Carnegie Hall

Bringing opera lovers to their feet with more than 200 performances each season, The Met Orchestra is also a world-class symphonic ensemble, both on stage and in the pit. It also stands at the nexus of two premier performing arts institutions, having headlined at Carnegie Hall nearly 90 times since 1918. For a better understanding of what makes this Grammy Award–winning “singer’s orchestra” so unique, here is some useful trivia about opera’s ultimate musicians.

Upstart Roots

Ask any fan of the HBO drama series The Gilded Age: Late–19th-century New York was dominated by a tense and bitter rivalry between old- and new-money families. In 1883, this feud led to the establishment of one of Manhattan’s great cultural touchstones, as the city’s newly wealthy industrialists, tired of being denied access to the “old money” elite’s social circles, established the Metropolitan Opera Company as an alternative to the more established Academy of Music opera house.

Built at 39th Street and Broadway, the new theater included three tiers of private boxes, in which new-money notables—among them the Morgans, Roosevelts, and Vanderbilts—could flaunt their wealth and social prominence. The early Metropolitan Opera Orchestra also contradicted custom. At the inaugural performance of Gounod’s Faust on October 22, 1883, the musicians were not discreetly tucked away in the orchestra pit, as had recently become the norm in European opera houses. Instead, they occupied a highly visible position on the same level as the spectators on the auditorium’s main floor.

Like Clockwork

Although billed primarily as a backing “orchestra for hire” in its early years, the Met’s orchestra grabbed headlines whenever it played outside the opera house. Its first headline appearance at Carnegie Hall was on June 4, 1918, supporting pianist Leo Ornstein, in a performance that attracted attention not only for what was played, but for what wasn’t.

After a spirited reading of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture led by then–principal conductor Artur Bodanzky, the orchestra regrouped behind Ornstein for a special presentation of Anton Rubinstein’s Fourth Piano Concerto. Eager to showcase the new Ampico player piano—a recent invention that could capture all the expression of an original performance, with dynamics and fine nuances, and then reproduce it—the American pianist-composer sat stonily at the instrument for the first movement of the concerto as it played itself. Then, for comparison, he treated the astonished crowd to his own live rendition of the second and third movements. “There was nothing automatic or mechanical about the thing,” marveled The Sun in a review published the following day. “It even satisfied the exacting Mr. Ornstein himself.”

Opera Masters

The globetrotting Italian conductor Auguste Vianesi—an early champion of notable singers such as Pauline Viardot, Marcella Sembrich, and Feodor Chaliapin—helmed the first season of the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1883. Yet for nearly a century thereafter, the company didn’t have an officially designated music director until Rafael Kubelík was appointed in 1973. In the interceding years, the orchestra welcomed a dazzling roster of famous conductors from around the world—Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini, Erich Leinsdorf, and Fritz Reiner, to name a few—who helped put the orchestra on the map. And following the appointment of James Levine as music director in 1975, the orchestra branched out even further, with a series of recordings and a spate of domestic and international tours; Levine led 70 of the orchestra’s more than 90 concerts at Carnegie Hall, where he also established a regular series of chamber-music performances that featured members of the ensemble. “In time, many critics came to consider the Met 
Orchestra on a par with the leading symphonic ensembles of the world,” The New York Times wrote in Levine’s obituary.

Since 2018, Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin has built upon this legacy and helped sustain the orchestra’s top-shelf reputation. “I am truly honored and humbled,” he commented on the occasion of his appointment, “to work with the extraordinary orchestra, chorus, and staff of what I believe is the greatest opera company in the world.” He’s been an ambitious and flexible leader from the start: In addition to the annual full-orchestra concerts at Carnegie Hall, Nézet-Séguin also conducts (and performs in) some of the events in the orchestra’s chamber ensemble series.

Making the Cut

The orchestra pit in the modern Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center can accommodate roughly 110 musicians; today, the Met’s orchestra is one of the largest in the world, with more than 120 members, including associate musicians. The workload for these skilled players is enormous, with seven performances per week—compared with the typical American orchestra schedule of three per week—and their nightly “concerts” are often four hours or more in length.

To meet these demands, the musicians themselves are highly accomplished international performers, recording artists, and teachers, comprising large portions of the music faculties of all the major universities and conservatories in the New York metropolitan area. The selection process for open seats is highly competitive: Routinely drawing upward of 200 applicants for a single position, the auditions are completely “blind,” with the selection committee unable to see applicants until after the final rounds are over.

Champions of Chamber Music

With musicians so accomplished, it soon became clear that many deserved their own limelight. On October 11, 1998, a smaller selection of artists convened at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall for an intimate—and diversely programmed—evening of Mozart, Schoenberg, Ligeti, and Poulenc. The Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble’s maiden recital was so popular that the group—with musicians plucked from across the orchestra—has since performed nearly 50 times at Carnegie Hall, presenting small-scale classics and lesser-known gems to a keen audience, sometimes with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin joining them at the podium and keyboard.

Often out of sight but rarely out of mind, The Met Orchestra has achieved a well-deserved reputation for excellence. Occupying what Wagner called the “mystic chasm” between audience and stage, it electrifies spectators at Lincoln Center night after night, and it continues to win the hearts of visiting conductors. “I love The Met Orchestra,” Italian maestro Gianandrea Noseda, whose relationship with the Met goes back to 2002, has said. “I consider it one of the greatest orchestras, period—and not just in the pit.” Bringing drama and divine musicianship to audiences throughout the season, the orchestra’s artistry is a powerful reminder that opera is more than just what happens onstage.

Photography by Steve J. Sherman, Chris Lee, Jonathan Tichler, and courtesy of the Carnegie Hall Rose Archives.