Be sure to be right here at parterre tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday, February 16) beginning at 1:00 pm for coverage of the Met’s season announcement press conference!

The press release continues: “In Siegfried, Gary Lehman sings the title role on October 27, November 1, 5 matinee, April 21 matinee, and April 30; Stephen Gould sings it on May 9. In Götterdämmerung, Gary Lehman sings the role of Siegfried on January 27, February 7, 11, and May 3; Stephen Gould sings it on January 31, February 3, April 24, and May 12 matinee.”

In other news, the Met will perform Siegfried and Götterdämmerung during 2011-2012. Other details for the season will be revealed next week at the company’s annual season announcement press conference.

La Cieca invites you to peruse Brad’s prognostications for the Met’s 2011-2012 season and then to exercise your own powers of prescience. In the comments section below, answer (with explanation) each of the following questions:

1. Which event next season is most likely to be judged “demented?”
2. Which event next season is most likely to be judged “filth?”
3. Which casting (role/artist) is the season’s “must see?”
4. Which casting (role/artist) is the season’s “must miss?”
5. If you could add one opera or artist to next season’s schedule, what would it be?
6. If you could subtract one opera or artist from next season’s schedule, which would it be?

There’s an Amazon gift card in the balance, cher public, and as usual La Cieca’s judgment is final and irrevocable.

Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network Stations

Flórez is, of course, one of the Met’s biggest draws and a favorite of Peter Gelb‘s, and, furthermore, the focus of the Met as the company moves into the Twenty-teens seems increasingly to be turning to bel canto works neglected since early in the Levine era.

Note that per Brad, Flórez is on board for L’elisir d’amore in 2011-12, a revival of Le Comte Ory in 2012-14, and the Met premiere of La donna del lago in 2014-15. So the assumption here is that the tenor should be singing something at the Met in 2013-14, most likely a role new to the house, and probably a new production. If not Puritani, then what?

And, as a sidebar, who here really believes that the Bellini will go forward without Flórez and with Natalie Dessay?

This frou-frou is to be contrived of snips and snails and oddments of Handel and Vivaldi, and it features, well, everyone actually: Joyce DiDonato, Danielle de Niese, Luca Pisaroni, Lisette Oropesa, Anthony Roth Costanzo, David Daniels, and Placido Domingo as “The Skipper,” uh, check that — ah, as “Neptune.”  (Avid Bette Midler fans will not be surprised to hear that legendary tenor “will make an entrance on a giant seashell.”)

Kudos to Mr. Gelb, who doubtless will go down in history as “the James Bidgood of opera!” [NYT]

Veteran Verdian Leo Nucci will take on the title role for these five performances, including the Saturday broadcast.

Tosca returns, though not in the opening weeks: so, assume Bondy! La Cieca’s information is that Sondra Radvanovsky will sing the January 2011 performances, with Violeta Urmana taking over the role in March and April.

The Metropolitan Opera commission Daedalus by Osvaldo Golijov seems to have slipped through the cracks, for now at least. According to the virtually always accurate Met Futures by Brad Wilber, the premiere of the work, planned for the 2011-2012 season, is not going to take place.

will include a rarely-seen French Grand Opera and an evening centered around pieces of Verdi done with a double chorus – one all African-American, one all Caucasian that will tell stories of today’s New York. During the first season we can also expect a new Pelleas et Melisande, but the plan for Nixon in China has been abandoned due to Gelb’s producing it in 2010-11. NYCO and The Met are committed to being divergent – aiming toward no overlap in the repertory.

On the horizon for 2011-2012: a “massive” production of Billy Budd to feature Nathan Gunn in the title role for the first time in New York. . .  at The Park Avenue Armory.

 

 

According to Variety, the late director’s plans at the Met also included a new production of Eugene Onegin to open the 2012 season, replacing the Robert Carsen staging currently used at the Met and telecast last year. (La Cieca’s guess: this Onegin is for Anna Netrebko and Mariusz Kwiecien).