THE next production in the 2017 – 18 Season of live satellite broadcasts direct from the Metropolitan Opera in New York to the big screen at the Regent in Christchurch, will be Verdi’s classic masterpiece – Luisa Miller, which can be seen at the Centre tomorrow at 5.30pm.

Plácido Domingo adds yet another chapter to his legendary Met' collaboration with this rarely performed Verdi gem, which premiered in Naples in 1849.

This is a heart-wrenching tragedy based on Friedrich Schiller’s novel Intrigue and Love.

The young maiden, Luisa, loves Rodolfo, unaware that he is in fact the son of the local lord.

An unscrupulous rival for her affections tells her father of Rodolfo’s true identity, thus turning the old man against him.

Meanwhile, Rodolfo’s father, Count Walter, is determined that his son be betrothed to Federica and conspires with his unscrupulous henchman, Wurm, to force the lovers to end their romance.

In the end, jealousy, suspicion, betrayal and tragedy tear the lovers apart, but Luisa remains loyal to her father to the last.

While reminiscent of the youthful vitality that made Verdi an international sensation, the opera also looks forward to the discipline and sophistication of the composer’s middle period and much of the dramatic and psychological acumen that would define the mature Verdi is already fully apparent in this earlier work.

In the first Met' performances of the opera in more than ten years updates the setting to Rural England. Sonya Yoncheva sings the title role opposite Piotr Beczala as Rodolfo, with Domingo as Luisa’s stern-yet-loving father. Bertrand de Billy conducts the Met Orchestra.