The 2019 work Blue presents the moving story of ​​a Black middle-class couple in Harlem, whose lives are shattered when their teenage son is shot by a white police officer. Compounding the heartbreak is the fact that the Father is a so-called "Black in Blue" — he serves on the very same police force. Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori's moving music brings to life Tazewell Thompson's probing, sensitive libretto. A co-production of Lyric, The Glimmerglass Festival, and Washington National Opera, Blue was named the Best New Opera of 2019 by the Music Critics Association of North America, and will be on stage at Lyric November 16 to December 1, 2024.

The timing of the composition and premiere of the work proved uncannily prescient, coming as it did just before the reckonings with racial injustice and examinations of law enforcement begun in 2020. The two-act opera opens when the Mother gathers her Girlfriends to celebrate the impending birth of her son. There is joy, but also notes of caution as the women discuss the dangerous lives of young Black men. Before long, we meet The Son as a teenager, full of creativity and idealism, and bridling at his parents' authority. His death, which takes place offstage, becomes all the more tragic because the family had been together in their kitchen only a short time before. After the tragedy, the Father and Mother and their community search for solace amidst powerful feelings of guilt, regret, and loss.

Six-time Grammy Award–winning composer Terence Blanchard brings his first opera to the Met after his Fire Shut Up in My Bones triumphantly premiered with the company to universal acclaim in 2021–22. Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green is the young boxer Emile Griffith, who rises from obscurity to become a world champion, and bass-baritone Eric Owens portrays Griffith’s older self, haunted by the ghosts of his past. Soprano Latonia Moore is Emelda Griffith, the boxer’s estranged mother, and mezzo- soprano Stephanie Blythe is the bar owner Kathy Hagan. Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium for Blanchard’s second Met premiere, also reuniting the director-and-choreographer team of James Robinson and Camille A. Brown. This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

MUSIC AND LIBRETTO BY RICHARD WAGNER
DIRECTOR: YUVAL SHARON
CONDUCTOR: ANDREW DAVIS
A CO-PRODUCTION
WITH LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC

Wagner’s best-known music – seen & heard like never before

A high-tech treatment of the most famous act in Wagner’s Ring Cycle makes this an experience you will not want to miss. Detroit Opera’s own Yuval Sharon and Christine Goerke join forces in this unique production which zooms in on the drama of Act III, beginning with the unforgettable “Ride of the Valkyries” and ending with “Magic Fire Music.”

Philip Glass’s mesmerizing modern masterpiece—a smash-hit in its 2019 company-premiere run—returns in Phelim McDermott’s unforgettable production, which brings ancient Egypt to vivid life with striking stage tableaux and a troupe of jugglers. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo reprises his celebrated turn as the revolutionary pharaoh Akhnaten, with mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb as his wife and queen, Nefertiti. Once again at the helm is conductor Karen Kamensek, a noted master of Glass’s music.

R. NATHANIEL DETT The Ordering of Moses
JOEL THOMPSON Seven Last Words of the Unarmed
FLORENCE PRICE Ethiopia's Shadow in America

The rediscovered masterwork, The Ordering of Moses by R. Nathanial Dett, is a musical powerhouse. Joining the Bach Festival Choir and Orchestra and guest soloists will be the Bethune-Cookman University Concert Chorale directed by Dr. Terrance Lane. Also on the program are Ethiopia’s Shadow in America by Florence Price and a new thought-provoking work by Joel Thompson, The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.

Soprano Nina Stemme brought down the house when she headlined the premiere of visionary director Patrice Chéreau’s 2016 staging of Elektra. Now she returns to Strauss’s unhinged heroine, opposite one of today’s most in-demand artists, soprano Lise Davidsen, as her sister, Chrysothemis. Sir Donald Runnicles is on the podium for one of opera’s most blistering scores, leading a cast that also includes mezzo-soprano Michaela Schuster as Klytämnestra, tenor Stefan Vinke as Aegisth, and bass-baritone Greer Grimsley as Orest.

Our beautiful new opera, INTIMATE APPAREL, was three weeks into previews and had hit its stride when we had to shut down so abruptly in March 2020. The show had been bringing audiences to their feet nightly, cheering for the moving performances and for the joy of hearing Lynn Nottage’s story and Ricky Ian Gordon’s music in our intimate space. Opening Night was just ten days away! We knew we had to find a way to bring the show back. And now, after this unimaginably long wait, we are delighted to tell you that INTIMATE APPAREL will return to the Newhouse this winter to continue its run!

The show is part of The Met/LCT Opera/Musical Theater Commissioning Program and it’s the first to be done at LCT. And although we have, of course, done sung-through musicals before, this is our first opera! It is directed by one of our Resident Directors, Bartlett Sher, who directed My Fair Lady most recently for us, among so many LCT favorites.

INTIMATE APPAREL, set in 1905 in turn of the century New York, tells the story of Esther, a lonely, single African-American woman who makes her living sewing beautiful corsets and ladies’ undergarments. There is warm affection between her and the Orthodox Jewish man who sells fabrics to her, but any relationship between them, even a touch, is completely forbidden. Seeking love and romance, Esther eventually embarks on a letter-writing relationship with a mysterious suitor laboring on the Panama Canal. When he moves to New York they embark on an unhappy marriage, leading Esther to realize that only her self-reliance and certainty of her own worth will see her through life’s challenges.

More than ever, we can’t wait to see you back at Lincoln Center Theater!

American composer Jake Heggie’s 21st-century masterpiece, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, has its highly anticipated Met premiere, in Ivo van Hove’s second new staging of the season. Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir about her fight for the soul of a condemned murderer, Dead Man Walking matches the high drama of its subject with Heggie’s beautiful and poignant music and a brilliant libretto by Tony and Emmy Award–winner Terrence McNally. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin is on the podium for this landmark premiere, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato starring as Helen Prejean. The outstanding cast also features baritone Etienne Dupuis as the condemned Joseph De Rocher, soprano Latonia Moore as Sister Rose, and legendary mezzo-soprano Susan Graham—who sang Prejean in the opera’s 2000 premiere—as De Rocher’s mother.