Showing at:

Banff, Lux

Campbell, River - Showcase '5'

Courtenay, Rialto

Penticton, Pen-Mar

Two unparalleled artists join forces to create a groundbreaking new Ring for the Met: Maestro James Levine and director Robert Lepage. The cycle launches with Das Rheingold, the prologue to Wagner’s epic drama. “The Ring is not just a story or a series of operas, it’s a cosmos,” says Lepage, who brings cutting-edge technology and his own visionary imagination to the world’s greatest theatrical journey. Bryn Terfel sings the leading role of Wotan for the first time with the company, heading an extraordinary cast.

René Pape takes on one of the greatest bass roles in a production by renowned theater and opera director Peter Stein, in his Met debut. Valery Gergiev conducts Mussorgsky’s epic spectacle that captures the suffering and ambition of a nation. “Boris Godunov is a masterpiece,” Stein says. “The challenge is to transmit the enormous emotional depth of the whole thing. Boris is the czar, but he is expressing a problem we all have: the consequences of human actions.” Aleksandrs Antonenko, Vladimir Ognovenko, and Ekaterina Semenchuk lead the huge cast.

Anna Netrebko revives her sensational turn in this sophisticated bel canto comedy, opposite Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecien, and John Del Carlo in the title role. Music Director James Levine conducts. When Otto Schenk’s production premiered in 2006, the New York Times called it “brilliant” and “wonderful.”

Puccini's La Fanciulla del West
January 8, 2011
ENCORE on February 19, 2011 (Courtenay Only)

Puccini’s wild-west opera had its world premiere in 1910 at the Met. Now, on the occasion of its centennial, all-American diva Deborah Voigt sings the title role of the “girl of the golden west,” starring opposite Marcello Giordani. Nicola Luisotti conducts.

Director Nicholas Hytner makes his Met debut with this new production of Verdi’s profound, beautiful, and most ambitious opera. Roberto Alagna leads the cast, and Ferruccio Furlanetto, Marina Poplavskaya, Anna Smirnova, and Simon Keenlyside also star. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, back after his triumphant debut leading Carmen, conducts. “I think Don Carlo is the quintessential Verdi opera,” Hytner says. “Right through this opera there is, on the one hand, an implacable expression of impending doom and, on the other hand, a succession of the most gloriously open-throated arias, the most fantastically determined music.”

“All of my operas have dealt on deep psychological levels with our American mythology,” says composer John Adams, who conducts the Met premiere of his most famous opera. “The meeting of Nixon and Mao is a mythological moment in world history, particularly American history.” Acclaimed director and longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars makes his Met debut with this groundbreaking 1987 work, an exploration of the human truths beyond the headlines surrounding President Nixon’s 1972 encounter with Communist China. Baritone James Maddalena stars in the title role.

Susan Graham and Plácido Domingo reprise their starring roles in Gluck’s nuanced and elegant interpretation of this primal Greek myth. Tenor Paul Groves also returns to Stephen Wadsworth’s insightful production, first seen in 2007. Patrick Summers conducts.

Natalie Dessay triumphed as the fragile heroine of Donizetti’s masterpiece on Opening Night of the 2007–08 season in Mary Zimmerman’s hit production. Now she returns to the role of the innocent young woman driven to madness, opposite Joseph Calleja, who sings her lover Edgardo.

Rossini’s vocally dazzling comedy stars bel canto sensation Juan Diego Flórez in the title role of this Met premiere production. He vies with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, in the trouser role of Isolier, for the love of the lonely Countess Adèle, sung by soprano Diana Damrau. Bartlett Sher, director of the Met’s hit productions of The Barber of Seville and The Tales of Hoffmann, describes the world of the opera as, “a place where love is dangerous. People get hurt. That can be very funny and very painful. Rossini captures both—with the most beautiful love music Rossini ever wrote.”

On Opening Night of the 2008–09 season, Renée Fleming dazzled audiences when she sang the final scene of Strauss’s wise and worldly meditation on art and life. Now she performs the entire work, in which the composer explores the essence of opera itself. Matthew Polenzani and Sarah Connolly also star, and Andrew Davis conducts.

David McVicar’s stirring production of Verdi’s intense drama premiered in the 2008–09 season. James Levine leads this revival, starring four extraordinary singers—Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, and Dmitri Hvorostovsk—in what might be the composer’s most melodically rich score.