will sing the role of Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice at the Met on January 14, replacing Stephanie Blythe, who is ill.
Chávez was a winner of the 1999 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and made her company debut in 2005 as Mercédès in Carmen. At the Met, she has also appeared as Sondra Finchley in Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy and as Bersi in Andrea Chénier. She has sung with numerous companies both in the U.S. and abroad including New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, San Diego Opera, Opera Australia, the Caramoor Festival, and opera houses in Philadelphia, Graz, Hannover, and Tokyo.
In the years since his 1971 Metropolitan Opera debut conducting Puccini's Tosca, Music Director James Levine has forged a relationship with the company that is both unparalleled in its history and unique in today's musical world. He has conducted 83 operas and close to 2,500 performances at the Met, a record no one else has even approached. A few days before this season opened, he conducted a special free performance of the Verdi Requiem in memory of Luciano Pavarotti. At the season's gala opening night, which was shown as part of The Met: Live in HD, Maestro Levine conducted Act II of Verdi's La Traviata, with Renée Fleming, Ramón Vargas, and Thomas Hampson in leading roles. In November, Levine conducted the new production of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust and later this season will conduct the Met's 125th Anniversary Gala on March 15, as well as the final revival of Otto Schenk's popular production of Wagner's Ring cycle. He also returns to Carnegie Hall for the MET Orchestra's widely admired annual series of three concerts.
Conductor Kazem Abdullah makes his Met debut on January 28, 2009. He collaborated with the Mark Morris Dance Group in 2007 at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he was a conducting fellow, stepping in at short notice to conduct Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. He has also conducted at the Baltimore Opera, Chautauqua Opera, National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, Berliner Kammerphilharmonie, and Finnish Radio Orchestra.
Mark Morris made his Met debut with this production of Orfeo ed Euridice in 2007, the first choreographer in half a century to direct a production at the Met. The New Yorker said, "Morris accomplishes the feat of making the score itself seem to dance before one's eyes." He founded the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) in 1980 and has since created more than 120 works for the company. From 1988-1991, he was Director of Dance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the national opera house of Belgium. In 1990, he founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Morris has created many works for the San Francisco Ballet and received commissions from American Ballet Theatre and the Boston Ballet, among others. His work is also in the repertory of the Geneva Ballet, New Zealand Ballet, Houston Ballet, English National Ballet, and the Royal Ballet. He has worked extensively in opera, directing and choreographing productions for the New York City Opera, English National Opera, and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. In 1996, Morris choreographed a fully-staged version of Orfeo ed Euridice that toured the United States with the Handel and Haydn Society, conducted by Christopher Hogwood.
Set designer Allen Moyer made his Met debut with Orfeo. His designs for opera include Nixon in China (Opera Theatre of St. Louis), Agrippina, for which he also designed the costumes, and Così fan tutte (Santa Fe Opera), The Mother of Us All (San Francisco Opera), and Il Trittico and La Bohème for New York City Opera. He designed the set of Mark Morris's ballet Sylvia for the San Francisco Ballet. His most recent Broadway credits include Thurgood, The Little Dog Laughed, Grey Gardens (for which he received a Tony Award nomination in 2007), and Twelve Angry Men. In 2006 he received an Obie award for Sustained Excellence.
A leader in the fashion industry, Isaac Mizrahi made his Met debut with Orfeo ed Euridice in 2007. He has designed costumes for movies, theater, dance, and opera in collaboration with Morris, Twyla Tharp, Bill T. Jones, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. His costume design credits for opera include Rameau's Platée at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and Purcell's King Arthur at English National Opera (also seen at New York City Opera), both in productions by Mark Morris. In 2006, he designed costumes for The Threepenny Opera at Studio 54 and Barefoot in the Park at the Cort Theater. His collaborations with the MMDG include Gong (2001), Later (2002), and Resurrection (2002), among many others.
