So the gossip La Cieca has been picking up is that at some point there were plans at the Met to open the 2012-13 season with Eugene Onegin featuring Mariusz Kwiecien, Anna Netrebko and Matthew Polenzani. The soprano and baritone were also booked to open the 2013-2014 season with new production of La bohème. Then various things happened and the new Puccini production was canceled in favor of the sacred/cash cow Zeffirelli version, and the Tchaikovsky opera moved back a year using the casting (Mariusz, Anna, etc.) of the scuttled Bohème.

So that left the trio of singers booked for a series of dates including the opening night of the 2012-13 season. La Cieca is told that there is an opera tentatively chosen for that time period, but it’s apparently still iffy enough that nobody is saying a title out loud, at least not where La Cieca can hear it. So, once again, the hive mind of the cher public must be called into play.

What opera do you think would be suitable for the 2012-13 opening night? Remember, cher public, the current Met policy is that opening night must be a new production, which means that the work must not be something that is currently on the Met’s schedule (e.g., it can’t be a new Don Giovanni, because there’s already a new staging on the schedule for 2011-2012) and it’s most likely not something for which the Met has a fairly recent successful production handy (e.g., not a new Don Pasquale).

So, your suggestions for a vehicle for these three singers on opening night, 2012?