Elektra - San Francisco Opera

Candide falls in love with the beautiful but materialistic Cunegonde. Her barron father doesn't approve of the affair so Candide wanders, meeting all the misfortunes along the way.

The Gershwins’ modern American masterpiece has its first Met performances in almost three decades, starring bass-baritone Eric Owens and soprano Angel Blue in the title roles. Director James Robinson’s stylish production transports audiences to Catfish Row, a setting vibrant with the music, dancing, emotion, and heartbreak of its inhabitants.

Tim Albery's Olivier-nominated production for The Royal Opera delves deep into the psychology of Wagner's cursed wanderer and his beloved Senta, detailing the monomania and uncompromising idealism that finally drives them apart. Michael Levine's elemental single set is dominated by a rolling metal hull that represents the Dutchman's phantom ship, the poverty of Senta's home and the treacherous sea.

The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

Ever since it opened the 2006–07 season, Anthony Minghella’s striking production of Madama Butterfly has been a Met classic. Drawing inspiration from traditional Japanese theater, Minghella’s staging retells this heartbreaking tale with brilliant stagecraft, bold colors, and bunraku puppetry. In this Live in HD performance from the fall of 2019, Chinese soprano Hui He stars as Cio-Cio-San, the young geisha who puts her trust in a visiting American naval officer, only to later be abandoned by him. In a feat of operatic heroics, tenor Bruce Sledge appears as the callous Pinkterton, stepping into the role on short notice to replace an ailing colleague. Pier Giorgio Morandi conducts one of opera’s most tragic masterpieces, leading a cast that also includes mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong as Cio-Cio-San’s loyal companion, Suzuki, and Tony Award–winning baritone Paulo Szot as the U.S. consul Sharpless.

Two singers at the height of their powers—radiant soprano Nadine Sierra and tenor sensation Benjamin Bernheim—come together as the star-crossed lovers in Gounod’s sumptuous Shakespeare adaptation, with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium to conduct one of the repertoire’s most romantic scores. Bartlett Sher’s elegant staging also features baritone Will Liverman and tenor Frederick Ballentine as the archrivals Mercutio and Tybalt, mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey as the mischievous pageboy Stéphano, and bass-baritone Alfred Walker as Frère Laurent.

Tony Award–winning director Ivo van Hove makes a major Met debut with a new take on Mozart’s tragicomedy, re-setting the familiar tale of deceit and damnation in an abstract architectural landscape and shining a light into the dark corners of the story and its characters. Maestro Nathalie Stutzmann makes her Met debut conducting a star-studded cast led by baritone Peter Mattei as a magnetic Don Giovanni, alongside the Leporello of bass-baritone Adam Plachetka. Sopranos Federica Lombardi, Ana María Martínez, and Ying Fang make a superlative trio as Giovanni’s conquests—Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, and Zerlina—and tenor Ben Bliss is Don Ottavio.

Wagner’s soaring masterpiece makes its triumphant return to the Met stage after 17 years. In a sequel to his revelatory production of Parsifal, director François Girard unveils an atmospheric staging that once again weds his striking visual style and keen dramatic insight to Wagner’s breathtaking music, with Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium to conduct a supreme cast led by tenor Piotr Beczała in the title role of the mysterious swan knight. Soprano Tamara Wilson is the virtuous duchess Elsa, falsely accused of murder, going head to head with soprano Christine Goerke as the cunning sorceress Ortrud, who seeks to lay her low. Bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin is Ortrud’s power-hungry husband, Telramund, and bass Günther Groissböck is King Heinrich.

When this sumptuous production by Giancarlo del Monaco opened in 1995, legendary tenor Plácido Domingo gave a riveting performance as the fiery revolutionary Gabriele Adorno, a tenor part. In the 2010 revival, he made history by taking on the baritone title role, one of Verdi’s most fascinating characters, and thrilling audiences with his multifaceted and gripping portrayal. Boccanegra is beset on all sides, juggling political adversaries bent on murder with his love for his long-lost daughter Amelia (Adrianne Pieczonka). James Levine’s conducting brings out all the color and surging emotion of Verdi’s magnificent score.

Star soprano Anna Netrebko adds Donizetti’s hapless heroine to her growing list of Met triumphs in this production by Mary Zimmerman that updates the events to the 19th century. Rising young tenor sensation Piotr Beczała is Edgardo and Mariusz Kwiecien plays Lucia’s brother Enrico whose brutal authority forces her to deny her heart and marry for the sake of her family. The famous mad scene brilliantly depicts the cascading fragments of Lucia’s disintegrating mind.

Christine Goerke has wowed audiences as Turandot, the icy princess at the heart of Puccini’s grand final masterpiece. In this performance from the 2019–20 Live in HD season, Goerke stars alongside tenor Yusif Eyvazov (as Calàf) and soprano Eleonora Buratto (as Liù) in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic staging, which dazzles with its opulent visions of mythic China. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin is on the podium, drawing a vivid array of musical colors from the incomparable Met Orchestra and Chorus.

Eva-Maria Westbroek stars in the title role of Zandonai’s sensuous drama, opposite Marcello Giordani as Paolo. Piero Faggioni’s lush production provides the perfect setting for one of the all-time great tales of tragic passion, adapted from an episode in Dante’s Inferno. Mark Delavan co-stars as Giovanni, the husband and brother of the star-crossed lovers, whose jealousy leads him to kill them both. Robert Brubaker is Malatestino and Marco Armiliato conducts.

Aufführung vom 11.05.2019 in der Metropolitan Oper. Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the classic John Dexter production of Poulenc’s devastating story of faith and martyrdom. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings the touching role of Blanche and soprano Karita Mattila, a legend in her own time, returns to the Met as the Prioress.

John Adams’s groundbreaking work vividly brings to life US President Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China. Peter Sellars’s Metropolitan Opera production, based on his 1987 world-premiere staging, features choreography by Mark Morris and stars James Maddalena as Nixon, Robert Brubaker as Chairman Mao, Janis Kelly as First Lady Pat Nixon, Russell Braun as Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and Kathleen Kim as Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife. From the pomp of the public displays to the intimacy of the protagonists most private moments, Adams, Sellars and librettist Alice Goodman reveal the real characters behind the headlines in this landmark American opera.

Following the success of his first foray into opera, Einstein on the Beach, revolutionary American composer and musician Philip Glass soon turned to another great figure of the 20th century for inspiration. Set to lines from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, Satyagraha depicts scenes from the life of Gandhi as he developed his philosophy of non-violent resistance in South Africa between 1896 and 1913. The opera became the second installment of Glass’s Portrait Trilogy, focused on innovators from across history. Satyagraha arrived at the Met during the 2007–08 season, when director Phelim McDermott made his debut with a production that employed everyday materials like newspaper and corrugated tin to create towering puppets and striking tableaus. In 2011, his staging returned, this time recorded live in HD. In this performance, tenor Richard Croft gives a moving performance as Gandhi, leading a remarkable ensemble cast conducted by Dante Anzolini.

The painter Mario Cavaradossi helps a fugitive escape – and so attracts the attention of Scarpia, the sadistic Chief of Police. Scarpia captures Cavaradossi and has him tortured within earshot of his lover, the singer Tosca. Scarpia sentences Cavaradossi to death – but promises Tosca that her lover can be saved if she gives herself to Scarpia. Tosca consents but as soon as the order has been given kills Scarpia. Scarpia’s menace continues even in death: betrayed by a double-cross, Cavaradossi dies and Tosca leaps to her death.

The great singing actress Nina Stemme gives a heart-wrenching performance in the title role of Strauss’s blazing one-act drama, adapted from the ancient Greek myth. Patrice Chéreau’s acclaimed production—the last staging he worked on before his death in 2013—also stars Waltraud Meier as Klytämnestra, Elektra’s nightmare-haunted mother, Adrianne Pieczonka as Chrysothemis, her sister, and Eric Owens as Orest, their brother, whose return home brings their family story to a terrifying climax. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the monumental and highly influential score.

Live from Glyndebourne Festival 1995. Yakov Kreizberg conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Directed for the stage by Deborah Warner.

Elijah Moshinsky's production of Saint-Saëns's "Samson et Dalila", recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera 28 September 1998. Plácido Domingo and Olga Borodina star as Samson and Dalila with Sergei Leiferkus as Grand-prêtre de Dagon, Richard Paul Fink as Abimélech, and René Pape as Un vieillard hébreu. James Levine conducts.

17-year-old Lisa feels certain that she inadvertently played a role in causing a traffic accident that claimed a woman's life. In her attempts to set things right, she meets with opposition at every step. Torn apart with frustration, she begins emotionally brutalizing her family, her friends, her teachers, and, most of all, herself. She has been confronted quite unexpectedly with a basic truth: that her youthful ideals are on a collision course with the realities and compromises of the adult world.

Sacred, scandalous, and irresistibly alluring, Saint-Saëns’s spectacular take on the biblical hero of legendary strength and the seductive Philistine whose beauty overpowers him returns in the Met’s larger-than-life production. Featuring a massive orchestra and chorus and some of opera’s most spellbinding tunes, this masterpiece of French grand opera is a feast for the eyes and ears. Giacomo Sagripanti conducts an electrifying cast led by the formidable star pairing of mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina and tenor Clay Hilley, transmitted live to cinemas worldwide. This live cinema transmission is part of The Met: Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

Performance of opera by Franz Schreker from the Salzburger Festpiele. Recorded live at the Felsenreitschule, 26 July 2005

Soprano Christine Goerke plays Brünnhilde, Wotan’s willful warrior daughter, who loses her immortality in opera’s most famous act of filial defiance. In this Live in HD transmission of Die Walküre, the second and most popular installment in the composer’s sweeping tetralogy, Goerke is joined by bass-baritone Greer Grimsley as Brünnhilde godly father, Wotan, and mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton as his unbending wife, Fricka. As the incestuous lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde, soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek and tenor Stuart Skelton—alongside bass Günther Groissböck as Sieglinde’s bloodthirsty husband, Hunding—round out the principal cast. And on the podium, Maestro Philippe Jordan conducts Robert Lepage’s innovative staging, which uses state-of-the-art stage technology to tell Wagner’s mythic tale.

Zaide, the unfinished opera by Mozart, in a production directed by Peter Sellars which was the focus of controversy at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2008. Composed in 1780, two years before The Abduction from the Seraglio, Zaide contains melodies of incredible inventiveness. The opera lacks an overture, a finale and many spoken dialogues, yet the missing elements allowed Sellars to elaborate and transform the work into a grand manifesto against slavery. Sellars' vision provoked a scandal, as it had previously in Vienna and London, but the Cour de l'Archevêché has experienced plenty of scandals.

In Gabriele Lavia's triumphant 2010 Bologna production, the linking of Salome's naive insouciance, sexual obsession and cruelty as portrayed by Erika Sunnegårdh is also subtly reflected in the scenic representation. Under the musical direction of internationally acclaimed conductor Nicola Luisotti, the stellar cast of experienced singers including Mark S. Doss as Jochanaan, Robert Brubaker as Herodes and Dalia Schaechter as Herodias give an energetic performance of Strauss' early masterpiece.