Gil Wechsler

Franco Zeffirelli’s larger-than-life production of Puccini’s Turandot returns to the Met stage for 17 performances, starting February 28. Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv will lead the production.

The cast of HBO’s The Gilded Age visited the Met for a discussion with Met Vice President C. Graham Berwind, III, followed by a performance of Wagner’s Tannhäuser. Watch clips from the discussion here!

Wagner’s Tannhäuser returns to the Met with soprano Elza van den Heever and tenor Andreas Schager making their Met role debuts as Elisabeth and Tannhäuser. Baritone Christian Gerhaher also makes his company debut in the role of Wolfram.

I’ve heard the opera a number of times at the Met over the years and this year’s run holds up with the most breathtaking of them. Despite the number of star performances among the magnificent ensemble currently being heard at the Met, the star of the show doesn’t have a single word to say or note to sing. It's the John Dexter production that does it.

I flipped over Lise Davidsen when she made her Met debut in QUEEN OF SPADES—the voice, the acting, the overall subtlety--but I was still unprepared for the performance she gave as the Prima Donna who became Princess Ariadne of Crete in Strauss’s ARIADNE AUF NAXOS. She was altogether divine.

Karen Kain, Artistic Director of The National Ballet of Canada, today announced the principal casting for Giselle which will feature several milestone events as well as important debuts. Giselle opens the 2019/20 season, which celebrates Ms. Kain's 50th anniversary with the company, and is onstage November 6 a?" 10, 2019 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. #GiselleNBC

You'd never know that the Met's production of Francis Poulenc's DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES is over 40 years old, except for a few giveaways. There are no dancing nuns, no nudity, no screeching train whistle as the women go to their deaths (a la SWEENEY TODD). This fictionalized version of the story of Carmelite nuns who were martyred during the French Revolution, sent to the guillotine, is certainly the most simple and eloquent work on the Met's stage these days.

The synopsis of Verdi's AIDA, with Ghislanzoni's smart libretto, places it in 'Egypt, during the reign of the pharaohs.' For the first performance of the opera this season, on Wednesday, they should have changed that to 'during the reign of soprano Anna Netrebko,' because she owned the stage from the moment she entered.

Season 12 of Great Performances at the Met continues Sunday, July 8 on PBS (check local listings) with a rare Met performance of Rossini's masterpiece Semiramide, starring Angela Meade as the titular Queen of Babylon and Elizabeth DeShong as the warrior Arsace. Javier Camarena, Ildar Abdrazakov and Ryan Speedo Greencomplete the all-star bel canto cast.

Season 12 of Great Performances at the Met continues Sunday, May 20 on PBS (check local listings) with one of the world's most popular operas, Puccini's La Bohème, starring Sonya Yoncheva as the fragile Mimì and Michael Fabiano as the poet Rodolfo.

The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live high-definition cinema simulcasts, will begin its 13th season on October 6, with the Met's grand production of Verdi's Aida, starring one of the world's most acclaimed sopranos, Anna Netrebko.

Giacomo Puccini's LA BOHEME will play at The Metropolitan Opera through March of 2018, and the critics are weighing in!

Tenor Matthew Polenzani sings the title role of the King of Crete, with mezzo-soprano Alice Coote in the trouser role of his noble son Idamante, soprano Elza van den Heever as Elettra, and soprano Nadine Sierra as Ilia.             

Take Puccini's LA BOHEME for granted at your peril. Sure, it has more gorgeous music per square inch than just about any other opera in the repertoire, but that doesn't mean that it always falls together, even at the Met. Lucky for those attending the current run of the opera, the stars are in alignment--with Kristine Opolais (Mimi), Piotr Beczala (Rodolfo), Brigitta Kele (Musetta) and Massimo Cavalletti (Marcello) as the stellar central quartet and not a weak link down the line.

Programming for American Ballet Theatre's 2016 Fall Season, October 19-30, at the David H. Koch Theater was announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie.  The season will feature a World Premiere by Jessica Lang, the Company Premiere of Daphnis and Chloe by Benjamin Millepied and revivals of George Balanchine's Prodigal Son and Frederick Ashton's Symphonic Variations.

I wonder whether James Levine imagined that Mozart's DIE ENFUHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL (THE ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO) would be his swan song as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera. I think he might have chosen better.

Sometimes, the Metropolitan Opera seems like an endless Puccini festival. It's particularly apparent this season, when top dogs LA BOHEME, TOSCA and MADAMA BUTTERFLY are joined by TURANDOT and MANON LESCAUT, which are not second drawer, though certainly less popular than the first three. (Let's see how that descriptor applies to the latter when Jonas Kaufmann steps on stage for the new production of LESCAUT.)

Almost 40 years ago, on short notice, the great tenor Jon Vickers (who died this summer at 90) caused a scandal when he pulled out of the premiere of the Met's still-current production of Wagner's 'Tannhauser' because he considered the opera anti-Christian. Well, nothing that exciting happened when tenor Johan Botha took the stage in the title role of the opera last week--merely some wonderful singing.

Nine years before IL TROVATORE took the prize for Verdi's most outlandish story line--with gypsies, stolen babies and mistaken identities--there was ERNANI, with a different kind of complicated plot to make your head spin. The Met's current revival of its 1983 production of the opera stars a formidable quartet: soprano Angela Meade, tenor Franceso Meli, bass-baritone Dmitry Belosselskiy and, last but certainly not least, tenor/baritone Placido Domingo.

I never ran a marathon, but I sure sat through one the other night at the Met. Richard Wagner's DIE MEISTERSINGER clocked in at six hours--a quarter of a day--without a god or flying horse in sight. And while the composer referred to this as a comedy, it's not exactly “I Love Lucy” (nor, for that matter, LE NOZZE DI FIGARO).