BY GEORGE LOOMIS [NY Sun, 17 March 2008]

Giuseppe Verdi's 200th birthday is five years away, but it looks as though the baritone Thomas Hampson is celebrating early. His operatic docket this season includes Verdi operas exclusively — "Macbeth" in San Francisco, "Don Carlo" in Vienna, "La Traviata" in Chicago and Zurich. And he makes his debut as Don Carlo in "Ernani" tonight when the hot-blooded Romantic sizzler returns to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time since 1985.