After opening its season with the first work by a Black composer, the Metropolitan Opera is launching its spring program with Giuseppe Verdi's "Don Carlos" in French for the first time instead of Italian, unveiling a new production of an epic of love, infidelity and betrayal set during the Spanish Inquisition. The New York cultural institution in recent years has taken steps to draw in new opera-goers with more modern works. "Today, the Met is much more adventurous artistically than it was 15 or 16 years ago,' says the Met General Manager, Peter Gelb. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES