Carnegie Hall

The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is regarded as one of the world’s finest orchestras. From the time of the company’s inception in 1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert performances, and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish and style. The Met Orchestra maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals during its 33-week New York season, when the company performs as many as seven times a week in repertory that this season encompasses 23 operas.

In addition to its opera schedule, the orchestra has a distinguished history of concert performances. Arturo Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with the Met Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who appeared with the orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moriz Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler. In recent years, instrumental and vocal soloists have included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, Maurizio Pollini, Evgeny Kissin, Christian Tetzlaff, Anna Netrebko, Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Natalie Dessay, Diana Damrau, Christine Goerke, Joyce DiDonato, Matthew Polenzani, and Peter Mattei. The group has also performed six world premieres: Milton Babbitt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998), William Bolcom’s Symphony No. 7 (2002), Hsueh-Yung Shen’s Legend (2002), Charles Wuorinen’s Theologoumenon (2007) and Time Regained (2009), and John Harbison’s Closer to My Own Life (2011).

One of today’s most dynamic young conductors, Milan-born maestro Daniele Rustioni takes the Met podium next month to conduct a revival of Falstaff. He made his company debut in 2017 leading performances of Aida, returning during the 2021–2022 season to conduct a new production of Rigoletto and a revival of Le nozze di Figaro. Winner of Best Conductor of the Year at the 2022 International Opera Awards, he has served as principal conductor of the Opéra National de Lyon since 2017 and principal guest conductor of the Bavarian State Opera since 2021. This season, he becomes music director of the Ulster Orchestra, following three years as that ensemble’s chief conductor. He is also conductor emeritus of the Orchestra della Toscana, where he served as music director between 2014 and 2020.

The 2022–2023 season also sees him make his Carnegie Hall debut leading the Met Orchestra and take the podium to conduct Tannhäuser, Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon, and Verdi’s Requiem in Lyon; La fanciulla del West, Nabucco, and Aida at the Bavarian State Opera; Massenet’s Hérodiade in concert in Lyon and at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; and Don Carlo at Covent Garden. He has conducted all of the major Italian symphony orchestras, as well as many throughout Europe, and made his debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra in January 2022. He has also led performances at the Salzburg Festival, La Scala, Staatsoper Berlin, Dutch National Opera, Opéra national de Paris, Pesaro’s Rossini Opera Festival, and in St. Petersburg, Aix-en-Provence, Valencia, Venice, Madrid, Stuttgart, Zurich, Tokyo, Rome, and Naples, among others.

A graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green has been a fixture on the company’s stage since his 2012 debut as the Mandarin in Turandot. In subsequent seasons, the Virginia native has appeared as Truffaldin in Ariadne auf Naxos, Jake in Porgy and Bess, Colline in La bohème, Uncle Paul in the Met premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Varlaam in Boris Godunov, the King in Aida, Oroe in Semiramide, “Rambo” in the company premiere of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer, the Bonze in Madama Butterfly, the Jailer in Tosca, and the Second Knight in Parsifal. Later this season, he will star as Young Emile Griffith in the Met premiere of Blanchard’s Champion.

Elsewhere this season, he takes the stage with both the Met Orchestra and Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble for concerts at Carnegie Hall, and sings Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Chineke! Orchestra at the BBC Proms and with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra, Ferrando in Il trovatore and Orest in Elektra at Washington National Opera, Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and at the Opéra national de Paris, the world premiere of a piece by Courtney Bryan with the New York Philharmonic, and Varlaam at the Bavarian State Opera. He is also an artist-in-residence at Florida State University, where he leads master classes with vocal students and gives a solo recital.

In 2014, Mr. Green became a member of the ensemble at the Vienna State Opera, where he appeared in performances of Macbeth, Die Zauberflöte, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rigoletto, Ariadne auf Naxos, Das Rheingold, La bohème, and Anna Bolena, among many others. He has also appeared at the Santa Fe Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, the Salzburg Festival, Houston Grand Opera, and Opera San Antonio. In 2016, Little, Brown and Company published Daniel Bergner’s Sing for Your Life, which tells the story of Mr. Green’s powerful personal and artistic journey.