The Met Opera HD Live: MADAMA BUTTERFLY

The Met made history in December 2006 when it presented its first Live in HD transmission to cinemas worldwide: the abridged English-language version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Julie Taymor’s whimsical production features a winning ensemble—including tenor Matthew Polenzani, baritone Nathan Gunn, and bass René Pape—and returns to select movie theaters for a special encore presentation during the […]

Rossini’s effervescent comedy retakes the stage in Bartlett Sher’s madcap production. Two star mezzo-sopranos—Isabel Leonard and Aigul Akhmetshina—headline a winning ensemble as the feisty heroine, Rosina, alongside high-flying tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Jack Swanson, in his Met debut, as her secret beloved, Count Almaviva. Baritones Davide Luciano and Andrey Zhilikhovsky star as Figaro, the infamous barber of Seville, with baritone Nicola Alaimo and bass-baritone Peter Kálmán as Dr. Bartolo and bass Alexander Vinogradov as Don Basilio rounding out the principal cast. Giacomo Sagripanti conducts.

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts his first Met performances of Strauss’s white-hot one-act tragedy, which receives its first new production at the company in 20 years. Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story—already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play—a psychologically perceptive Victorian-era setting rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness and light. Headlining the new staging is soprano Elza van den Heever, the abused and unhinged antiheroine, who demands the head of Jochanaan, sung by celebrated baritone Peter Mattei. Tenor Gerhard Siegel is Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias, and tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth. Derrick Inouye conducts two performances in May.

Conductor Joana Mallwitz makes her Met debut, leading two extraordinary casts in Mozart’s comic masterpiece. Bass-baritones Michael Sumuel and Luca Pisaroni star as the clever valet Figaro, opposite sopranos Olga Kulchynska and Rosa Feola as his betrothed, the wily maid Susanna. Baritone Joshua Hopkins and bass-baritone Adam Plachetka alternate as the skirt-chasing Count, sopranos Federica Lombardi and Jacquelyn Stucker (in her Met debut) trade-off as his anguished wife, and mezzo-sopranos Marianne Crebassa and Emily D’Angelo share the role of the adolescent page Cherubino.