The Metropolitan Opera announced the content of its 2023-2024 season on Wednesday, and the change initiated by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Peter Gelb in favor of the renewal of the repertoire is moving up a gear. A third of the operas presented will be recent operas!
What was announced Wednesday in New York is the greatest act of programmatic courage by a major orchestral or operatic musical institution in the post-war period. The change is all the more impressive since the Metropolitan Opera was considered the archetype of the sclerotic and conformist opera house five years ago.
The season will open on September 26 with the Met premiere of Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie, based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir of her spiritual ministry to a death row inmate. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato will play Sister Helen in a new production by coveted Ivo van Hove. Nézet-Séguin will conduct this opera created in 2000 and which has already entered the international repertoire.
Create a directory
This desire to lead to the creation of a real repertoire of our time will be materialized by the revivals of two key shows of the current season: Fire Shut up in my Bones by Terence Blanchard and The Hours by Kevin Puts, with the trio Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato. It will be endorsed by the entry into the repertoire of the Met d’El Ninoopera-oratorio by John Adams (2000), in a new production by Lileana Blain-Cruz, resident director of the Lincoln Center Theater, which will make its Met debut.
And it’s not over. Among the new works of the season, the opera by Anthony Davis, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm Xwill have its Met premiere on November 3 under the direction of Kazem Abdullah in a new revised score, and the same month will see the premiere of the first opera in Spanish to be presented at the Met in nearly a century: Florence in the Amazonas by Daniel Catan. Florence is the story of a Brazilian diva who returns to her native country to perform in the legendary opera house of Manaus. Nézet-Séguin will lead a cast around the soprano Ailyn Pérez. According to statistics, about 18.5% of the population of the United States is of Hispanic origin. Hispanics are the country’s largest ethnic minority.
The more discreet construction site
“The future of opera rests on a rebalancing between classics and new works,” said Peter Gelb, general manager of the Met. Peter Gelb and Yannick Nézet-Séguin will try to push this revolution through with subtle balances between contemporary issues and tradition. But within the works of great tradition, another site is opening up: that of dramaturgical stripping. A news Carmen will be proposed by the British Carrie Cracknell and the new version of The Forza of Destino by Verdi was entrusted to Mariusz Treliński, who staged the most recent Tristan and Isolde of the Met. The images of the models of these shows attest to a clear modernization of these operas.
So is it really a risk? Yes and no. Yes, because the helm is violent, any fundamental reform takes time and new works call for tireless marketing work with a population that has not yet gotten used to it and certainly hasn’t not that of paying 200 dollars for a ticket (besides the Met now has its “Fridays for the under 40s”). No, because in the post-pandemic era, we see that the elderly public, which forms the broad base of traditional shows, is increasingly difficult to get out of their homes, whatever we do. Not to move is necessarily to die slowly. Putting a firm grip on it is giving yourself the chance to change your image and build a new audience.
The shows shown in the cinema will be Dead Man Walking (21st of October) ; X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (November 18); Florence in the Amazonas (December 9); Nabuco (January 6); Carmen (January 27); The Forza of Destino (March 9); Romeo and Juliet (March 23); The Rondine (April 20) and Madame Butterfly (May 11).