Live in HD Wins a Peabody

April 2, 2009

Ever since its launch with Mozart’s The Magic Flute in December 2006, The Met: Live in HD has been a global hit with critics and audiences. Now the company’s series of live high-definition performance transmissions to movie theaters around the world has also won a prestigious Peabody Award.

Created in 1941 to recognize the most outstanding achievements in broadcasting, the Peabody Awards honored the Met this year for the HD series’ “vividly designed, smartly annotated productions of Hansel and Gretel, Doctor Atomic, Peter Grimes and other operas.” Yesterday’s announcement went on to say that “the Met used state-of-the-art digital technology to reinvent presentation of a classic art form.”

With one transmission remaining this season, the series has so far sold more than 1.5 million tickets. Next season, the Met will present nine live HD productions, starting with a new production of Tosca, starring Karita Mattila and conducted by James Levine, on October 10. The season will conclude on May 1, 2010 with a new staging of Rossini’s Armida, starring Renée Fleming.

The Met was in good company among this year’s crop of Peabody winners. Other organizations to take home awards include NBC for its coverage of the Beijing Olympics; CNN for its coverage of the presidential primaries and debates; HBO for the original movie John Adams; and YouTube. The Peabody Awards’ sole criterion is “excellence.”

Last fall, the Met also won an Emmy Award for the Live in HD series.

The Met: Live in HD series, produced in association with PBS and WNET.org, is seen on public television as part of Great Performances at the Met.

The series is made possible by a generous grant from the Neubauer Family Foundation.