(New York) Yannick Nézet-Séguin is making his mark at the Metropolitan Opera.
When the 48-year-old conductor leans forward to stretch his arms out and accentuate the vibrato, or stretches upwards for a fortissimo during a concert, the red soles of his Christian Louboutin shoes in patent leather become visible. He almost leaves the ground, which contrasts visually with the last years of his predecessor James Levine. He had been sitting since 2001 in a motorized wheelchair during his last five seasons due to Parkinson’s disease.
“I still feel like we’re only at the beginning of our journey together,” Yannick Nézet-Séguin said during a break during rehearsal last week. “I can appreciate the progression of our understanding of the music, our common understanding and our confidence, so that I feel more like Yannick’s orchestra – I hate to say that, because that’s not what it’s – I’m just here for continuity. »
Completing his fifth season as Music Director of the Met, he will accompany the orchestra on its first tour since 2011 – the orchestra’s only first since 2002. The Met will perform in Paris, London and Baden-Baden, in Germany.
Born in Montreal, Yannick Nezet-Séguin has directed eight new productions and five revivals as musical director, among the 23 staged since his debut in 2009.
Musical director of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2012-2013 and of the Orchester Métropolitain de Montréal since 2000, Nézet-Séguin has teamed up with Met General Manager Peter Gelb to steer the 140-year-old Met toward more contemporary, with the aim of attracting a wider audience. For years, from 1976 to 2016, the Met was ruled by Levine, known for his bushy hair and the importance he placed on Verdi, Wagner and Mozart.
“With the exception of the Vienna Philharmonic, major orchestras need music directors to create unifying forces artistically,” says Peter Gelb, chief executive of the Met. “It was still the same group of wonderful musicians, but without a musical director, they had no artistic direction. »
Of the 2,552 performances given by the Met between 1971 and 2017, Levine only conducted two operas written after 1951: The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano (1991) and The Great Gatsby by John Harbison.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin has conducted five since his appointment as musical director, a varied assortment of Dialogues of the Carmelites of Poulenc, Champion, Fire Shut Up In My Bones by Terence Blanchard Eurydice by Matthew Aucoin and The Hours by Kevin Putts. Next season, Nézet-Séguin will lead Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie, Florence in the Amazonas by Daniel Catan and Grounded by Jeanine Tesori for the opening of the 2024-25 season.
“What is striking is the catholicity of his tastes. I think for a long time, certainly during the Levine years, it seemed like there was sometimes a new play a decade,” said Matthew Aucoin, who is starting to adapt the demons by Dostoyevsky for the Met. “What’s really healthy about the kind of aesthetic ecosystem that Yannik nurtures is that he releases the pressure on each piece to be a singular masterpiece in the same tradition. It also allows the audience to get an idea of the real diversity of music that exists. … You have to write bad operas to get to good ones. Verdi knew it. »
Nézet-Séguin gave the Met a new lease of life with his hairstyle and attire. He dyed his short hair blonde ahead of the 2019-20 season and swapped the conductor’s uniform of tuxedos and tailcoats for outfits created by the Met’s costume department: colorful and sometimes floral shirts, boxing dress for Champion and conductor’s blue jacket with gold lace for Bohemian by Puccini.
“He likes to put on a show,” says Peter Gelb, “but that’s just the icing on the cake, because the most important thing is that he’s deeply sound musically.”
A performance by Yannick Nézet-Séguin
To celebrate Pride Month, the conductor broadcast a performance of the classic Somewhere (There’s a Place for Us) on his Facebook page.