Canadian stars to shine at opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's 2024-25 season
Mezzo-soprano Emily D'Angelo will lead the cast of Grounded, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting
The Metropolitan Opera in New York City has announced its 2024-25 season, and its highly touted opening night on Sept. 23 will put two Canadian musicians front and centre.
Mezzo-soprano Emily D'Angelo, who hails from Toronto, will lead the cast of Grounded, an opera the Met recently commissioned from Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori, known for her Broadway musicals Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo. D'Angelo will sing the role of Jess, a fighter pilot "whose pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating Reaper drones," according to the press release. The Met's music director, Montrealer Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will conduct some of the opening run's seven performances, the final of which will be live streamed in HD in cinemas on Oct. 19.
Grounded premiered in October 2023 at Washington National Opera, and the New York Times' review described D'Angelo as "perfectly cast," while pointing to some of the controversy surrounding the production, which was sponsored by arms and combat-vehicle manufacturer General Dynamics.
Grounded is one of six new productions that will take the Met's stage in 2024-25. The others include Met premieres of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar, Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick and John Adams' Antony and Cleopatra. Canadian baritone Gerald Finlay will sing a title role in the latter opera.
Two war horses will receive new stagings: Giuseppe Verdi's Aida and Richard Strauss's Salome, both to be conducted by Nézet-Séguin, who stated: "This is truly modern — to pay tribute to the essential works of the past while paving the way for an operatic future."
Nézet-Séguin will also conduct performances of Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten.
In the winter run of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, American Canadian soprano Sondra Radvanovsky will reunite with tenor Brian Jagde, following their acclaimed 2021 performances of the opera's lead pair, along with the Scarpia of bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, who returns to the Met after more than a decade.
View the Met's complete 2024-25 season here.
Tune in to the Metropolitan Opera's live Saturday matinee radio broadcasts on CBC Music's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, hosted by Marion Newman.
