James Levine to Conduct UN BALLO IN MASCHERA at the Met

Met Music Director James Levine will lead a starry revival of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, opening April 23 and continuing for four additional performances through May 9. This season's performances, a revival of David Alden's 2012 production, will be the first time Levine has conducted the opera at the Met in nearly 20 years. Piotr Beczala will make his Met role debut as the self-destructive Swedish king, Gustavo III, with Dmitri Hvorostovsky as his confidant, Anckarström; Sondra Radvanovsky as Amelia, Anckarström's wife and the king's illicit lover; Dolora Zajick as the mysterious fortune-teller who predicts the king's downfall, Madame Ulrica Arvidsson; and Heidi Stober as the page Oscar. Hvorostovsky, Radvanovsky, and Zajick will be reprising their acclaimed performances from the 2012 premiere of Alden's staging, while Beczala and Stober will be making company role debuts. Alexey Markov, the Russian baritone who sang Germont in Verdi's La Traviata and Robert in Tchaikovsky's Iolanta earlier this season, will sing Anckarström in the May 6 and 9 performances.

James Levine has conducted 25 Met performances of Un Ballo in Maschera between 1990 and 1997. This season, Levine also led the season-opening new production of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, and Verdi's Ernani. Also this spring, he leads a rare revival of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress as well as the final MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall concert of the season, on May 17. Over the course of his 44-year career at the Met, he has led more than 2,450 performances.

Earlier this season, Piotr Beczala starred as Count Vaudémont in the Met's first-ever staging of Iolanta. He has previously sung Gustavo at Zurich Opera and Santa Fe Opera, and will sing the role with the Bavarian State Opera next season. His Met repertory includes Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème, Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, the title role in Gounod's Faust, Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the Chevalier des Grieux in Massenet's Manon, and the Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto, a role he reprises at the Met next season.

Sondra Radvanovsky has sung Amelia at La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, and Lyric Opera of Chicago; she made her Met role debut in the part in the premiere of Alden's staging. She has sung numerous Verdi heroines at the Met, including Leonora in Il Trovatore, Elvira in Ernani, Lina in Stiffelio, Elisabeth de Valois in Don Carlo, Elena in I Vespri Siciliani, and the title roles in Aida and Luisa Miller. In the Met's 2015-16 season, she will become the first singer in the company's history to star in all three of Donizetti's "Tudor queen" operas, performing the leading roles in Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux over the course of the season.

Heidi Stober has sung Oscar with San Francisco Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin. She made her Met debut in 2011 as Gretel in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, a role she repeated with the company earlier this season. Her other Met appearances have included Pamina in the abridged, English-language version of Mozart's The Magic Flute and, also this spring, the Celestial Voice in Don Carlo.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang Anckarström at the Met in 2007 and 2012 as well as earlier this season at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. This spring, he sings another Verdi baritone role at the Met, Rodrigo in Don Carlo. His Met repertory also includes the title roles in Rigoletto and Simon Boccanegra, Germont in La Traviata, Don Carlo in Ernani, and Count di Luna in Il Trovatore. Next season, he will reprise his di Luna in a cast that also stars Zajick as Azucena and, in her North American role debut, Anna Netrebko as Leonora.

Dolora Zajick has sung Ulrica with San Francisco Opera, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, and at the Met in 1995 and 2012. She has sung 230 Met performances of 9 roles, including 76 as Amneris in Aida and 48 as Azucena in Il Trovatore. Her other recent Met roles have included Ježibaba in Dvo?ák's Rusalka, the Countess in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, and Adalgisa in Bellini's Norma. She will reprise Azucena, the role of her 1988 debut, in a revival of Il Trovatore at the Met this fall.

The April 23 opening performance of Un Ballo in Maschera will be broadcast live on Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS XM Channel 74, as will the performance on May 2. The April 23 performance will also be streamed live on the Met's Web site, www.metopera.org.

The May 2 performance will be broadcast live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network.

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