1 in 3 Met operas next season is by a living composer
OperaWhile James Levine was music director for 40 years, the Met hardly ever engaged with a living composer.
A rare exception was the premiere of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby, which Levine conducted for his own 25th anniversary in the job, and John Corigliano’s Ghosts of Versailles.
Under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, next season will see new productions of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking; Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X; and John Adams’s El Niño.
There will also be revivals of Terence Blanchard’s (pictured) Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Kevin Puts’s The Hours.
Quite a turnaround.
Levine also conducted the premiere of John Corigliano‘s ‘The Ghosts of Versailles’ at the Met in 1991. That’s one I can remember, anyway.
I’m genuinely curious: why does this post merit two thumbs down? Or, for that matter, thumbs in any direction? It’s a statement of fact, not of opinion. Baffled.
@Bulgakov: Search not; intelligence is not always on show in the comments sections. Maybe they thought you should have remembered more, or something.
No answers….. just more thumbs down….lol.
“Dead Man Walking” and “Fire, Shut Up, in My Bones”
sound like very timely pieces for the Met.
After a decade, these works do not exist, but neither does the Met, probably.
Let the record show that Levine also conducted John Corigliano Jr’s “Ghosts of Versailles” with considerable publicity, and DG recorded it promptly. That too received much publicity (I was on DG’s PR mailing list because I was a reviewer and they really pulled out all the stops on that one).
My recollection is that Levine had the Met commission an opera from Jacob Druckman but the project was still-born. I also seem to recall something by Philip Glass. So not a shabby record at all particularly given the operas by “not living but nonetheless disliked by many” composers that he championed.
Philip Glass’s “The Voyage” was commissioned for the quincentennial of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 landing in the New World.
Glass’ The Voyage was commissioned for 1992, conducted by Bruce Ferden.
I’m curious to hear how they are going to put to music in the opera Malcolm X, an aria featuring these lines
“‘I gave the Jew credit for being among all other whites the most active, and the most vocal, financial, ‘leader’ and ‘liberal’ in the Negro civil rights movement. But at the same time I knew that the Jew played these roles for a very careful strategic reason: the more prejudice in America could be focused upon the Negro, then the more the white Gentiles’ prejudice would keep diverted off the Jew.’
Well, I don’t know either how they are “going to put in music”… since this opera was premiered in 1985, the “putting in music” was done almost 40 years ago.
Bravo, Yannick!!!!
Sounds ghastly, mostly. Try something by Patrick Burgan instead of these dismal American composers.
There is a full season announcement on line.
https://www.metopera.org/season/2023-24-season/
The count is actually six contemporary operas out of a total of eighteen (substantially fewer than what has been normal in recent seasons). The sixth opera is Florencia en el Amazonas, by Daniel Catan, who was born in 1949 and died in 2011.
Good luck selling tickets, especially at Met’s price level…
The Met is at 62% capacity at the moment, what is it going to be with the season like this? Third full? Contemporary operas aside, most of the “traditional” shows have completely uninteresting casts. Sigh…
The Met is doing this because, for the past few years, contemporary operas have been selling better than the standard rep. (This has been widely reported, including here.)
Because the new works have received more marketing money than the standard rep works. Plus, my earlier comment below.
The Met will use its most important marketing tools…papering and half-truths.
Fantastic! Less tired Verdi again and again and again!
Great to see this. Of course, if one looks far enough back in its history, the Met did many, many operas by living composers and many premieres.
“Quite a turnaround.” Yes indeed, sales straight down toilet. 95% of living composers are unlistenable.
The Ghosts of Versailles
The Voyage
An American Tragedy
I didn’t like any of the 3 and left after act 1 from the Voyage due to vertigo
I didn’t see The Ghosts of Versailles, but I liked The Voyage well enough and I quite liked An American Tragedy. (Granted, the latter would not have been as effective without such good actors as Patricia Racette and Nathan Gunn in the leads.)
Other than a slap at Levine, what recent Met commissions did you like?
I hope for the Metropolitan Opera’s sake that these new works also contribute to a positive bottom line.
Once. Were not talking sustainable repertory works here.
They…are? Why wouldn’t they be? Blanchard is already a reprise, as is The Hours. And Dead Man Walking could very well be, it’s been touring North America to great success (I loved it in Montréal a few years back).
What is this constant nonsense about drawing comparisons between some past times and today. Times were simply different. Levine did what he thought was right, and for decades the Met was one of the world’s leading opera houses with fantastic ticket sales – without commissioned compositions and living composers. There was no need furch such things. You could play Zefirelli’s Boheme 40 nights per season in a circle, and people would stand in line for hours to get a ticket. So please, just don’t make those comparisons.
Levine did a lot of other things too, and might be in jail today if he were still alive.
But to your point, opera houses are more than museums of the past. They’re presenting a living, breathing art form that continues to evolve – just like dance companies, theaters, and art museums do.
Stick to the topic at hand, please. To keep beating that drum is just sick diversion.
Great!
Now make a second third 20th century operas.
Out of the mere twelve repertory operas, the twentieth century is represented only by Turandot, Butterfly and La Rondine. (Why is the last being performed at all, but that is another matter). There is no Strauss, Berg, Britten, Janacek, Prokofiev, etc. The Met has never performed a Messiaen opera; while not to my taste his operas are received rapturously when they are performed elsewhere. It is almost as if there is a death wish in this programming. Gelb reports that this season the contemporary operas sold better than the repertory operas, and then the weakest possible season of repertory is assembled. If Gelb had any integrity he would offer his resignation.
“ The Met has never performed a Messiaen opera; while not to my taste his operas are received rapturously…” Please do inform us quickly about “his operas”, I mean the ones he wrote apart from StFrançois, it’s gonna be a huge musicological find…
Levine also conducted the world premiere of John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles at the Met in 1991, and a number of orchestral/chamber pieces by Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, and Charles Wuorinen with the Met Orchestra and the Met Chamber Ensemble over the years.
But the broader point still stands, of course, and it’s great that the Met is continuing to expand its repertoire.
Besides the living composer operas and the new productions, the new season is rather boring. SO much repeating of operas and cast.
Gelb will be losing many avid opera goers and longtime patrons in NYC and certainly beyond
Have already talked with several of my opera friends ages 40 + and all agree that little interest in this season, casts with of course a few exceptions: Bernheim, Grigorian, Tetelman, and Baek, Lindstom
I assume you mean Lise Davidsen? Lise Lindstrom hasn’t been at the Met in years.
Right on the mark! I’ve been to the Met at least once a year for some 60 years. Not much in the way of operas and casts to justify further attendance. Dommage!
How much of the apparent ‘sell outs’ of new operas that form the basis of the ‘radical’ repertoire the MET sees as it’s salvation is down to papering? Too few bums on too many seats does not necessarily flow through to the bottom line (sorry!) as the numbers at ENO might indicate. The MET should be applauded for extending the repertory but I sense that the endowments are going to be a continuing source for survival for some time to come.
What about Tan Dun: The First Emperor?
From the comments and lack of collective memory about commissioned operas at the Met during the Levine years proves they are forgotten almost immediately after their initial outings.
What makes Gelb think all these recent commissions will not suffer the same fate? Sure, throw enough promotional money at a first production and people will come. They do not enter the repertory.
I can’t wait for the revival of Two Boys…
oh well, at least there’s Tannhäuser . . .
I am surprised that the Gelb has chosen to stage Carmen, an opera that showcases every conceivable anti Roma prejudice: oversexed, thieves, unpatriotic, undependable employees, etc. , and has cast a non- Roma as Carmen. Will the chorus wear Roma face?
Gelb just wants publicity. Yea let’s support living composers who can’t land a real job in Hollywood and Broadway.