The season opens with Cherubini’s Medea, a Met-premiere production starring soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role.
Having triumphed at the Met in some of the repertory’s fiercest soprano roles, Sondra Radvanovsky stars as the mythic sorceress who will stop at nothing in her quest for vengeance.
Joining Radvanovsky in the Met-premiere production of Cherubini’s rarely performed masterpiece is tenor Matthew Polenzani as Medea’s Argonaut husband, Giasone; soprano Janai Brugger as her rival for his love, Glauce; bass Michele Pertusi as her father, Creonte, the King of Corinth; and mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova as Medea’s confidante, Neris.
Media screens on 18, 19, 20, 22 November at Cinema Nouveau Rosebank Mall, Bedford Centre and Brooklyn Mall in Gauteng, Gateway in Umhlanga KZN, and Garden Route, Somerset and Blue Route in Western Cape.
In addition to Medea, 2022–23 Live in HD season will feature two more company premieres, both led by Met music firector Yannick Nézet-Séguin: Kevin Puts’s The Hours, in its world-premiere production, starring the powerhouse trio of soprano Renée Fleming, mezzosoprano Joyce DiDonato, and soprano Kelli O’Hara, and the Met premiere of Terence Blanchard’s first opera, Champion, about the life of boxer Emile Griffith.
Four additional new productions will be presented throughout the season: Giordano’s Fedora with soprano Sonya Yoncheva in the title role; Wagner’s Lohengrin starring tenor Piotr Beczała; and two Mozart operas conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann, including a cinematic staging of Don Giovanni by Ivo van Hove and Simon McBurney’s production of Die Zauberflöte, which raises the orchestra pit to allow interaction with the cast.
“Our 2022–23 Live in HD season picks up where we left off at the end of the current season, with more new productions and more Met premieres than in recent decades,” said Met general manager Peter Gelb. “Our lessons learned during the two years of the pandemic are that the future of the Met, and of opera, rely upon ceaselessly breaking new and diverse artistic ground. It’s our path forward.”
Live in HD audiences will also have the chance to see Michael Mayer’s celebrated production of Verdi’s La Traviata starring soprano Nadine Sierra as Violetta; and the return of two of Robert Carsen’s productions, including Verdi’s Falstaff, with baritone Michael Volle singing the title role in his first Verdi opera at the Met, and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, with soprano Lise Davidsen and mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard as the Marschallin and Octavian.
