Three new productions by James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera, will headline the company’s 2013-14 season. Levine will be returning to the Met for the first time in two years, where he will conduct a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Falstaff,” Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte,” and Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck,” three operas the conductor has long been associated with.
“I am delighted to be back with the great Met company, conducting three operas I love with our incomparable orchestra and chorus,” Levine said in a statement.
Levine’s return represents only a small portion of the expansive new season. Fabio Luisi, the Met’s principal conductor, will be leading Gioachino Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” while three directors will be making their Metropolitan Opera debut: Deborah Warner, with a new production of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” starring Anna Netrebko, Mariusz Kwiecien, and Piotr Beczala under the baton of Valery Gergiev; Jeremy Sams, with a new production of Johann Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus,” conducted by Adam Fischer and featuring new dialogue by playwright Douglas Carter Beane; and Dmitri Tcherniakov, with Romantic composer Alexander Borodin’s “Prince Igor,” conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and starring Ildar Abdrazakov.
Two more new productions will round out the season: Nico Muhly’s “Two Boys,” commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, conducted by David Robertson and directed by Bartlett Sher (“A work of dark beauty... a landmark in the career of an important artist,” according to the New York Times), while Richard Eyre stages the final new production of the season, Jules Massenet’s “Werther,” starring Jonas Kaufmann and Elīna Garanča.
The season’s repertory calendar includes Richard Strauss’s “Arabella,” “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” and “Der Rosenkavalier”; a revival of Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” conducted by Los Angeles Opera Music Director James Conlon in celebration of the composer’s centennial; and many more.
Ten of the season’s performances will be simulcast as part of the “Met: Live in HD” series, shown in movie theaters globally. The 2013-14 season at the Metropolitan Opera opens on September 23.