The Met season opens September 23 with the Met premiere of Grounded by Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori, starring Emily D’Angelo as an Air Force drone pilot and conducted by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. It features six new productions, including additional Met premieres of Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick, and John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra—and new stagings of Verdi’s Aida and Strauss’s Salome.
The Met’s HD series continues to shrink. There will only be eight telecasts during the coming season. There will also be no operas by Wagner. I can’t remember a Met season without a single Wagner opera. From here, the season seems a dud. A striking lack of great singers is a problem. There are a few fine women singers on the roster, but the male talent is pretty ordinary except perhaps for Benjamin Bernheim and the aging Bryn Terfel.
The rollout of new operas will hopefully offer something of interest, but I wouldn’t make book on it. I saw Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick in San Francisco in 2012. It was pretty good save for completely missing the excitement needed for Ahab and the whale’s final confrontation. The Met’s complete announcement can be viewed here. With a top ticket going for $480 the Met had better up their game.
