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The Metropolitan Opera, which has championed contemporary opera in recent years as it works to attract new audiences, announced on Wednesday that it would bring three modern titles to its stage in the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n
The company will open the season in September with the New York City premiere of Mason Bates\u2019s \u201cThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,\u201d an opera based on the 2000 novel of that name by Michael Chabon, which was first heard<\/a> at Indiana University last fall. The lineup also includes local premieres of Kaija Saariaho\u2019s final opera, \u201cInnocence,\u201d<\/a> from 2021, and Gabriela Lena Frank\u2019s first opera, \u201cEl \u00daltimo Sue\u00f1o de Frida y Diego,\u201d<\/a> from 2022.<\/p>\n There will be new stagings of Wagner\u2019s \u201cTristan und Isolde,\u201d directed by Yuval Sharon, in his company debut; Bellini\u2019s \u201cI Puritani,\u201d for the annual New Year\u2019s Eve gala; and Bellini\u2019s \u201cLa Sonnambula,\u201d directed by the star tenor Rolando Villaz\u00f3n and featuring the soprano Nadine Sierra. Among the dozen revivals planned for the season are Bizet\u2019s \u201cCarmen,\u201d Strauss\u2019s \u201cArabella\u201d and Giordano\u2019s \u201cAndrea Ch\u00e9nier.\u201d<\/p>\n Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, the Met\u2019s music director, will conduct the new productions of \u201cThe Amazing Adventures,\u201d \u201cEl \u00daltimo Sue\u00f1o\u201d and \u201cTristan.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The company\u2019s embrace of contemporary opera<\/a>, which its leaders have said is necessary to overcome serious financial pressures<\/a>, with the belief that newer works sell better than the classics, has had mixed results<\/a>. Attendance has averaged about 70 percent of capacity so far this season, compared with 73 percent at the same point last season. (Still, the Met said that it expected to reach an average of 75 percent capacity by the end of the season.)<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to predict hits,\u201d said Peter Gelb, the Met\u2019s general manager. \u201cOn the other hand, if we don\u2019t promote new works, then we\u2019re saying goodbye to the art form.\u201d<\/p>\n Here are five highlights of the coming season, chosen by critics for The New York Times. JAVIER C. HERN\u00c1NDEZ<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Richard Strauss\u2019s final collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal as his librettist has some strange energies: Weimar-era angst about class and gender roles figures in the plot, with alternating farce and despair throughout. It needs a lead soprano who can energize Arabella, a character who can come across more as being acted upon than acting on her own. Enter Rachel Willis-Sorensen, whose creamy-toned Leonora enlivened \u201cIl Trovatore\u201d earlier this season. She will star opposite the bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny in a revival of Otto Schenk\u2019s classic staging. Opens Nov. 10.<\/em> SETH COLTER WALLS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The inventive director Yuval Sharon, the first American to stage an opera at Wagner\u2019s festival in Bayreuth, Germany, is creating a new production of Wagner\u2019s voluptuous romance \u201cTristan und Isolde,\u201d starring the tenor Michael Spyres and the majestic soprano Lise Davidsen. Under normal circumstances, it would be a massive undertaking in its own right, but in this case, it\u2019s also a prelude: Sharon and Davidsen will team up again for a new staging of Wagner\u2019s \u201cRing\u201d in a few seasons. Opens March 19.<\/em> OUSSAMA ZAHR<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Kaija Saariaho\u2019s last, and perhaps greatest, opera is a slowly self-revealing thriller about the tendrils of pain and trauma that extend from a tragic event at an international school in Finland. \u201cInnocence\u201d will come to the Met with much of what made its premiere, at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2021, such a triumph: Susanna M\u00e4lkki, a friend of Saariaho\u2019s and one of her finest interpreters, at the podium; Lucy Shelton and Vilma J\u00e4\u00e4\u2019s haunting vocals; and Simon Stone\u2019s restless, chillingly realistic production. Opens April 6.<\/em> JOSHUA BARONE<\/p>\n The soprano Asmik Grigorian\u2019s voice is a focused conduit for flooding emotion, the kind that pours out of Tatiana, the yearning teenager at the heart of Tchaikovsky\u2019s masterpiece. Igor Golovatenko sings Onegin, who requites her love too late, alongside Stanislas de Barbeyrac as Lenski. The veteran mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe appears in the small but characterful role of the nanny Filippyevna, and the 31-year-old conductor Timur Zangiev makes his Met debut leading one of opera\u2019s most sumptuous, gripping scores. Opens April 20.<\/em> ZACHARY WOOLFE<\/p>\n This opera, by Gabriela Lena Frank and the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, begins with death. In a reversal of the Orpheus tale, Frida Kahlo returns to earth once more to guide her husband, Diego Rivera, to the underworld on the Day of the Dead. The Met\u2019s production, conducted by Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, features the mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard in the title role. With direction and choreography by Deborah Kolker, who staged the fiery \u201cAinadamar\u201d last fall, this promises to be another visually sumptuous spectacle. Opens May 14.<\/em> CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Arabella\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Tristan und Isolde\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Innocence\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Eugene Onegin\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018El \u00daltimo Sue\u00f1o de Frida y Diego\u2019<\/h2>\n