News from the Met

New York, NY (October 26, 2010) –
Bizet’s Carmen will return to the Metropolitan Opera on November 4 in Richard Eyre’s critically acclaimed production, featuring star mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča as the alluring Gypsy seductress; rising tenor Brandon Jovanovich as her lover and victim, Don José; Nicole Cabell as the innocent Micaëla; and John Relyea, singing the toreador Escamillo for the first time at the Met. English National Opera Music Director Edward Gardner, who is making his Met debut, will conduct all Carmen performances this season.
Richard Eyre’s production of Carmen earned widespread praise when it premiered at the Met last season. The New York Times admired Eyre’s ability to “uncover the rawness and daring at the opera’s core.” Critics were similarly enthusiastic about Elīna Garanča’s performance in the title role, with New York magazine calling her “the most convincing Carmen in a long time…her voice glides with liquid smoothness from the upper range down to the chesty low tones” and the Times finding her portrayal “captivating…nuanced, sexy, and cagey.”On January 5, 26-year-old Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, who made a high-profile debut in Carmen at La Scala last year, will make her Met debut in the title role. The Times hailed her La Scala debut as “a triumph…whenever Ms. Rachvelishvili tossed her long dark locks, smitten Spanish soldiers fell onstage like dominoes.” She will sing opposite Roberto Alagna, whose Don José in the production’s premiere last season earned considerable critical praise. Rachvelishvili and Alagna will be joined by two singers making their Met role debuts: Genia Kühmeier as Micaëla and Tony Award winner Paulo Szot as Escamillo. Carmen features sets and costumes by Rob Howell, lighting design by Peter Mumford, and choreography by Christopher Wheeldon. Viktoria Vizin will sing the role of Carmen on December 9 and Hei-Kyung Hong will sing Micaëla on December 4 and 9.

New York, NY (November 1, 2010)
Renowned baroque specialist William Christie will make his Metropolitan Opera debut conducting a revival of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, which will begin performances November 9. The “sensitively conceived and beautiful to watch” (The New York Times) production will star Miah Persson and Isabel Leonard as sisters and unwitting fiancé-swappers Fiordiligi and Dorabella; Danielle de Niese as their shrewd maid Despina; Pavol Breslik and Nathan Gunn as their dubious lovers, Ferrando and Guglielmo; and Wolfgang Holzmair, in his Met debut, as the cynical middle-aged bachelor Don Alfonso, who enlists the younger men in a scheme to prove that “all women are like that.”
The “prodigiously gifted” Christie “has rewritten musical history” (The Guardian) with his explorations of the baroque repertory. In France, his country of residence, he has received the highest national honors accorded to artists; he was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1993, is an officer in The Order of Arts and Letters, and is a member of the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Swedish soprano Miah Persson debuted at the Met last season, giving well-received performances in the very different roles of Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier and Gretel in Hansel and Gretel. Isabel Leonard has appeared in two recent Mozart revivals at the Met, earning positive notices for her “fresh, effervescent, and lovely” (Times) singing as Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro. Danielle de Niese, who displayed an “ebullient playfulness” (Times) as Figaro’s Susanna last season, will add another Mozart maid to her repertoire with her Met role debut as Despina. When Pavol Breslik made his Met debut as Don Ottavio in Giovanni in 2009, the Associated Press raved that his “light, honeyed voice seems ideally suited to Mozart’s refined melodic line.” Star baritone Nathan Gunn, who sang Papageno in Mozart’s Magic Flute to great acclaim in 2006 and 2010 and will reprise the role later this year, will sing Guglielmo. The versatile Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair has sung Mozart, Debussy, Britten, Wagner, and Strauss in Europe’s great opera houses and is also an accomplished lieder recitalist who, the Washington Post proclaimed, “has a genius for connecting with his audience.”Così fan tutte, directed by Lesley Koenig, features sets and costumes by two-time Tony winner Michael Yeargan and lighting design by Duane Schuler.

New York, NY (November 3, 2010)
The Metropolitan Opera celebrates its 80^th season of Saturday Afternoon Radio Broadcasts—the longest-running classical music series in American broadcast history—with a 22-week season featuring many of the world’s greatest operatic artists, beginning December 18. Broadcast live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network, the season begins with Verdi’s grand epic Don Carlo and continues with 20 additional live matinee performances direct from the Met stage, plus a special archival broadcast of Smetana’s rollicking comic opera The Bartered Bride from 1978.
This season will mark the Saturday Matinee Broadcast premiere of two operas. John Adams will conduct the Met premiere of his opera Nixon in China on February 12, and Rossini’s rarely performed comedy Le Comte Ory will have its broadcast premiere on April 9 in a new Met production by Bartlett Sher that stars Juan Diego Flórez, Diana Damrau, and Joyce DiDonato.
Music Director James Levine, celebrating his 40^th anniversary with the Met, will conduct six broadcast performances including the first two installments of director Robert Lepage’s much-heralded new production of Wagner’s four-part cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. On April 2, Levine leads Das Rheingold, followed by Die Walküre on May 14. The cast of international stars assembled for the Ring includes Bryn Terfel as Wotan; Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde; Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund; Stephanie Blythe as Fricka; and Eva-Maria Westbroek, in her Met debut, as Sieglinde. On February 5, Levine conducts Verdi’s powerful Simon Boccanegra, with Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the title role for the first time at the Met, followed on February 19 by Anna Netrebko, Matthew Polenzani, and Mariusz Kwiecien in Donizetti’s playful Don Pasquale. German mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier returns to the Met as Marie in Berg’s Wozzeck (April 16) with Levine conducting, and the starry quartet of Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Àlvarez, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky sing Verdi’s popular Il Trovatore on April 30, under the Music Director’s baton.
The season-opening Don Carlo, one of the Met’s seven new productions this season, marks the debut of Tony Award-winning director Nicholas Hytner. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a cast that includes Yonghoon Lee in the title role, Marina Poplavskaya as Elisabeth de Valois, Simon Keenlyside as Rodrigo, and Ferruccio Furlanetto as Philip II. Radio listeners will also hear this season’s new productions of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, conducted by Valery Gergiev, directed by Stephen Wadsworth, and starring René Pape in the title role (March 12); and La Traviata, directed by Willy Decker and starring Marina Poplavskaya in her first Met Violettas, with Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo (January 15).
Other broadcast season highlights include Pelléas et Mélisande on January 1, conducted by Berlin Philharmonic principal conductor Simon Rattle in his Met debut; Deborah Voigt making her Met role debut as La Fanciulla del West on January 8 (this season is the 100^th anniversary of the world premiere of Fanciulla which took place at the Met on December 10, 1910) ; Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze debuting as Gilda opposite Joseph Calleja as the Duke in Rigoletto (January 22); Sondra Radvanovsky’s first Met performances in the title  role of Tosca (January 29); Plácido Domingo and Susan Graham reprising their triumphant star turns in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (February 26); Renée Fleming as Rossini’s Armida (March 5) and, in her Met role debut, as the Countess in Richard Strauss’s Capriccio (April 23); Natalie Dessay as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (March 19); Karita Mattila, Vladimir Galouzine, and Peter Mattei in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades (March 26); and Violeta Urmana in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos (May 7).
The Met will continue the celebration of James Levine’s 40^th anniversary season with a series of intermission features in which the Maestro and a host of great artists—including Renée Fleming, James Morris, Renata Scotto, Christa Ludwig, Sherrill Milnes, Frederica von Stade, and former concertmaster Raymond Gniewek—will share their reminiscences of working together.

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