The Metropolitan Opera has announced its 2024–25 season.
The Metropolitan Opera has announced its 2024–25 season, which will consist of four Met premieres and 14 repertory favorites.
The season opens on 23 September with the premiere of Grounded by Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori, starring Emily D’Angelo as a drone pilot and conducted by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
A co-commission by the Met and the Washington National Opera, the opera is based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play. Grounded explores the ethical quandaries and psychological toll of twenty-first century warfare. Michael Mayer’s high-tech staging will employ LED screens to provide a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above.
The pandemic-delayed premiere of a new production of Verdi’s Aida, directed by Michael Mayer, is scheduled for the annual New Year’s Eve Gala with Nézet-Séguin. Angel Blue will make her highly anticipated Met debut as the Ethiopian princess, with Judit Kutasi as Amneris and Piotr Beczała as Radames. Christina Nilsson, in her Met debut, will assume the title role in March, with Elīna Garanča and Brian Jagde also appearing later in the run. Mayer’s production replaces the beloved, monumental staging by Sonja Frisell that was mounted 262 times over 25 years at the Met.
Nézet-Séguin will conduct his first Met performances of Richard Strauss’s Salome in a new production by Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors. Elza van den Heever and Peter Mattei will star, with the action updated to the Victorian era.
The 2024/25 season will also bring three contemporary operas with star-studded casts to the Met for the first time. Angel Blue and Daniela Mack will star in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadama, in a staging by Deborah Colker (renowned for her work with Cirque du Soleil) in her Met debut. The opera dramatizes the life and work of poet-playwright Federico García Lorca, who was assassinated by Fascist forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War.
In Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick, Brandon Jovanovich will head the cast as Captain Ahab, joined by tenor Stephen Costello as Greenhorn, Peter Mattei as Starbuck and Ryan Speedo Green as Queequeg. Maestro Karen Kamensek takes the podium for a new staging by American theater director Leonard Foglia.
John Adams will conduct Antony and Cleopatra, the fifth of his operas to be presented by the Met. His adaptation of Shakespeare’s drama will feature Julia Bullock as Cleopatra and Gerald Finley as Antony. The staging by American opera director and librettist Elkhanah Pulitzer transports the story of troubled romance and political strife from ancient Rome to the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s.
Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten returns to the Met for the first time since 2013 in a dazzling production by German director Herbert Wernicke, with Nézet-Séguin on the podium. The 2002 staging was one of the triumphs of Joseph Volpe’s time as the Met’s general manager. Three outstanding sopranos lead the cast, Elza van den Heever as the Empress, Lise Lindstrom as the Dyer’s Wife and Nina Stemme as the Nurse, with Michael Volle as Barak, Russell Thomas as the Emperor and Ryan Speedo Green as the Spirit Messenger.
For many opera lovers, the return of Lise Davidsen in two plum roles, the tempestuous diva in Puccini’s Tosca and Leonora in Beethoven’s Fidelio, will be the chief draws of the season. In Tosca, she will appear with Freddie De Tommaso, in his Met debut as Cavaradossi, and Quinn Kelsey as Baron Scarpia. It will be conducted by Xian Zhang, and Susanna Mälkki will be in the pit for Beethoven’s only opera, with David Butt Philip as Florestan, Tomasz Konieczny as Don Pizarro and René Pape as Rocco.
Among the revivals, Benjamin Bernheim as the poet and Christian Van Horn in the roles of all four of Offenbach’s villains in Les contes d’Hoffmann will be another highlight, as will Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades with Sonya Yoncheva and Brian Jagde making their role debuts as Lisa and Hermann.
The Met is still adjusting to the realities of the post-pandemic era and trimming its sails accordingly. Financial headwinds caused it to withdraw $40 million this season from its endowment. The number of productions presented next season will be reduced to 18, down from a high of 21 in the 2007-2008 season (which was planned prior to the Great Recession). Audience favorites, such as Il barbiere di Siviglia, La bohème and Tosca, will be shifted to weekends which tend to draw larger audiences.
Other noticeable changes in the upcoming season will be the extension of the winter break from four to five weeks and the reduction in the number of Live in HD broadcasts to eight. These will begin Les contes d’Hoffmann (October 5, 2024) and continue with Grounded (October 19, 2024), Tosca (November 23, 2024), Aida (January 25, 2025), Fidelio (March 15, 2025), Le nozze di Figaro (April 26, 2025), Salome (May 17, 2025), and Il barbiere di Siviglia (May 31, 2025).
Three new productions are also being delayed, including Claus Guth’s staging of Handel’s Semele, Bellini’s La sonnambula by Rolando Villazón and Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny by Ivo van Hove.
Rick Perdian
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Rick Perdian
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