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    Review: With ‘Fidelio,’ the Met Opera Does What It Does Best

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    The Met, a magnet for star singers, flexed its muscles to stack the cast of Beethoven’s only opera, with Lise Davidsen in the title role.Opera houses tend to have their specialties. They might be havens for adventurous directors or unusual repertoire, for grand spectacles or Baroque chamber dramas. The Metropolitan Opera, at its finest, is a destination for voices.The Met is a glamorously storied house with a welcoming audience and undeniable prestige. It hasn’t always been quick to cast today’s rising singers, but when it does, it holds on to them, sometimes even bending its repertory to match theirs.And occasionally, the Met will gather its favorites in a single opera, assembling a vocal all-star team. This is what the company does best, and it can be thrilling to witness, as in the revival of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” that opened on Tuesday.This “Fidelio” isn’t just excellently sung, including by the Met’s sensitive chorus: Jürgen Flimm’s fresh-as-ever staging from 2000 is also led with clarity, drive and insight by the conductor Susanna Mälkki. It’s just a pity that the revival is so brief, with only four more performances through March 15.These performances will also be the last of the season for the soprano Lise Davidsen. With a remarkably luminous sound in Wagner and Strauss roles, she has been a pillar of the Met’s recent casting. But she announced in January that she was pregnant with twins and would take a break from singing after “Fidelio.” (She is set to be back at the Met next year to star in “Tristan und Isolde.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: A ‘Moby-Dick’ Opera at the Met Cuts the Blubber

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      Streamlining Melville’s sprawling novel, Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s moody, monochromatic 2010 adaptation has come to the Metropolitan Opera.The opening line of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” is one of the most famous in literature. But Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, whose moody, monochromatic 2010 adaptation arrived at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday, conspicuously avoid placing those classic three words at the start.It’s an early declaration of independence, the kind that artists have always had to make when turning a well-known novel — especially one as sprawling and shaggy as Melville’s — into singing. Heggie, who also composed the well-traveled opera “Dead Man Walking” (2000), and Scheer, an experienced librettist, have narrowed one of the canon’s most overflowing works to its core plot.For readers who enjoyed “Moby-Dick” but yawned through the rambling digressions about whaling, do I have an opera for you.The compressed adaptation is direct and clear, at least. Some contemporary operas, of which the Met has offered a burst over the last few seasons, lean heavily on confusing devices: complicated flashbacks; characters shadowed by doubles; singers playing metaphorical qualities like Destiny and Loneliness; split-screen-style scenes crossing place and time.“Moby-Dick” wants none of that. It stretches across a year or so, but in a linear way. It never leaves the ship Pequod and its salty surroundings. Its characters are flesh-and-blood people.Yet the opera only rarely takes on flesh-and-blood urgency. While the story is streamlined and straightforward — a ship’s crew struggles with the demanding whims of a vindictive captain — Heggie and Scheer also want to capture Melville’s brooding grandeur, philosophical profundity and portentous language.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jake Heggie’s Adaptation of ‘Moby Dick’ Comes to the Metropolitan Opera

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      Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s 2010 adaptation of Melville’s unruly novel opens this week at the Metropolitan Opera.When “Moby Dick” opens at the Metropolitan Opera this week, audiences will experience a deeply American story of unchecked ambition, fomented grievances and a self-destructive desire for revenge.Based on Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, the opera delivers an economical and resolute retelling of the fateful tale of the Pequod, a ship in pursuit of a vengeful white whale. The libretto, by Gene Scheer, hits the book’s main conflicts without losing track of the action. The score, by Jake Heggie, is graceful and propulsive. The opera’s ending is certain and clear.It’s probably fair to say that more people know the story of the white whale from parodies or synopses than from reading “Moby Dick.” But an adaptation is not just a summary of the book’s major events. A society obsessed with efficiencies can be overly focused on directness.Skillful though it is, the opera, which had its premiere in Houston in 2010, has a kind of scrubbed and airless storytelling that leaves the singularity of the novel behind. This is the sort of adaptation that audiences have long responded to — a simplification of the book’s billowy structure to emphasize its plot. But can a tidy adaptation truly represent this unruly book, with its dramas born of endless uncertainties? Or is the purpose of adaptation something different?The tenor Brandon Jovanovich, center, sings Captain Ahab at a dress rehearsal of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “Moby Dick,” which opens on Monday night.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA composer decides what aspects of the narrative can be told through music, while a librettist shapes the story through words that can be thrown out into the air by way of song. An aria reveals a character’s singularity and ambition. Characters sing them to announce what they want and what lengths they must pursue to get it. Each creative turn adds distance from the book.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Met Opera Announces Its 2025-26 Season

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      Our critics choose highlights from a lineup that includes six new productions and modern works by Mason Bates, Kaija Saariaho and Gabriela Lena Frank.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.The company will open the season in September with the New York City premiere of Mason Bates’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” an opera based on the 2000 novel of that name by Michael Chabon, which was first heard at Indiana University last fall. The lineup also includes local premieres of Kaija Saariaho’s final opera, “Innocence,” from 2021, and Gabriela Lena Frank’s first opera, “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego,” from 2022.There will be new stagings of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” directed by Yuval Sharon, in his company debut; Bellini’s “I Puritani,” for the annual New Year’s Eve gala; and Bellini’s “La Sonnambula,” directed by the star tenor Rolando Villazón and featuring the soprano Nadine Sierra. Among the dozen revivals planned for the season are Bizet’s “Carmen,” Strauss’s “Arabella” and Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, will conduct the new productions of “The Amazing Adventures,” “El Último Sueño” and “Tristan.”The company’s embrace of contemporary opera, which its leaders have said is necessary to overcome serious financial pressures, with the belief that newer works sell better than the classics, has had mixed results. 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.)“It’s impossible to predict hits,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “On the other hand, if we don’t promote new works, then we’re saying goodbye to the art form.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Is an Entire Age of American Opera Missing at the Met?

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      “Vanessa” had the kind of pedigree you rarely see in a world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera.Samuel Barber, who was already famous for his Adagio for Strings, composed the score. Gian Carlo Menotti, his partner and an experienced hand at opera, wrote the libretto and directed. Cecil Beaton, mere weeks from winning his first Academy Award, designed the production. Dimitri Mitropoulos, the house’s leading maestro, conducted.On opening night, in January 1958, audience members sounded pleased during the intermission, according to a report. There were 17 curtain calls. The next day, Howard Taubman wrote in The New York Times that “Vanessa” was “the best American opera ever presented” at the Met. It would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for music.The opera was revived the next season, and again in 1965, when a critic wrote that it “deserves to be kept in the repertory.” Instead, it disappeared from the Met.“Vanessa” has survived, to be sure. The aria “Must the winter come so soon?” is a staple of recitals and competitions. Conservatories and small companies stage productions; a “reimagined” version by Heartbeat Opera is coming to the Williamstown Theater Festival this summer.Why, then, is it impossible to see “Vanessa” at an opera house like the Met? That’s a question with deeper implications: If one of the finest, most enduring American works of the mid-20th century can’t make it to the grandest stage in the country, what hope is there for others from its time?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Edith Mathis, Radiant Swiss Soprano, Is Dead at 86

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      Known for her interpretations of Bach, Mozart and Weber, she was praised for her clear, bright voice and her perfect intonation even on the highest notes.Edith Mathis, a light-voiced Swiss soprano who sparkled in Bach, Mozart and Weber and was the agile-voiced favorite of several of the conducting giants who dominated mid-20th-century concert halls, died on Sunday at her home in Salzburg, Austria. She was 86.Her death was announced by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where she sang throughout the 1970s and ’80s.But she was also a star in all the world’s other major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, illuminating roles like Cherubino and Susanna in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” Ännchen in Weber’s “Der Freischütz” and Marzelline in Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” which she sang five times at the Met in 1971 under Karl Böhm. She was a favorite of his, as she was of his rival for conducting pre-eminence in the last century, Herbert von Karajan.The dozens of opera, oratorio, cantata and song recordings Ms. Mathis left behind illustrate why: a clear, bright voice, perfect intonation even on the highest notes, an unaffected manner and absolute service to the text — “the voice so reliably radiant and clear, the musicianship so reliably impeccable,” the British critic Hugo Shirley wrote in Gramophone magazine in 2018, reviewing a CD collection released by Deutsche Grammophon in observance of her 80th birthday. She was, the dramaturg Malte Krasting wrote in a tribute for the Bavarian State Opera, “the epitome of an ideal Mozart singer.”She was also ideal in the German lieder repertoire — Schubert, Schumann and Hugo Wolf — many of whose songs she recorded with all-star partners like Christoph Eschenbach and Graham Johnson.When, for instance, she sang the Schubert song “Schlaflied” in a 1994 recording with Mr. Johnson, she gave a slight, barely perceptible push to the German word “jedem” (“all” or “every”), in the line “And is healed of all pain.” The extra measure of reassurance for the poem’s subject, a young boy, adds a dramatic point to the whole song.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paul Plishka, Prolific Soloist at the Met, Dies at 83

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      Known for his liquid bass tones and flawless diction, he appeared in 88 roles, many of them comic, over 1,672 performances at the Metropolitan Opera.Paul Plishka, an American singer acclaimed for his sonorous, liquid bass tones and near-perfect diction during a career at the Metropolitan Opera that spanned a half-century, died on Monday in Wilmington, N.C. He was 83.His death was confirmed by his wife, Sharon Thomas, who did not cite a cause or specify where in Wilmington he died.Known for a disciplined approach to choosing roles and a great concern for the development of his voice, Mr. Plishka was one of the most prolific solo singers at the Met, where he appeared in 88 roles over 1,672 performances.“I think the secret of my longevity was having the good sense to turn down repertoire that wasn’t right for my voice at the time,” he said in an interview for this obituary in 2023.Early in his career he preferred buffo, or comic, roles, especially in operas by Verdi. “My voice was more of the basso cantante — with a lyric kind of sound — not a villain’s voice,” he said.But as his voice changed, Mr. Plishka accepted more dramatic roles, including the title one in Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov,” as Philip II of Spain in Verdi’s “Don Carlos” and as Mephistopheles in Gounod’s “Faust” — all stellar performances.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How a Soprano With Dyslexia Rose to the Heights of Opera

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      Elza van den Heever, a star of “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” at the Metropolitan Opera, no longer sees dyslexia as a hindrance — just a different way of learning.When the soprano Elza van den Heever was hired to sing the role of the Empress in Strauss’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” at the Metropolitan Opera, she was elated. It was a dream role — the kind that could cement her reputation as a leading singer.But van den Heever was also nervous. She has struggled with dyslexia since her childhood, in South Africa. And “Frau” is one of opera’s most daunting works, not least because of its dense libretto.“I just sort of assumed in life that I would never be able to sing this kind of complicated music,” she said. “I knew this would be my Mount Everest.”For three years, van den Heever followed a rigorous routine, learning the “Frau” music five to 12 measures at a time and studying the text “as if I were a toddler learning a new language,” she said.Then the pandemic hit, and the Met’s revival of “Frau” was called off.“I was devastated,” she said, “100-percent gutted.”Finally, van den Heever is getting her moment. “Frau” was rescheduled, and is now onstage at the Met through Dec. 19. Van den Heever has won praise for her shimmering voice and seamless virtuosity, and this run of “Frau” has been hailed by critics as a must-see opera.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Shadow of a Childless Woman: The Mythic Roots of Strauss’s ‘Frau’

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      What’s behind the strange emphasis on childlessness in “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” the Strauss-Hofmannsthal opera now at the Met? Look to the ancients.Although the music of “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (“The Woman Without a Shadow”) is often transcendentally beautiful, it is among the least performed of the Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal operas at the Metropolitan Opera. Its relatively rare appearance on the Met stage is, I believe, in large part because of its weird, somewhat incomprehensible, and to some contemporary tastes offensive, libretto. The opera compounds the felony by being (at over four hours) the longest of all the Strauss-Hofmannsthal operas. Only “Der Rosenkavalier” comes close, but as “Rosenkavalier” is the best loved of all the pair’s operas, the length of “Frau” cannot be the only culprit.It’s the libretto. Any summary immediately brings to mind Anna Russell’s satire on the convoluted plot of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” which she excused by remarking, “But that’s the beauty of Grand Opera: you can do anything so long as you sing it.”The “Frau” libretto concerns the Empress, the daughter of the invisible spirit god Keikobad and a mortal woman, who has married the Emperor (a mortal man) but cannot bear children. The sign of her defining lack is that she has no shadow; because she is part spirit, she doesn’t have enough substance to generate a shadow or a child.Many Strauss aficionados have long been uncomfortable with the opera’s strange emphasis on childlessness. But the return of “Die Frau” to the Met’s stage (through Dec. 19) comes at a fraught moment when audiences are dealing with abortion and transgender issues, not to mention concerns over a declining birthrate. They might be apt to criticize it for what they see as a natalist stance. Men and women, however, have been caught up in the convoluted dance of mortality and fertility since the dawn of history, and “Frau” draws upon that tradition, allowing us to see our present preoccupations in both the ancient wisdom and the ancient folly that still bedevil us.Mortality and fertility become real issues when the Empress learns that unless she gets a shadow within three days, her father, the god, will turn her husband, the Emperor, to stone. So she goes to the world of mortals to try to buy a shadow from the malcontented wife of a very nice but very poor man who wants children. He is named Barak, and he’s a dyer, which can be heard, for those listening in English translation, as “a dier,” one who dies, which is the defining characteristic of the dyer and his wife.Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss in 1912. Their opera “Die Frau ohne Schatten” premiered in 1919, in the wreckage of World War I.Fine Art/Heritage Images, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More