The Metropolitan Opera:
Le Nozze di Figaro

Conductor Joana Mallwitz makes her Met debut leading an extraordinary cast in Mozart’s comic masterpiece. Bass-baritone Michael Sumuel stars as the clever valet Figaro, opposite soprano Olga Kulchynska as his betrothed, the wily maid Susanna. Baritone Joshua Hopkins is the skirt-chasing Count, with soprano Federica Lombardi as his anguished wife and mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa as the adolescent page Cherubino.

The Metropolitan Opera:
Salome

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts his first Met performances of Strauss’s white-hot one-act tragedy, which receives its first new production at the company in 20 years. Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story—already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play—a psychologically perceptive, Victorian-era setting rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness and light. Headlining the new staging is soprano Elza van den Heever as the abused and unhinged antiheroine, who demands the head of Jochanaan, sung by celebrated baritone Peter Mattei. Tenor Gerhard Siegel is Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias, and tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth.

The Metropolitan Opera:
Il Barbiere di Siviglia

Rossini’s effervescent comedy retakes the stage in Bartlett Sher’s madcap production. Mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina headlines a winning ensemble as the feisty heroine, Rosina, alongside high-flying tenor Jack Swanson, in his Met debut, as her secret beloved, Count Almaviva. Baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky stars as Figaro, the titular barber of Seville, with bass-baritone Peter Kálmán as Dr. Bartolo and bass Alexander Vinogradov as Don Basilio rounding out the principal cast. Giacomo Sagripanti conducts.