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      Met Opera Chooses Tilman Michael as Next Chorus Master

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      Tilman Michael, who leads the Frankfurt Opera’s chorus, will succeed the veteran conductor Donald Palumbo, who steps down this season after 17 years.The chorus master at the Metropolitan Opera has one of the company’s most demanding jobs. There are singers to corral, notes to correct and centuries-old scores to pore over.Donald Palumbo, who brought the chorus to new heights during his 17-year tenure as chorus master, announced last fall that he would step down in June. And on Wednesday, the Met announced his successor: the German conductor Tilman Michael, who has served as chorus master of the Frankfurt Opera for the past decade.Michael, 49, who will join the company at the start of the 2024-25 season in the role of chorus director, said in an interview that he was eager for a “new and exciting” challenge, describing the Met as “one of the most important opera houses in the world.”“Choral singing and choral conducting is my life — it’s what I’ve done since I was a child,” he said. “I’ve loved this work from the very first day.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, who selected Michael, said in a statement that he was a “longtime collaborator and friend whose work I deeply respect.”“I welcome him wholeheartedly to the Met family,” he said. “He has an innate understanding of the complexity of the voice and draws out the best in the choruses he works with.”Under Palumbo, 75, the Met chorus, with 74 regular members and 85 extras, has become an equal partner with the company’s world-class orchestra.Michael, who has also led the chorus at the National Theater in Mannheim, Germany, and served as an assistant chorus master at the Bayreuth Festival and the Hamburg State Opera, said he hoped to build on Palumbo’s legacy. He said he felt a special connection to the choristers when he traveled to New York in February to meet them and try out some repertoire. They worked together on Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” Puccini’s “La Rondine” and Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s “The Hours.”“The Met Opera chorus is a fantastic chorus,” he said. “But I think we can of course every day improve and search for new colors and search for new abilities.”Michael said he was looking forward to a production of Richard Strauss’s fairy-tale opera “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” next season, as well as to new operas by John Adams, Jeanine Tesori and other composers.“When choral music is done well, it’s magic,” he said. “It is just about listening to each other and creating a unique sound together — to feel this energy from your body, from your ears, in your heart.” More

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      Review: Jonathan Tetelman Arrives at the Met in ‘La Rondine’

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      The tenor sang the role of Ruggero in a revival of Puccini’s opera that was performed with such restraint, it verged on overly careful.The revival of Nicolas Joël’s Art Deco-inspired production of Puccini’s “La Rondine” at the Metropolitan Opera highlights a quality that Puccini is not necessarily known for: restraint.In his headline-making debut, the Chilean-born American singer Jonathan Tetelman, who has a Deutsche Grammophon recording contract and the potential to become the house’s next major Italian-opera tenor, didn’t necessarily arrive with a splash.His performance had the careful craft of an Olympic diver who breaks the water’s surface without generating ripples. His second assignment this month is another Puccini work, “Madama Butterfly,” and in a show of faith from the company, he will star in high-definition simulcasts of both operas (“La Rondine” on April 20 and “Madama Butterfly” on May 11).Tall and willowy, Tetelman sang in a performance of “La Rondine” on Tuesday, his third show in the run, with a hyper-focused, brightly resonant voice that conveyed the sunny ping of an Italianate instrument. As Ruggero, he traced fastidious lines through the full length of Puccini’s lavish melodies, holding them taut before releasing them, and artfully negotiated his registers.His approach yields beautiful results in recordings, balancing ardor and sensitivity in a voice of impressive size, but in a live setting, it feels overly controlled. There’s a lean quality to his timbre that renders climaxes loud rather than thrilling. His somewhat studied performance affirms the admirable seriousness with which he approaches operatic art, and it will be exciting to hear him once he figures out how to conceal the artifice required to make it.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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      Patrick Carfizzi Is ‘the Heart and Soul’ of the Met Opera

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      Patrick Carfizzi, a vibrant performer in supporting roles, has grabbed attention in a new production of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino.”Many boxes of pizza had been delivered to the Metropolitan Opera on Sunday afternoon, and were stacked on a table in the hallway between some dressing rooms and the stage.They were a gift from one of the singers appearing in the matinee performance that day: the bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi, who is having attention-grabbing success in the modest but meaty role of Fra Melitone in a new production of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” which concludes its run on Friday.That performance, remarkably, will be Carfizzi’s 459th with the Met. “It’s a huge gift to be here as often as I’ve been here,” he said on Sunday as he put on his makeup and costume, and warmed up. “You just keep working. It’s step by step by step.”Melitone doesn’t appear until the second act. So, as the opera began, Carfizzi was getting ready in a dressing room next to the one he lovingly calls the Charlie Anthony Suite, after its longtime inhabitant, the tenor Charles Anthony, a Met lifer who sang mostly supporting roles in 2,928 performances from 1954 to 2010.Heath Bryant-Huppert applying Carfizzi’s makeup before a performance of “Forza.”Ali Cherkis for The New York TimesCarfizzi, who turns 50 next month and is celebrating his 25th anniversary with the company later this year, has, in the skill and relish he brings to smaller parts, become something of a latter-day Anthony — or Paul Plishka, Bernard Fitch, James Courtney or John Del Carlo. (It was from this group that Carfizzi inherited the morale-building tradition of ordering pizza for the cast and crew.)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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      Ukrainian Conductor Oksana Lyniv Arrives at the Met Opera

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      Oksana Lyniv, who is leading “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera, has used her platform to criticize Russia and promote Ukrainian culture.The Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv was preparing for a performance of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera this month when she saw the news: A Russian drone had hit a building in Odesa, not far from the home of her parents-in-law.She called her family to ensure they were safe. But images of the attack, whose victims included a young mother and children, lingered in her mind. When she conducted that night, she felt the pain of war more acutely, she said, praying to herself when Liù, a selfless servant, dies in the opera’s final act and the chorus turns hushed.“In that moment, I saw all the suffering of the war,” she said. “How do you explain such sadness? How do you explain who gets to be alive and who has to die?”Since the invasion, Lyniv, 46, the first Ukrainian conductor to perform at the Met, has used her platform to denounce Russia’s government. She has also set out to promote Ukrainian culture, championing works by Ukrainian composers and touring Europe with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, an ensemble that she founded in 2016.The war has raised difficult questions for artists and cultural institutions. Russian performers have come under pressure to speak out against President Vladimir V. Putin. Ukrainians have faced questions too, including whether to perform Russian works or appear alongside Russian artists.Lyniv, who now lives in Düsseldorf, Germany, has sometimes felt caught in the middle. She protested last month when a festival in Vienna announced plans to pair her appearance with a concert led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has come under scrutiny over his connections to Russia. (The festival canceled his appearance.)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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      At the Met Opera, the Show Goes On After a Technical Mishap

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      The company put on a semi-staged version of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the last minute, after a backstage lift got jammed.The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Puccini’s “Turandot” is one of the most lavish and intricate in the company’s repertoire, a spectacle that includes an imperial palace, a glittering throne room and expansive gardens.But on Wednesday evening, audience members had to make do without the opera’s usual visual delights. A jam in the Met’s main lift backstage forced the company to put on a semi-staged version at the last minute, with the cast and chorus singing from an improvised set instead.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, walked onstage before the show to explain the situation.“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to say that this is not going to be a normal night at the opera,” he said. “Although our scenery will not be working, the show will go on.”Audience members were offered a refund if they wished to leave, and about 150 people did, the Met said. But most stayed, offering a hearty applause when the conductor, Oksana Lyniv, entered the pit. (The Met, which has about 3,800 seats, said that the performance’s paid attendance was about 80 percent of capacity before the problem was announced.)Gelb said in an interview that the machinery jammed around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, while the Met was changing sets for “Turandot” after a rehearsal for Puccini’s “La Rondine,” which opens next week. Crew members tried using saws to cut through steel bars to free the lift, but their efforts were unsuccessful.By about 6:30 p.m., one hour before the show was to begin, Gelb had to make a decision: cancel the show, or move forward with a pared-down version. He said he was reluctant to turn audiences away.“Everybody rallied together,” he said.The Met used a piece of scenery from the second act of “Turandot” — a wall in the imperial palace — as a backdrop, to provide some color. The action was confined to roughly the first 20 feet of the stage.Gelb tried to encourage the singers by telling them that their music would be more powerful, telling the tenor SeokJong Baek that when he sang the famous aria “Nessun dorma,” “you’ll be that much closer the audience.”Technical mishaps have rarely stopped productions at the Met. In 1966, when the Lincoln Center house was opened, a turntable malfunctioned at a dress rehearsal for Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” The soprano Leontyne Price narrowly escaped being trapped inside the pyramid on top of it. And in 2011, a performance of Wagner’s “Die Walküre” was delayed for 45 minutes because of a technical problem with the 45-ton set.Gelb said that he expected things to be back to normal in time for a performance of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” on Thursday.“Tonight as soon as show ends,” he said, “it will be all hands on deck to free this lift.” More

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      The American Tenor Jonathan Tetelman, a Puccini Specialist, Arrives at the Met

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      Jonathan Tetelman will sing in “La Rondine” and “Madama Butterfly” in New York. He trained as a baritone and worked as a D.J. before finding his “authentic voice” as a tenor.In the middle of last summer’s production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the Salzburg Festival, the American tenor Jonathan Tetelman brought down the house. As Macduff, Tetelman gave a searing rendition of “Ah, la paterna mano,” the heartbreaking aria after his character learns that the bloodthirsty monarch has slaughtered his wife and children.Tetelman’s performance in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s monumentally gloomy production was one of the festival’s highlights. Later this month, the 35-year-old tenor will make his Metropolitan Opera debut in Puccini’s “La Rondine.” He’ll also be heard at the Met as Pinkerton in a revival of the composer’s better-known “Madama Butterfly” that reunites him with his “Macbeth” co-star, the soprano Asmik Grigorian, in April and May. (There are planned Met Live in HD broadcasts of both productions.)In an email, the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, wrote that Tetelman had a “beautiful and big voice that is perfectly suited to the generous size of the Met’s auditorium, which is much larger than most European opera houses, and to these soaring Puccini roles.”Tetelman has swiftly risen to become one of his generation’s most in-demand lyric tenors and is particularly sought after for his Puccini. After singing Rodolfo in “La Bohème” for the first time in 2017 in Fujian, China, he reprised the role a year later at Tanglewood (replacing the Polish star tenor Piotr Beczala) and then on opening night of Barrie Kosky’s production at the Komische Oper Berlin in January 2019.Tetelman played Macduff in a performance of “Macbeth” at the 2023 Salzburg Festival.Bernd Uhlig/SFBut Tetelman’s path to the Met’s stage was anything but typical. Born in Chile, Tetelman was adopted by an American couple when he was 6 months old and grew up in Princeton, N.J. As an undergraduate at the Manhattan School of Music, he trained as a baritone but felt frustrated.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: The Met’s ‘Roméo et Juliette’ Is Saved by Its Stars

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      Bartlett Sher’s middling production returned to the Metropolitan Opera, with a glorious Benjamin Bernheim and Nadine Sierra in the title roles.Sometimes you just need a few great singers.Two weeks ago at the Metropolitan Opera, a superb cast in “La Forza del Destino” outshone a new, somewhat confused staging by Mariusz Trelinski. And now, Bartlett Sher’s handsome yet unconvincing 2016 production of Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” has returned to the house with a pair of singers in splendid form.Sher’s staging situates the action on a raised platform surrounded by stone facades and colonnades. Each sharply etched scene from Shakespeare’s tragic romance — the ball, the balcony, the bedroom, the tomb — occurs more or less in a town square.Beautifully lit by Jennifer Tipton and costumed by Catherine Zuber, the production runs out of ideas quickly. But that doesn’t really matter when you have singers on the order of Nadine Sierra and Benjamin Bernheim in the title roles. For an opera steeped in raptures and reveries, in which fantasies of romantic bliss compete with premonitions of a pessimistic outcome, Sierra and Bernheim were a dream at the revival’s second performance on Sunday.Sierra was luscious, lovely and free throughout her range. Although her full, warm voice sounded a tad mature to portray a teenage girl, the disarming generosity of her sound conveyed a trusting, childlike quality. Reluctant and bashful in Act I, with a naturally youthful demeanor, Sierra started Juliette’s waltz with a coy, plain-spoken quality — a bold choice for the opera’s most famous set piece — and rendered the coloratura with a plump tone.Her ripe timbre signaled that she probably would be better suited to the Act IV potion aria, and more than that, she was stupendous. Once again, she began the aria softly. Then it blossomed with Juliette’s fatalistic determination and came to multiple climaxes with a magnificent series of high notes that spun like liquid gold. Daring to glory in her sound, Sierra touched the operatic firmament. The applause went on and on.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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      Met Opera’s Orchestra Will Tour Asia for the First Time

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      After the pandemic forced the cancellation of a tour planned for 2022, the ensemble will visit Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in June.The coronavirus pandemic forced the Metropolitan Opera to shut its doors for more than a year and a half. It also upended plans that had been in the works for the Met Orchestra’s first Asian tour.Now, that idea is being revived. The Met announced on Thursday that the orchestra and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, would visit South Korea, Japan and Taiwan in June, performing the music of Bartok, Wagner, Debussy and others alongside star soloists.The Met musicians have toured overseas just twice since 2000. Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, said that, beyond showcasing them, the tour was meant to help the Met expand its network of fans abroad.“It’s important that we serve our global constituency with live performances in person when we can,” he said. “It’s very good for the morale of the orchestra to be able to perform in major cities of the world.”The tour, which includes stops in Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo and Hyogo, Japan, will feature more than 110 orchestra players, as well as the mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, the soprano Lisette Oropesa and the bass-baritone Christian Van Horn. The program includes concert performances of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” and excerpts from various operas, including Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer” and Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande,” as well as Jessie Montgomery’s “Hymn for Everyone.”Last year Nézet-Séguin, who became the Met’s music director in 2018, led a company tour, the first since 2002, in Europe. (A 2021 tour there had also been canceled by the pandemic.) “Bringing live music and performances to audiences around the world is my passion,” he said in a statement.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