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 18 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 more than 150 performances of 24 operas, as well as numerous galas and concerts with the Met Orchestra. During the 2023–2024 season, he conducted the Met premieres of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas, a new production of La Forza del Destino, a revival of Roméo et Juliette, Verdi’s Requiem, and concerts with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Later this month, he leads the Met Orchestra on its first-ever Asian concert tour, conducting performances in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

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 Terence Blanchard’s Champion and Fire Shut Up in My Bones, A Concert for Ukraine, Verdi’s Requiem: The Met Remembers 9/11, and Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice with the Met; his first solo piano album, Introspection: Solo Piano Sessions; Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene with soprano Renée Fleming; and recordings with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. He has received four Grammy Awards (of 13 nominations), winning most recently for conducting the Met’s recording of Champion.

Born in Riga, Latvia, mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča is one of the world’s most in-demand vocalists. She has been a regular on stage at the Met since her debut in 2008 as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and has also appeared as Marguerite in concert performances of La Damnation de Faust, Dalila in Samson et Dalila, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Sara in Roberto Devereux, the title roles of Carmen and La Cenerentola, and Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito.

She began her professional career as a resident artist with the Staatstheater Meiningen, followed by Oper Frankfurt and Vienna State Opera, and she regularly appears at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Salzburg Festival; Festspielhaus Baden-Baden; Bavarian State Opera; Deutsche Oper Berlin; and London’s Wigmore Hall, as well as at various concert halls and festivals around the world. She recently made her debut at the prestigious Bayreuth Festival, appearing as Kundry in Parsifal. She has also received numerous national and international awards, most importantly the title of Kammersängerin from the Vienna State Opera, where she has sung nearly 200 performances of 18 roles since her house debut in 2003.

During the 2023–2024 season, she sings excerpts from Samson et Dalila in concert with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg; Amneris in Aida at Staatsoper Berlin; the title role of Moreno Torroba’s Luisa Fernanda in concert in Madrid; Eboli in Don Carlo, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, and a recital with pianist Malcolm Martineau at La Scala; Verdi’s Requiem with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Kundry at the Vienna State Opera; Judith in Bluebeard’s Castle in Naples and in concert with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and on tour in Asia; and concert appearances with the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra and Vienna Chamber Orchestra.

Hailing from Rockville Centre, New York, bass-baritone Christian Van Horn made his Met debut in 2013 as Pistola in Falstaff. With the company, he has also appeared as Colline in La Bohème, Ramfis in Aida, Oroveso in Norma, Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress, Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro, the Doctor in Wozzeck, Publio in La Clemenza di Tito, the title role of Mefistofele, Julio in the company premiere of Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel, and the Speaker in Die Zauberflöte.

During the 2023–2024 season, he returns to the Met as Colline and also sings Colline in concert with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Bluebeard in Bluebeard’s Castle in concert with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and on tour in Asia, Jacopo Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra at Opera Philadelphia, the Four Villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Opéra de Paris, the title role of Don Giovanni at the Vienna State Opera and in concert at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and Raimondo at the Bavarian State Opera. In recent years, he has also appeared as Bluebeard at Des Moines Metro Opera; Ramfis in Verona; de Silva in Ernani, Banquo in Macbeth, and Walter in Luisa Miller at Lyric Opera of Chicago; Méphistophélès in Faust, Don Giovanni, and Publio at the Opéra de Paris; and Claggart in Billy Budd and Zoroastro in Orlando at San Francisco Opera.

He has also headlined productions at the Santa Fe Opera, LA Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Salzburg Festival, Dutch National Opera, and in Rome, Stuttgart, and Geneva, as well as in concert with The Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and at the Mostly Mozart Festival, Bard Music Festival, and National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He was the 2018 recipient of the Richard Tucker Award and a 2003 winner of the Met’s National Council Auditions (now the Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition).