[Feb. 17, 2011]—In a break with tradition and expectations, the big world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera next season isn’t really a newly written opera at all. Announced yesterday at the Met’s unveiling of its 2011-12 season, The Enchanted Island is a pastiche of Baroque arias by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau and others, re-fitted to a new story (with a new libretto) by British director Jeremy Sams that draws upon Shakespearean comedies including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest.” The work will be conducted by William Christie with an all-star cast of Danielle de Niese, Joyce DiDonato, Placido Domingo, and David Daniels, who appeared mid-press conference to sing one of the sumptuous arias with piano accompaniment.
 |
The house’s 2011-12 season opens with Anna Netrebko singing the title role in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, an opera that has never before been staged at the Met. Anna Bolena is also the first of a planned series of all three of the composer’s “queen” operas, which also includes Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux. As Met general manager Peter Gelb noted with evident pleasure at the press conference announcing the upcoming season, the superstar soprano will be singing more often at the Met this coming season than at any other house in the world: Netrebko also stars in Massenet’s Manon beginning in March.
Other highlights include a rather modernist approach to Don Giovanni directed by British theater director Michael Grandage in October, and a staging of Gounod’s Faust starting in November that casts its time period during the two World Wars, with conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin returning to the Met and whose slated first cast includes Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann, and Rene Pape.
 |
The 2011-12 season also includes Wagner's last two Ring operas from the new Robert Lepage production that features what’s become known as “The Machine”: two dozen planks that rotate on one axis and that together weighs 45 tons. For Siegfried, which begins in October, The Machine will have lifelike, 3D-style imagery projected onto it, though this technology is not to be re-employed for Gotterdammerung in January. Siegfried also now stars Gary Lehman and Stephen Gould sharing the title role, after Ben Heppner's recent announcement that he is forced to retire this role.
Despite the lack of any contemporary operas to be premiered this year, music director James Levine noted at the conference that Philip Glass’ Satyagraha, inspired by the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi, is returning in November 2011 after its very successful Met/English National Opera production in 2008. “It’s important to bring contemporary pieces back as part of the repertory, rather than taking a one-season-only approach,” said Levine.
Opera lovers well outside New York will also enjoy another season of up-close-and-personal HD transmissions: 11 performances are set for HD broadcast to theaters worldwide of all of the above premieres and new productions, as well as Handel's Rodelinda starting Renee Fleming in December, Verdi's Ernani in March with Salvatore Licitra and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and a reprise of the Willy Decker production of La traviata in April, now with Natalie Dessay as Violetta.
Browse more editorial features here
by Anastasia Tsioulcas
