WOZZECK

​​​​​​​Ivo van Hove, the Tony Award–winning director of Broadway's A View from the Bridge, makes a major Met debut with Mozart's Don Giovanni (May 5–June 2), re-setting the familiar tale of deceit and damnation in an abstract architectural landscape and shining a light into the work's dark corners....

Tenor Yusif Eyvazov, who was scheduled to sing Rodolfo in the upcoming four performances of Puccini's La Bohème, is ill and has withdrawn. He is being replaced by Matthew Polenzani, who will sing the performances on May 16 and 24; Stephen Costello, who will sing on May 20; and Russell Thomas, who will sing on May 27....

BroadwayWorld is saddened to report that opera singer Maria Ewing has died at age 71. Ewing sang soprano and mezzo-soprano, and was also the mother of actress Rebecca Hall. ...

Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, who usually leads the LA Philharmonic, took a busman's holiday to NY for a brace of performances with his orchestra's East Coast counterpart, the New York Philharmonic. His reputation as a master on the podium is not overrated: I can't think of a more understated, yet fully controlled, performance than the one I heard Friday night at Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall, with Schubert and, especially, Mahler on the bill....

A funny thing happened the other night at the Met when the curtain came down on William Kentridge's stunning new production of Alban Berg's cruel and devastating WOZZECK. The audience didn't rush from their seats to escape into the night. They stayed and cheered for an opera with a reputation for being, well, challenging for opera-goers weaned on Figaros and Flutes, Aidas and even Ring Cycles....

The Metropolitan Opera presents the company premiere of Philip Glass's modern masterpiece Akhnaten on November 8, 2019, with performances continuing through December 7....

The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live high-definition cinema simulcasts, will begin its 14th season on October 12, with the Met's production of Puccini's Turandot, starring Christine Goerke in the title role, led by the Met's Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin....

The Metropolitan Opera presents a double bill of two rarely performed one-act operas, Tchaikovsky's romantic fairy tale Iolanta and Bartók's harrowing Bluebeard's Castle, with six performances January 24 to February 14, 2019. Iolanta stars Sonya Yoncheva in the title role of a blind princess and Matthew Polenzani as Vaudémont, the knight who loves her. Bluebeard's Castle stars Angela Denoke as Judith, an innocent young bride who discovers the terrifying truth about her new husband, the menacing ...