The Metropolitan Opera’s 2015-16 season will present 227 opera performances in a varied repertory, ranging from rarely performed masterpieces to perennial audience favorites.  

The season features six new productions:

Verdi’s Otello, opening the season on September 21, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and directed by Bartlett Sher;

Berg’s Lulu (November 5), conducted by Met Music Director James Levine and directed by visual artist William Kentridge in his first Met staging since the acclaimed company premiere of The Nose;

Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles (December 31), which will have its first Met performances in nearly a century, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and directed by Penny Woolcock;

Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (February 12), conducted by Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi and directed by Richard Eyre;

the company premiere of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux (March 24), conducted by Maurizio Benini and directed by David McVicar;

Richard Strauss’s Elektra (April 14), conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen in the final opera production by the late Patrice Chéreau.

All six new productions will be featured in the tenth season of The Met: Live in HD series, which will feature ten transmissions beginning on October 3 with Il Trovatore, starring Anna Netrebko as Leonora. Netrebko will also make her New York recital debut in a solo concert on the stage of the Met on February 28, 2016.

The 2015-16 season was announced by Met General Manager Peter Gelb and Met Music Director James Levine, whose conducting duties for the season include the new production of Berg’s Lulu; revivals of Wagner’s Tannhäuser; Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus; Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, with Plácido Domingo in the title role; and Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail; and a series of three MET Orchestra concerts at Carnegie Hall.  [Online Brochure]

Photograph by Kristian Schuller/ Metropolitan Opera