La Cieca’s familiar spirits have been turning their generally steely eyes to the Future Met Wiki, attempting in vain to make sense of impending repertoire and casting at Casa Gelb. Perhaps you, the cher public, can offer your insights and suggestions the better to fill the many gaping lacunae in their prognostications.
According to the most recent updates to insertions to the Wiki, we will hear no fewer than eight(!) operas in French next season: Carmen, Guillaume Tell, Roméo et Juliette, Cyrano de Bergerac, Thaïs, Werther and Pelléas et Mélisande. The Debussy has has a recent casting update, as has the Bizet, but the others have not. Has anyone heard whether some of this plethora of French repertoire will be dropped or moved to a different season?
Consider casting of the title roles in Pelléas et Mélisande—that is, whom do you think the Met would cast, which is not necessarily your “dream” casting. We don’t exactly picture Piotr Beczala as Pelléas, but if he’s out of Idomeneo in 2016-17 in favor of Matthew Polenzani, he seems otherwise off the roster.
Doesn’t Pelléas require a star conductor as champion? At one time Yannick Nézet-Séguin was attached to 2016-17’s revivals of Manon Lescaut and Fliegende Holländer, so if he’s leading the Debussy, will this revival move to 2017-18?
Fidelio is coming back sometime in the next two years, with Adrienne Pieczonza and Greer Grimsley. Which season will it happen, do you think, and is Jonas Kaufmann the Florestan? (He’s probably doing the new Tosca in 2017-18, and he’s acted resentful lately about spending too much time in the US.)
The next few seasons will offer Met debuts for tenors Diego Silva and Michele Angelini, baritone Etienne Dupuis and mezzo Daniela Mack. Any idea in what repertoire?
La fanciulla del West and Mefistofele seem to hover somewhere on the horizon. Any guesses which season(s) in particular?
Who would seem a logical choice for Pollione opposite Anna Netrebko and Marina Rebeka in the 2017-2018 new production of Norma?
Is Sonya Yoncheva the raison d’être for a revival of Thaïs?
Who, if anyone, would you like to see in the double bill of Les Mamelles de Tirésias and L’enfant et les sortilèges which is supposedly on the books for 2018?
Will Don Carlo return in a four-act version? When?
The season 2018-2019 is already looking odd, with ony four new productions scheduled, likely in order to accommodate necessary revisions in the Ring revival that year. By December 31 we will see stagings of Samson et Dalila, Adriana Lecouvreur, Iphigenia in Aulis (Golijov) and… what? Lucrezia Borgia? La traviata?
At one point rumors placed the new Traviata as opening night 2019, but that now seems unlikely for two reasons: it’s to be directed by Michael Mayer, who is also staging the new Nico Muhly Marnie that season, plus a reliable source insists that the opener for the 2019 season will be a new Porgy and Bess!
We call on you, parterriani, for answers!
