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 encompassed 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, 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).

Canadian-born conductor and pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin became the Metropolitan Opera’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director with the beginning of the 2018–2019 season. He made his company debut in 2009 with a new production of Carmen and has since returned every season, conducting nearly 150 performances of 17 operas, as well as numerous galas and concerts with the Met Orchestra. This season at the Met, he took the podium to lead the company premieres of Kevin Puts’s The Hours and Terence Blanchard’s Champion, a new production of Lohengrin, a revival of La Bohème, and For Ukraine: A Concert of Remembrance and Hope. This summer, he leads concerts with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and on tour in Europe.

He has been music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra since 2012 and held the same position with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra—where he now serves as honorary conductor—between 2008 and 2018. Since 2000, he has served as artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain. From 2008 to 2014, he was principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He also enjoys close collaborations with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Vienna Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Chamber Orchestra of Europe and has led performances at La Scala, Covent Garden, Dutch National Opera, Vienna State Opera, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, and the festivals of Salzburg, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Grafenegg, Lanaudière, Vail, and Saratoga.

Recent recordings include his first solo piano album, Introspection: Solo Piano Sessions, as well as albums with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. He has been nominated for 11 Grammy Awards, winning most recently for conducting the Met’s recording of Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones and collaborating with Renée Fleming on Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene.

A native of Honolulu, Hawaii, baritone Quinn Kelsey made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2008 as Schaunard in La Bohème. In subsequent seasons, he has appeared with the company as Marcello in La Bohème, the title character and Monterone in Rigoletto, Amonasro in Aida, Germont in La Traviata, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Count di Luna in Il Trovatore, and Peter in Hansel and Gretel. He returns to make his company role debut as Count Anckarström in Un Ballo in Maschera this fall. He was the 2015 recipient of the Met’s Beverly Sills Artist Award, established by Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman. Elsewhere during the 2022–2023 season, he appeared as Don Carlo in Ernani at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Count di Luna and Enrico at the Paris Opera, and the title character of Macbeth at the Canadian Opera Company.

One of Mr. Kelsey’s signature portrayals, the role of Rigoletto has taken him to the Paris Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, English National Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Norwegian National Opera, Covent Garden, Oper Frankfurt, Zurich Opera House, and Hawaii Opera Theatre. Other recent performances include the title role of Falstaff at the Santa Fe Opera, Amonasro in Dresden, Count di Luna in Zurich, Marcello at Palm Beach Opera, the Duke of Nottingham in Roberto Devereux at LA Opera, Miller in Luisa Miller at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Ford in Falstaff at The Dallas Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera Chorus is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading vocal ensembles. It is a ubiquitous presence throughout the Met’s New York season and can be seen and heard in the company’s high-definition transmissions into cinemas (The Met: Live in HD series), as well as on radio broadcasts and audio and video recordings. Performances featuring the Met Chorus have garnered nine Grammy Award wins, including three consecutive awards since 2021. The Met Chorus is at home performing a wide variety of styles, languages, and eras: singing everything from ancient Egyptian in Philip Glass’s Akhnaten to English in Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, as well as operas in German, Italian, Russian, Czech, French, Latin, and Spanish.

Under the direction of Maestro Donald Palumbo, the Met Chorus just completed one of the most ambitious seasons in its history, performing to critical and audience acclaim in all 23 operas in the Met season and working closely with Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and a wide range of guest conductors and directors.

Also at home on the concert stage, the Met Chorus has recently been featured in For Ukraine: A Concert of Remembrance and Hope, A Concert for Ukraine, and Verdi’s Requiem: The Met Remembers 9/11, recordings of the last two receiving Grammy Award nominations. In addition to these works, the group has also performed Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. The Met Chorus made its first appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1996 singing Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust with the Met Orchestra and appeared in subsequent performances between 2001 and 2003.

Donald Palumbo was born in Rochester, New York, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston University. He began his career in the 1980s at The Dallas Opera, where he served as the assistant to Roberto Benaglio, the renowned Italian chorus master of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala. Since 2007, he has been the chorus master of the Metropolitan Opera, following a 16-year tenure as chorus master at Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Mr. Palumbo was the music director of Boston’s Chorus pro Musica and has also served as chorus master of the Canadian Opera Company, The Dallas Opera, Banff School for the Arts Summer Opera Program, Opera Company of Boston, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. In Europe, he has held the position of chorus master at the Opéra de Lyon, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and Teatro Massimo in Palermo. He has worked extensively at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and has conducted the Radio France Chorus in several a cappella choral concerts. From 1999 to 2001, he was chorus director of the Salzburg Festival, the first American to hold that position. In 2003, he was the chorus master for a production of Berlioz’s Les Troyens in Paris under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

Since 2014, he has been a vocal coach for the apprentices of the Santa Fe Opera, and in September 2016, he became a faculty member of the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts at The Juilliard School. In June 2022, he joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as chorus master for performances of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera conducted by Riccardo Muti and returns for performances of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in June 2023.