schools in Milwaukie, Oregon; Waterloo Community Schools in Waterloo, Iowa; New Orleans Area Public Schools in New Orleans, Louisiana; Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, California; and Buffalo Public Schools in Buffalo, New York.

Since the program launched nationally in 2008, it has reached more than 55,000 students across the country. This season's featured operas are Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, Handel's Giulio Cesare, and three operas by Verdi: Otello, Aida, and Rigoletto. Each opera was chosen based on a mixture of factors, including the opera's applicability to general curriculum, scheduling with school calendars, and entertainment value. In New York City, students will study all five featured operas, while school districts across the country will choose four titles from the list to focus on.