OPERA AND NATIONAL THEATRE   

Two-time Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded, commissioned by the Met and based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, wrestles with the ethical quandaries and psychological toll of 21st-century warfare. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, one of opera’s most compelling young stars, portrays Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. As she struggles to adjust to this new way of doing battle, she fights to maintain her sanity, and her soul, as she is called to rain down death by remote control. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin oversees the Met premiere of Tesori’s kaleidoscopic score and a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as the Wyoming rancher who becomes Jess’s husband. Michael Mayer’s high-tech staging, using a vast array of LED screens, presents a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above.

Sung in English.

Estimated run time is 2 hours, 45 minutes, with one intermission.

Conductor Joana Mallwitz makes her Met debut leading an extraordinary cast in Mozart’s comic masterpiece. Bass-baritone Michael Sumuel stars as the clever valet Figaro, opposite soprano Olga Kulchynska as his betrothed, the wily maid Susanna. Baritone Joshua Hopkins is the skirt-chasing Count, with soprano Federica Lombardi as his anguished wife and mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa as the adolescent page Cherubino.

Sung in Italian.

Estimated run time is 3 hours, 55 minutes, with 1 intermission.

This is an encore presentation. Previously recorded.

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts his first Met performances of Strauss’s white-hot one-act tragedy, which receives its first new production at the company in 20 years. Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story—already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play—a psychologically perceptive, Victorian-era setting rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness and light. Headlining the new staging is soprano Elza van den Heever as the abused and unhinged antiheroine, who demands the head of Jochanaan, sung by celebrated baritone Peter Mattei. Tenor Gerhard Siegel is Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias, and tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth. 

Sung in German.

Estimated run time is 2 hours, 15 minutes, with no intermission.

Rossini’s effervescent comedy retakes the stage in Bartlett Sher’s madcap production. Mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina headlines a winning ensemble as the feisty heroine, Rosina, alongside high-flying tenor Jack Swanson, in his Met debut, as her secret beloved, Count Almaviva. Baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky stars as Figaro, the titular barber of Seville, with bass-baritone Peter Kálmán as Dr. Bartolo and bass Alexander Vinogradov as Don Basilio rounding out the principal cast. Giacomo Sagripanti conducts.

Sung in Italian.

Estimated run time is 3 hours, 35 minutes, with 1 intermission.