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 20 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 Los Angeles, soprano Angel Blue is the most recent recipient of the Richard Tucker Award and was the 2020 recipient of the Met’s Beverly Sills Artist Award, established by Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman. She made her debut with the company in 2017 as Mimì in La Bohème and has since returned to the Met stage as Violetta in La Traviata, Bess in Porgy and Bess, Destiny/Loneliness/Greta in the company premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and Musetta in La Bohème. Her performances in Porgy and Bess and Fire Shut Up in My Bones both earned her consecutive Grammy Awards in 2022 and 2023. Next season, she returns to sing Micaëla in the new production of Carmen and appears as Magda in La Rondine and Liù in Turandot.

Elsewhere during the 2022–2023 season, she sang Violetta at Houston Grand Opera; the title role of Tosca at LA Opera, a role that she will reprise this summer at the Santa Fe Opera; the title role of Aida at Covent Garden and in concert at Detroit Opera; concerts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; and a recital at the Tucson Desert Song Festival. She will also go on tour with the Met Orchestra and Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin, appearing in concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris, London’s Barbican Centre, and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.

In recent seasons, she has also sung Marguerite in Faust at the Paris Opera; Mimì at the Bavarian State Opera, Canadian Opera Company, and in Hamburg and Dresden; Violetta at Covent Garden, La Scala, and in Winnipeg; Tosca in Aix-en-Provence; Bess and Violetta at Seattle Opera; Liù at San Diego Opera; Myrtle Wilson in John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby in Dresden; and the Peri in Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri in concert with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Also active on the concert platform, she has appeared in recital and in concert in more than 35 countries, including notable performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Munich Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

A graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Miami-born tenor Russell Thomas most recently appeared at the Met last fall in the title role of Don Carlo. He made his debut with the company in 2005 as the Royal Herald in Don Carlo, returning to sing Rodolfo in La Bohème, Ismaele in Nabucco, Andres in Wozzeck, Tito in La Clemenza di Tito, Tamino in The Magic Flute, the Steersman in Der Fliegende Holländer, Uldino and Foresto in Attila, Malcolm in Macbeth, and the First Prisoner in Fidelio. Later this month, he will join the Met Orchestra and Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin on tour throughout Europe, appearing in concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris, London’s Barbican Centre, and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.

During the 2022–2023 season, he sang the title role of Ernani at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Don Alvaro in La Forza del Destino at the Paris Opera, Calàf in Turandot at Covent Garden, and the title role of Otello and a recital at LA Opera. Last season, he became the first artist-in-residence at LA Opera, a new role which takes him to the heart of the company not only as a performer but as a curator of the new After Hours recital series and as a mentor to the Russell Thomas Young Artists.

In recent seasons, he has given celebrated performances as Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana and Don Alvaro at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Manrico in Il Trovatore at the Bavarian State Opera, the title role of Stiffelio in Frankfurt, Otello at Covent Garden, Florestan in Fidelio at San Francisco Opera, Cavaradossi in Tosca at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Radamès in Aida at LA Opera. He has enjoyed a long collaboration with director Peter Sellars, creating the role of Lazarus in the world premiere of John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and appearing in productions of La Clemenza di Tito and Idomeneo at the Salzburg Festival. In great demand on the concert platform, he has also appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as in the Wiener Konzerthaus’s 2019 New Year’s Eve concert.