Video: Mason Bates’s THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY In Rehearsal
Performances begin Sunday, September 21, at 6:30PM.
By: Joshua Wright Sep. 04, 2025
Rehearsals are underway for the Met premiere of Mason Bates and Gene Scheer’s adaptation of Michael Chabon’s acclaimed novel. Get a first look at the cast in rehearsal in this all-new video.
The Metropolitan Opera opens its 140th season with the company premiere of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the operatic adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. The Met-commissioned opera—composed by Grammy Award–winning composer Mason Bates, to a libretto by Gene Scheer—premieres on Sunday, September 21, at 6:30PM.
Under the baton of the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the world of 1940s New York comes vividly to life as two Jewish cousins—a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague and a closeted gay Brooklynite—forge a bond through the creation of the Escapist, a comic book superhero who fights fascism and frees the oppressed.
Baritone Andrzej Filończyk makes his Met debut as Joe Kavalier, the gifted artist who flees war-torn Europe, opposite tenor Miles Mykkanen as his cousin and writing partner, Sam Clay. The cast also includes soprano Lauren Snouffer—in her Met debut—as Sarah Kavalier, mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce as Rosa Saks, baritone Edward Nelson as Tracy Bacon, and bass-baritones Patrick Carfizzi and Craig Colclough as Sheldon Anapol and Gerhard, respectively.
Blending sweeping orchestration, jazz-inflected rhythms, and electronic music, Kavalier & Clay explores themes of identity, survival, and liberation through three distinct musical worlds. The production is led by Tony Award–winning director Bartlett Sher, with colossal set pieces and cinematic projections designed by a returning team from 59 Studio.
The opera marks the ninth Met production for Sher, and the creative team also features debuts by costume designer Jennifer Moeller, sound designer Rick Jacobsohn, and Emmy Award–winning choreographer Mandy Moore. Paul Cremo, who also directs the Met’s Opera Commissioning Program, supports the production as dramaturg.
Following the Opening Night Gala performance on September 21, there are six additional performances through October 11.
The 2025–26 season also includes two additional Met premieres—Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence (Apr. 6–29) and Gabriela Lena Frank’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego (May 14–Jun. 5)—as well as new productions of Bellini’s La Sonnambula (Oct. 6–Nov.1) and I Puritani (Dec. 31–Jan. 18) and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (Mar. 9–Apr. 2) and revivals of works by Bizet, Donizetti, the Gershwins, Giordano, Puccini, Mozart, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and Verdi.
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