This season Marco Armiliato conducted Act III of Manon at the Opening Night Gala, which was transmitted as part of The Met: Live in HD, as well as performances of Lucia di Lammermoor. In February, he will be on the podium for Adriana Lecouvreur. Last season, he conducted the new production of La Fille du Régiment, which was a Live in HD transmission, as well as La Traviata. Among the operas he has conducted at the Met are the company premiere of Wolf-Ferrari's Sly and the United States premiere of Franco Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac. The Italian conductor has worked with such companies as the Vienna State Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and Venice's La Fenice. He led two performances of the famed Three Tenors concerts.
Nicolas Joël, who has been the Director of the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse for more than 15 years, will take over as General Director of the Paris Opera next season. While still in his teens, he began working with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle; within a few years, he was also working with Patrice Chéreau in Bayreuth. Joël has mounted productions for companies throughout the world, including the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and San Francisco Opera. La Rondine is the third opera that Joël has directed at the Met. He made his debut in 1996 with a new production of Andrea Chénier, starring Luciano Pavarotti, and later directed a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor.
Ezio Frigerio began his career in his native Italy, working with the late director Giorgio Strehler at Milan's Piccolo Teatro. Frigerio made his Met debut in 1984, creating the sets for a new production of Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini starring Renata Scotto and Plácido Domingo. Later he designed the sets for a new production of Il Trovatore with Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti, as well those for a new Lucia di Lammermoor directed by Nicolas Joël. Frigerio is active in opera, theater, and film. He served as art director for such well-known films as Vittorio De Sica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900, and Jean-Paul Rappenau's Cyrano de Bergerac, for which Frigerio received an Academy Award nomination.
Costume designer Franca Squarciapino, who has worked at such international companies as the Zurich Opera and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, is also well known in the film, theater, and dance worlds. She won an Academy Award for her costumes for the 1990 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac and was a Tony nominee for her Can-Can costume designs. She has worked at the Met on three previous occasions, all with her partner, set designer Ezio Frigerio, with whom she also collaborated on the legendary Swan Lake that Rudolph Nureyev choreographed for the Paris Opera Ballet.
Duane Schuler has created lighting designs for 22 new productions at the Met, most recently Thaïs, which opened in December. He was the lighting designer for two world premieres at the Met, The Great Gatsby (1999) and The First Emperor (2006), as well as for four operas that had not previously been seen here: Susannah, Sly, Il Pirata, and A View from the Bridge. Schuler has worked with opera, ballet, and theater companies around the world and is a partner in the theater and lighting consulting firm Schuler Shook.
La Rondine will be experienced by millions of people around the world this season on the radio and the Internet, through distribution platforms the Met has established with various media partners. The January 10 matinee will be transmitted as part of The Met: Live in HD series. Renée Fleming hosts the transmission, which is being sent to Europe, Australia, Africa, and Asia. Brian Large is the HD director for La Rondine.
The opening-night performance on December 31 will be broadcast live on the Metropolitan Opera on SIRIUS channel 78 and XM Radio channel 79, as will the matinee on January 10 and evening performances on January 13, February 11, 19 and 23.
The performances on December 31 and January 13 will also be available via RealNetworks internet streaming at the Met's web site, www.metopera.org.
The Saturday matinee performance on January 10 will be broadcast live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network.
About the Met
Under the leadership of General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director James Levine, the Met has a series of bold initiatives underway that are designed to broaden its audience and revitalize the company's repertory. The Met has made a commitment to presenting modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, with highly theatrical productions featuring the greatest opera stars in the world.
The Metropolitan Opera's 2008-09 season pays tribute to the company's extraordinary history on the occasion of its 125th anniversary, while also emphasizing the Met's renewed commitment to advancing the art form. The season features six new productions, 18 revivals, the final performances of Otto Schenk's production of Wagner's Ring cycle conducted by Levine, and two gala celebrations; the galas include the season-opening performance featuring Renée Fleming as well as a 125th anniversary celebration on March 15. New productions include the company premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic as well as the Met's first staged production of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust since 1906, Massenet's Thaïs, Puccini's La Rondine, Verdi's Il Trovatore, and Bellini's La Sonnambula.
Building on its 77-year-old radio broadcast history - currently heard over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network - the Met now uses advanced media distribution platforms and state-of-the-art technology to attract new audiences and reach millions of opera fans around the world.
The Emmy Award-winning The Met: Live in HD series reached more than 935,000 people in the 2007-08 season, more than the number of people who saw performances in the opera house. These performances began airing on PBS in March 2008, and nine of these HD performances are now available on DVD. The most recent, The Magic Flute is released by the Met and will be available at the newly renovated Met Shop in the opera house lobby in mid-December. The other eight are on the EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, and Decca labels. In the 2008-09 season, the HD series expands to feature 11 live transmissions, starting with the Met's Opening Night Gala and spanning the entire season. The HD productions are seen this season in over 850 theaters in 28 countries around the world. Five new productions are featured, including the Met premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic. The Opening Night transmission was seen in the Americas only; the remaining ten high-definition productions are shown live worldwide on Saturdays through May 9 with encores scheduled at various times.
Live in HD in Schools, the Met's new program offering free opera transmissions to New York City schools in partnership with the New York City Department of Education and the Metropolitan Opera Guild, reached more than 7,000 public school students and teachers during the 2007-08 season. This season, Live in HD in Schools expands to reach schools in 18 cities and communities nationwide.
Continuing its innovative use of electronic media to reach a global audience, the Metropolitan Opera has recently introduced Met Player, a new subscription service that makes its extensive video and audio catalog of full-length performances available to the public for the first time online, and in exceptional, state-of-the-art quality. The new service currently offers 120 historic audio recordings and 50 full-length opera videos, including over a dozen of the company's acclaimed The Met: Live in HD transmissions, known for their extraordinary sound and picture quality. New content, including HD productions and archival broadcasts, will be added monthly.
Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS XM Radio is a subscription-based audio entertainment service broadcasting both an unprecedented number of live performances each week throughout the Met's entire season, as well as rare historical performances, newly restored and remastered, spanning the Met's 77-year broadcast history.
In addition to providing audio recordings through the new Met on Rhapsody on-demand service, the Met also presents free live audio streaming of performances on its website once every week during the opera season with support from RealNetworks®.
The company's groundbreaking commissioning program in partnership with New York's Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), provides renowned composers and playwrights with the resources to create and develop new works at the Met and at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater. The Met's partnership with LCT is part of the company's larger initiative to commission new operas from contemporary composers, present modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, and provide a venue for artists to nurture their work.
The Met has launched several audience development initiatives such as the company's Open House Dress Rehearsals, which are free and open to the public. Two are planned for the 2008-09 season: La Damnation de Faust on November 4 and La Sonnambula on February 27. Just prior to beginning the current season, the Met presented a free performance of the Verdi Requiem on September 18, in tribute to the late Luciano Pavarotti. Other company initiatives include the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met which exhibits contemporary visual art; the new $25 Weekend Tickets program; the immensely successful Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Rush Ticket program; and an annual Holiday Series presentation for families. This season's special Holiday Presentation is Julie Taymor's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, an abridged, English-language version of the opera which is given four special matinee performances and one holiday evening performance as a way for families to celebrate the holiday season.
