‘Porgy And Bess,’ ‘Akhnaten’ To Lead Met Opera’s 2019-2020 Season
The Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City, circa 1965 Image by Getty Images/FPG/Staff
By PJ Grisar February 21, 2019
After almost three decades, the Charleston-set “Porgy and Bess” is coming back to the Upper West Side.
The Metropolitan Opera’s 2019-2020 season, announced on February 20, will open on September 23 with a new production of Ira and George Gershwin’s folk opera, the first since 1990. The staging, brought over by director James Robinson after a rave run at the English National Opera, promises to start the season on a high note, likely courtesy of lead soprano Angel Blue.
Other standouts include the Met’s first production of Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten” with a libretto co-written by Glass, choreographer and director Jerome Robbins, Shalom Goldman, Richard Riddell and Robert Israel. Phelim McDermott will stage the piece, which features a crew of acrobats and jugglers, with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo as the titular monotheistic pharaoh.
Julie Taymor’s production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” returns for its abridged and puppet-filled holiday presentation in 2019, maintaining its status an annual tradition. Less family-friendly is Arnold Schoenberg protégé Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck,” an adaptation of Georg Büchner’s play about a soldier tormented by visions of the apocalypse. In this expressionistic staging by director William Kentridge, baritone Peter Mattei’s eponymous infantryman is billeted in a haunting pre-World War I wasteland.
Michael Mayer’s celebrated production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” will return in the new year for encore performances through January and March of 2020. It will follow a dance-forward autumn run of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice” helmed by legendary choreographer Mark Morris with costumes by Isaac Mizrahi.
Met veteran Elijah Moshinsky will direct Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s imperial melodrama “The Queen of Spades” in the winter of 2019. And in May the Met will welcome a rare three performances of Leoš Janáček’s domestic drama “Káťa Kabanová” directed by Sir Jonathan Miller.
2019 also marks the first year in which The Met will open its doors for Sunday matinees, good news for the Shabbat-observant who prefer an afternoon performance.
PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected]
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
