The Met’s 2019–20 Live in HD season kicks off on October 12
with Franco Zeffirelli’s celebrated production of Turandot
led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin
The season will feature ten transmissions,
live from the Metropolitan Opera stage,
including five new productions, featuring the world’s leading artists
The series will reach more than 70 countries on six continents
including nearly 800 theaters in the United States
The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live high-definition cinema simulcasts, will begin its 14th season on October 12, with the Met’s production of Puccini’s Turandot, starring Christine Goerke in the title role, led by the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
The 2019–20 Live in HD season features ten transmissions, including five new productions: the Met premiere of Philip Glass’s groundbreaking 20th-century opera Akhnaten, starring Anthony Roth Costanzo as the title pharaoh, conducted by Karen Kamensek; Peter Mattei in the title role of Berg’s Wozzeck, in a new staging by acclaimed visual artist and stage director William Kentridge, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin; a new production of the Gershwins’ classic American opera Porgy and Bess, last performed at the Met in 1990, starring Eric Owens and Angel Blue, directed by James Robinson and conducted by David Robertson; the Met premiere of Handel’s Agrippina, starring Joyce DiDonato in a contemporary staging by Sir David McVicar that promises to resonate with modern audiences; and a new take on Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer, starring Sir Bryn Terfel in the title role.
In addition to Turandot and the five new productions, Live in HD audiences will have the chance to see Massenet’s lush French masterpiece Manon; the return of Anthony Minghella’s inspired vision of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, with Plácido Domingo as Sharpless; Anna Netrebko in the title role of Puccini’s Tosca; and Diana Damrau and Jamie Barton as the dueling queens of Maria Stuarda, the second opera of Donizetti’s Tudor trilogy.
Select cinemas will also offer a special holiday encore of The Magic Flute, the company’s first-ever Live in HD transmission from 2006. The abridged, English-language version of Mozart’s classic fable features a winning ensemble, including Matthew Polenzani as Tamino, Nathan Gunn as Papageno, and René Pape as Sarastro. Julie Taymor’s cherished production will be shown on December 7 in the U.S. and Canada, with dates varying internationally.
The Met: Live in HD is the largest provider of alternative cinema content in the world, with more than 26 million tickets sold since the inception of the series in 2006. The series brings live Met performances to more than 2,200 movie theaters and performing arts centers in more than 70 countries.
2019–20 Live in HD Season at a Glance:
The Live in HD season will begin on Saturday, October 12, with Turandot. Future transmissions are as follows: Manon (October 26); Madama Butterfly (November 9); Akhnaten (November 23); Wozzeck (January 11); Porgy and Bess (February 1); Agrippina (February 29); Der Fliegende Holländer (March 14); Tosca (April 11); and Maria Stuarda (May 9). All ten operas will be Saturday matinee performances, transmitted live from the Met stage at 12:55PM Eastern Time. Please check local listings for rebroadcast dates and times.
For more information about Live in HD, click here.
The new season is even more disappointing that the current season, what with Philip Glass (ugh) and other horrors. If the production of ‘Madama Butterfly’ still includes that puppet, I’ll pass. Why any soprano worth her salt would stand for that nonsense. Nothing, and I repeat, nothing distracting, should be allowed to share the stage with a major aria. As for ‘Tosca’, they need to return to the Zeffirelli production, because nothing since that time have passed muster.
[edited comment]
Putting aside your gripes about the repertoire, your comments about the Bunraku in ‘Madama Butterfly’ are ridiculous. Unless you want to make the child ‘imaginary’, he’s right there in the scenes, next to Butterfly. That amazingly evocative puppet is much less disruptive (and completely controllable and reliably silent) compared to any live 3-year-old, no matter how well coached.
My view on controlling a three-year-old on stage. If that is an issue one should see what Central City Opera has done. Several times they have produced ‘Madama Butterfly’, with a young child, and done a fantastic job.
2019-20 Met HD programme. The weakest since the first HD cinema service. I fully agree that the use of puppets was absurd. Where are Calleja, Kaufmann, Diego Flórez, Garanča, Yoncheva, Jaho, Opolais and many great opera singers? Very sad! Also concerned about the lack of new Met Opera dvds and Blu-rays from the last two years.
Very sad as the HD broadcasts showed such great operas, singers and performances in the past but 2019-20 fails badly.
I am looking forward to ‘Akhnaten’ and ‘Wozzeck’ (I loved Kentridge staging of The Nose).
I wish the MET did MORE more modern and contemporary operas such as George Benjamin’s ‘Written on Skin’ or his newest opera: ‘Lessons in Love and Violence’ which I might go see in May in Lyons or next year at the Chicago Opera.
That would be exiting if the MET did it!
I fully agree with John Boots
I agree with D. Richards and would add the name
Kwiecień.
Sadly missing
I’m not disappointed at all, as many of my favorites, which I can seen over and over, will be broadcast. I’m also looking forward to ‘Akhnaten’. I liked ‘Satyagraha’ by Glass and wish it was available on DVD.
I would like a. copy of next years HD schedule
Elaine Bialor
[address removed]
Thank you but we are not a reactive site and there is a ‘click here’ link to all the details at the bottom of the article. S&H
I hope no one really thinks productions that were last staged more than a decade ago are still sitting around in mint condition in a warehouse with a tarp over them, awaiting the day they will be ‘brought back’. They’ve either been sold off or destroyed. Also, I like the Minghella ‘Butterfly’ more than any of Zeffirelli’s Met productions. He started out with something, but over the years he just turned into a kitschy over-decorator. Talk about distracting from the singers…sometimes it was hard even to find them.
If the Met thinks they will be building new audiences by presenting HD broadcasts of the insipid trash written by Glass, Wozzeck, and ‘modern’ interpretations of great standard classics they are delusional and myopic at best. This is, by far, the worst HD season they have presented, with mediocre casting. I have always respected and loved Domingo, but do we now have to suffer through shows put on as a vehicle for an ageing tenor to demonstrate that he can still sing as a baritone??
The initial HD productions were a great idea to bring grand opera to those who could not access or afford to go to the MET in NYC. The recent years of HD broadcasts have lost their glitter and the MET has lost it’s artistic compass.
very disappointed with program too.
I agree with Boots. Too many recent productions have stagings that mock the texts.
I enjoy the HD productions but wish they did not repeat some which have been shown just a few years ago.