Metropolitan Opera to Present New Works by Jeanine Tesori and Missy Mazzoli | Playbill

Classic Arts News Metropolitan Opera to Present New Works by Jeanine Tesori and Missy Mazzoli The two are the first female composers to be commissioned by the Met since its founding in 1883.
Jeanine Tesori Rodolfo Martinez

As the Metropolitan Opera's 2018–2019 season prepares to kick off September 24 with a new production of Samson et Dalila, the New York organization has laid out plans for what's to come in future season under the leadership of new Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Among the premieres on tap are new works by Jeanine Tesori and Missy Mazzoli—the first female composers ever to be commissioned by the Met.

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Anne Hathaway in Grounded Photo by Joan Marcus

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Tesori is set to pen an opera adaptation of George Brant's Grounded, according to the New York Times. In 2015, the solo show, about a fighter pilot reduced to operating drones during her pregnancy, played the Public Theater in a production starring Anne Hathaway, who also plans to bring the story to the screen. Mazzoli will compose an opera based on the George Saunders surrealist historical fiction novel Lincoln in the Bardo.

Also in the pipeline is an operatic presentation of Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay from Mason Bates, composer of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. The opera is a co-commission with the Philadelphia Orchestra, where Nézet-Séguin also serves as music director. The partnership between the two organizations will allow commissions to be presented in concert in Philadelphia before arriving on the Met stage. Another premiere, starring recent Carousel Tony nominee Renée Fleming, will also head to New York by way of Philadelphia.

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Yannick Nézet-Séguin Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Nézet-Séguin will also work with General Manager Peter Gelb, aligning the Met with other New York cultural institutions with an aim to champion new voices in the opera scene, including those established in the theatre world. They'll partner with Brooklyn Academy of Music to present a Mazzoli chamber opera; an English-language The Magic Flute directed by Lear deBessonet will head to the Public's Delacorte Theater in Central Park; the neighboring Lincoln Center Theater will be home to an opera adaptation of Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel, composed by Ricky Ian Gordon, next season.

Read: PORGY AND BESS HEADS TO ENO BEFOR THE MET

Other productions lined up include the previously announced Eurydice—a collaboration between Sarah Ruhl and Matthew Aucoin, Jake Heggie's Dead Men Walking directed by Tony winner Ivo van Hove, Phillip Glass' Akhnaten, Brett Dean's Hamlet, Handel's Agrippina, and Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel.

 

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