Renée Fleming is Hanna and Nathan Gunn is Danilo in Lehár's The Merry Widow. Credit: Brigitte Lacombe/Metropolitan Opera
Live from New York, it's™ -- The Metropolitan Opera's 2014-15 season, announced yesterday. Sumptuous promo shots tease twenty-six operas, which includes three house premieres, six new productions and 18 revivals.
Gelb's hybridization of opera/broadway in NYC moves along with the outsourcing of Lehár's The Merry Widow to perennially-baseball-capped Broadway choreographer Susan Stroman (we obliterated our entertainment budget with The Producers tix, and Double Feature was good fun, but how much did Oklahoma suck?) starring Renée Fleming, sided by opera-outsider Kelli O'Hara as Valencienne, who's currently singing in The Bridges of Madison County on the Great White Way.
Other highlights? Tchaikovsky's Iolanta gets a new production by Mariusz Treliński starring Anna Netrebko, who also sings the lady in Verdi's Macbeth. A new Donna del Lago by Paul Curran stars bel canto dream-team Joyce DiDonato & Juan Diego Flórez. Plácido Domingo goes baritone as Don Carlo in Ernani. Vittorio Grigolo goes Grieux in Manon and stars in Les Contes d’Hoffmann vs. Thomas Hampson's Four Villains. Jonas Kaufmann splits Don José with Roberto Alagna against Elīna Garanča's Carmen. Sondra Radvanovsky does Amelia in Ballo. Danielle de Niese brings her Susanna to Nozze (in a new production by Richard Eyre), and Angela Gheorghiu owes it all to Mimì.
MD James Levine will lead six productions (Mozart Nozze, Offenbach Contes, Stravinsky Rake, Verdi Ernani and Ballo and Wagner Die Meistersinger) and René Pape gives a recital of Dvořák, Beethoven, Ravel, and Mussorgsky.
Anna Netrebko in Tchaikovsky's Iolanta. Credit: Baden-Baden Festival: Andrea Krempera
Renée Fleming is Hanna and Nathan Gunn is Danilo in Lehár's The Merry Widow. Credit: Brigitte Lacombe/Metropolitan Opera