The Metropolitan Opera will present five new productions in its 2026-27 season, including the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” the company announced on Thursday. But, in a break from recent tradition, the season will start with something old rather than new: Verdi’s “Macbeth.”
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said that an exception was made for next season because the new production of “Macbeth” will feature Lise Davidsen, who is singing the role of Isolde in Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” at the Met next month and has become one of the biggest box office draws in opera.
“Whatever rule I stated a few seasons ago that we are going to open seasons with a new opera is a rule that can be ignored,” he said. “It doesn’t diminish the importance of these new operas. I wanted to open the season with Lise Davidsen.”
Next season’s programming reflects the Met’s ongoing effort to balance demands for its traditional repertoire with new productions that may bring in new audiences. It also offers evidence of the financial struggles confronting the company: There will be 17 productions, down from 18 this season and a larger drop from before the coronavirus pandemic, when there were generally around 25. (As part of the austerity measures, the Met postponed a new production of Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” that was planned for next season.)
The schedule also offered an early hint of what might be a budding rivalry between the Met and its Lincoln Center neighbor the New York Philharmonic, and between their leading conductors, Yannick Nézet-Séguin (the Met) and Gustavo Dudamel (the Philharmonic).
Dudamel, who takes over as music and artistic director of the Philharmonic in September, announced last month that he would bring his orchestra to Carnegie Hall for two nights in November to perform Puccini’s “Tosca” in concert. The Met will also perform “Tosca” that month, with Nézet-Séguin sharing conducting duties with four other conductors.
“As far as the ‘Tosca’ pileup, that was an unfortunate lack of coordination between Carnegie Hall and the Met,” Gelb said. “The New York Phil and I have agreed to to be more careful in the future so we can avoid a clash like that.”
Competition, he said, is “good for the art form,” but he added: “We just shouldn’t be presenting ‘Tosca’ in the same week that the Philharmonic is performing ‘Tosca.’”
“Lincoln in the Bardo,” based on the novel by George Saunders, is the 32nd world premiere in the Met’s history, according to the company. The New Year’s Eve gala production will be Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” (which is one of the company’s world premieres, from 1910). The season will also feature the Met premiere of Kevin Puts’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Silent Night,” in a co-production with Houston Grand Opera, where it was performed this season.
Below, critics for The New York Times share which productions they are most looking forward to.
— Adam Nagourney
‘Macbeth,’ Sept. 22-Oct. 20
For its first new “Macbeth” production in nearly 20 years, the Met turns to two recent headliners of Verdian dramas, Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen. Macbeth is a natural enough assignment for Kelsey, whose Rigoletto is a powerful yet remarkably human creation. Davidsen has largely shown the placid side of her ample, luxuriant voice to New York audiences, so she’ll have to summon Lady Macbeth’s fiendish coloratura and temperament. The director Louisa Proske, who co-founded the scrappy downtown outfit Heartbeat Opera, makes her company debut, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a cast that also includes the tenor Freddie De Tommaso as Macduff and the bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as Banquo.
— Oussama Zahr
‘Lincoln in the Bardo,’ Oct. 19-Nov. 14
George Saunders’s novel “Lincoln in the Bardo,” taking place between planes of existence and written like a script for an ensemble cast, seems an ideal fit for the dreamy world of opera. And what better team for the task of adaptation than the librettist Royce Vavrek, who shares Saunders’s ear for straight-talking and sometimes crass poetry, and the composer Missy Mazzoli, who evokes cosmic forces and delicate psychology with equal brilliance. The world premiere production, directed by the imaginative Lileana Blain-Cruz and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will feature Met stalwarts like Peter Mattei, Christine Goerke, Stephanie Blythe and more.
— Joshua Barone
‘Jenufa,’ Nov. 16-Dec. 4
After bringing a darkly unsettling “Salome” to the Met last year, the director Claus Guth returns to direct Janacek’s searing village tragedy of a young woman’s unraveling in a production that forgoes folklore in favor of keen psychology. The cast is anchored by Asmik Grigorian, a soprano who marries vocal fire and raw theatrical intelligence, in the title role. Alongside her will be the formidable Nina Stemme, who brings her blazing soprano to the Kostelnicka, the stepmother whose desperate act propels the tragedy. Tomas Hanus makes his house debut conducting Janacek’s starkly expressive score.
— Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
‘La Fanciulla del West,’ Dec. 31-Jan. 30
The Met is retiring Giancarlo del Monaco’s long-serving production of Puccini’s durable Wild West opera. Perhaps to cover the high-stakes bet on a staging by Richard Jones, the company is brandishing big vocal talents, like SeokJong Baek as Dick Johnson. To wit: Sondra Radvanovsky will make her role debut as Minnie. This soprano has been one of the Met’s most reliably exciting performers in recent years — including as the house’s reigning Tosca. She’ll revisit that character, too, later in the season (though once again, alas, not as part of the Met’s Live in HD broadcasts). I’ll want to hear her in both shows.
— Seth Colter Walls
Adam Nagourney is the classical music and dance reporter for The Times.
The post The Met Opera’s New Season: What We Want to See appeared first on New York Times.
