Christian van Horn

Berg’s 20th-century shocker stars baritone Peter Mattei in the title role, with Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium and soprano Elza van den Heever as the long-suffering Marie. Groundbreaking visual artist and director William Kentridge unveils a bold new staging set in an apocalyptic wasteland.

After the acclaimed Met premiere of Thomas Adès's "The Tempest" in 2012, the composer returned with another masterpiece, this time inspired by filmmaker Luis Buñuel's seminal surrealist classic "El Ángel Exterminador", during the 2017–18 season. As the opera opens, a group of elegant socialites gather for a lavish dinner party, but when it is time to leave for the night, no one is able to escape. Soon, their behavior becomes increasingly erratic and savage. The large ensemble cast tackles both the vocal and dramatic demands of Adès's opera with one riveting performance after another. Tom Cairns, who also penned the work's libretto, directs an engrossing and inventive production, using a towering wooden archway to trap the characters onstage. And Adès himself takes the podium to conduct the frenzied score, which features a host of unconventional instruments, including the eerie electronic ondes Martenot.

Witness the fall of Troy and the rise of an even greater nation in Hector Berlioz’s monumental five-part epic The Trojans. Opera legend Susan Graham, a master of the French opera repertoire, leads the cast as the lovesick queen Dido, who welcomes the Trojan refugees to her shores—only to have her heart broken by one of their heroes.

Music Director James Levine conducts his first new Met production after a two-year absence: Robert Carsen’s hit staging of Verdi’s great human comedy. Ambrogio Maestri is an ideal Falstaff, leading an extraordinary ensemble cast of veteran and up-and-coming Met stars, including Angela Meade (Alice), Stephanie Blythe (Mistress Quickly), Franco Vasallo (Ford), and Jennifer Johnson Cano (Meg). Lisette Oropesa and Paolo Fanale are the young lovers, Nannetta and Fenton.