LaChiusa, Tesori, Guettel and Kushner to Pen Works for Metropolitan Opera

Composers Michael John LaChiusa, Jeanine Tesori and Adam Guettel, as well as playwright Tony Kushner, will illustrate the increasingly thin line between musical theatre and opera with a number of high-profile new productions at the Metropolitan Opera House. In addition, directors such as Mary Zimmerman will also helm productions of operas in upcoming years.

Peter Gelb, the incoming general manager of the Met, will inaugurate a collaborative program with Lincoln Center Theatre, according to Anthony Tommasini's article in The New York Times: "In a recent interview, Mr. Gelb said that contemporary opera could use a jolt from composers who have worked in musical theater, jazz and popular music. He also said that the opera world had much to learn from the Broadway model of working on a show for months in advance, with members of the creative team bickering and bartering, revising, throwing out songs, writing new ones, jiggling the book, trying to get things right."

The program will involve top musical theatre composers and lyricists writing commissioned operas to be produced at the Met, with the first complete production likely to debut during the 2011-2012 season. Those who have signed on to the program include Guettel (The Light in the Piazza, Floyd Collins), Tesori (Caroline, or Change, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Violet), Kushner (Brundibar, Caroline, or Change, Angels in America) and LaChiusa (See What I Wanna See, The Wild Party), whose Bernarda Alba is in previews at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theatre.

The productions will first be developed in workshops (an uncommon practice in the opera world) before either being presented at the Met or at the smaller Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center. In addition to the works by musical theatre composers, the Met-Lincoln Center collaboration will feature operas by contemporary classical composer Michael Torke, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, pop singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright (who is known as a fervent opera fan) and composer Scott Wheeler.

In addition, the Met has planned productions of operas directed by notable theatre artists--among them a staging of Rossini's Armida helmed by Mary Zimmerman (Metamorphoses) and starring Renee Fleming; it would debut in the 2009-2010 season. A new production of Tosca, which would possibly be directed by George C. Wolfe, is also likely to premiere in fall of 2009, while Richard Eyre and Matthew Bourne will respectively direct and choreograph a staging of Bizet's Carmen, with Angela Gheorghiu, for that season. The 2010-2011 season will feature Robert Lepage's reimagining of Wagner's Ring Cycle.