Explore This Month's E-Resources - School of Music: February 2024

The Met rang in 2022 with a little bit of operatic magic, presenting the New Year’s Day matinee performance of Cinderella to audiences worldwide as part of the Live in HD series of cinema transmissions. An abridged, English-language version of Massenet’s enchanting fairy-tale opera, this performance stars beloved mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard as the rags-to-riches title princess, with Emmanuel Villaume on the podium to lead a witty and whimsical production by Laurent Pelly. The spellbinding cast also features mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo as the love-struck Prince Charming, soprano Jessica Pratt as the spunky Fairy Godmother, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as the wicked Madame de la Haltière, and bass-baritone Laurent Naouri as Cinderella’s compassionate but meek father, Pandolfe.

During the 2022–23 season, prominent American composer Kevin Puts made his Met debut when the company presented the world-premiere production of his fourth opera, The Hours. Adapted from Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel and the celebrated film that it inspired, the compelling new work focuses on a trio of women from three different eras: Virginia Woolf, who is beginning a novel outside London in 1923; Laura Brown, a housewife in the Los Angeles suburbs in 1949; and Clarissa Vaughan, an editor in New York at the end of the 20th century. In this performance recorded as part of the Live in HD series of cinema transmissions, sopranos Reneé Fleming and Kelli O’Hara and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato star as the opera’s three heroines, with Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading an evocative and ultimately life-affirming staging by Phelim McDermott.

Ever since it opened the 2006–07 season, Anthony Minghella’s striking production of Madama Butterfly has been a Met classic. Drawing inspiration from traditional Japanese theater, Minghella’s staging retells this heartbreaking tale with brilliant stagecraft, bold colors, and bunraku puppetry. In this Live in HD performance from the fall of 2019, Chinese soprano Hui He stars as Cio-Cio-San, the young geisha who puts her trust in a visiting American naval officer, only to later be abandoned by him. In a feat of operatic heroics, tenor Bruce Sledge appears as the callous Pinkterton, stepping into the role on short notice to replace an ailing colleague. Pier Giorgio Morandi conducts one of opera’s most tragic masterpieces, leading a cast that also includes mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong as Cio-Cio-San’s loyal companion, Suzuki, and Tony Award–winning baritone Paulo Szot as the U.S. consul Sharpless.

Giacomo Puccini’s final operatic masterpiece, Turandot, is one of the repertory’s most extravagant spectacles. And in the Met’s production, by legendary director Franco Zeffirelli, this tale of an icy Chinese princess and the mysterious prince vying to win her love takes on larger-than-life proportions. This performance, recorded as part of the company’s series of Live in HD cinema transmissions, stars Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska in the formidable title role, going head-to-head with tenor Yonghoon Lee as Prince Calàf, who must correctly answer Turandot’s three riddles or forfeit his head. Maestro Marco Armiliato, a veteran of nearly 500 Met performances, takes the podium to lead a stunning cast, which also features soprano Ermonela Jaho as the self-sacrificing Liù and bass-baritone Ferruccio Furlanetto as Calàf’s father, the blind king Timur.

Puccini’s timeless love story, which includes some of its composer’s most beloved music, has moved generations of opera lovers since its 1896 world premiere. It has also proved incredibly popular with the Met’s global HD audiences and has been featured in three live high-definition transmissions since 2008. The most recent, presented during the 2017–18 season, includes a cast of celebrated young artists. Soprano Sonya Yoncheva is the fragile seamstress Mimì, who instantly falls in love with the passionate poet Rodolfo, sung by tenor Michael Fabiano. Soprano Susanna Phillips and baritone Lucas Meachem trade both spars and kisses as the on-again-off-again lovers Musetta and Marcello, with bass Matthew Rose and baritone Alexey Lavrov rounding out the rambunctious gang of bohemian friends. Maestro Marco Armiliato takes the podium to lead Franco Zeffirelli’s picturesque staging.