“For the first time in four decades, the Metropolitan Opera has a new music director,” writes Michael Cooper in Thursday’s (6/2) New York Times. “The company announced on Thursday that it was passing the baton long held by James Levine to Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra.… [He] will not officially take up the Met post until the 2020-21 season … and plans to divide his duties between the Met and … the storied Philadelphia Orchestra, which he has led since 2012. He announced on Thursday that he had extended his contract as music director in Philadelphia through the 2025-26 season. ‘I’m very, very lucky, of course—maybe the luckiest music director—to be able to have what I believe to be the two greatest, arguably, organizations in the United States,’ … Mr. Nézet-Séguin said in a telephone interview from Japan, where he was on tour with the Philadelphians…. Beginning in the 2017-18 season … he will conduct two operas a season; in 2020-21 … he will conduct five. His initial contract will then run for five years…. In the coming seasons, he is scheduled to conduct operas by composers including Wagner, Strauss, Puccini, Poulenc and Verdi—including a new production of ‘La Traviata’ in 2018-19.”
Posted June 2, 2016
Yannick Nézet-Séguin photo by Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan Opera
