photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

New Hampshire's Patricia Racette (center) as Leonora in the Met's "Il Trovatore.'

This week's Metropolitan Opera broadcast is Verdi's Il Trovatore.  Set in war-ravaged Spain, it tells of Leonora and her love for the troubadour, whose actual identity is known only to the gypsy woman who raised him. 

LATE NOTE:  New Hampshire's Patricia Racette was to have sung Leonora, but the Met informs us that she is ill.  Leonora will be sung instead by Angela Meade.