It will broadcast its third season live from the Metropolitan Opera
beginning with Opening Night on Monday, September 22 and will include
127 live performances during the Met’s 2008-2009 season.

The season will start with the Met’s Opening Night Gala on Monday,
September 22, on Metropolitan Opera Radio SIRIUS channel 78. Coverage
of opening night will begin with an overview of the evening’s red
carpet events, backstage interviews and a season preview starting at 6
pm ET. Met Opera Radio’s Opening Night Gala will star Renee Fleming
performing in some of her most acclaimed roles, beginning with Act II
of Verdi’s La Traviata, conducted by Met Music Director James Levine,
and continuing with Act III of Massenet’s Manon, conducted by Marco
Armiliato, and the final scene of Richard Strauss’s one act opera,
Capriccio, conducted by Patrick Summers.

Highlights
of the Met Opera Radio 2008-09 schedule include every season premiere
and all six of the Met’s new productions: the Met premiere of John
Adams’s opera about the creation of the atomic bomb, Doctor Atomic;
Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust; Massenet’s Thais; Puccini’s La
Rondine; Verdi’s Il Trovatore; and Bellini’s La Sonnambula. Host
Margaret Juntwait along with Will Berger will return to the Met Opera
Radio channel.

A schedule of this season’s Metropolitan Opera Radio broadcasts on SIRIUS is available at www.sirius.com/metropolitanoperaradio.

For more information about the Metropolitan Opera, please visit www.metopera.org