“Due to Anna Netrebko’s recent decision not to add the title role in Bellini’s Norma to her repertory, the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden—where she was scheduled to debut the role—as well as the Vienna State Opera and Dallas Opera have announced several related cast changes.” The Met’s press office has been whirring this morning, and La Cieca will try to get you up to speed. 

Sondra Radvanovsky will now star in the new production that will open the 2017-18 Met season. As previously announced, the new production will be directed by Sir David McVicar, and will also star Joyce DiDonato as Adalgisa and Joseph Calleja as Pollione. Later that season Radvanovsky will make her company role debut as Leonora in Calixto Bieito’s staging of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino.

Netrebko will step into Radvanovsky’s Fall 2017 performances of Leonora in Verdi’s Il Trovatore in Vienna. At the Met, she will reprise Leonora in a revival of Il Trovatore that has now been added to the season and, as previously scheduled, will debut a new Met role, Puccini’s Tosca.

In the Met’s 2016-17 season, Sonya Yoncheva will withdraw from five performances of Mimì in La Bohème so that she may make her role debut as Norma at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, in the new production originally planned for Netrebko. In her place, Ailyn Pérez will make her Met role debut as Mimì on September 28; October 1, 6, 10, and 14, in addition to her previously announced dates: January 6, 11, and 14 matinee. (She is available for the additional Bohème performances because she had earlier made the decision to postpone her role debut as Tatiana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, which she was to premiere at Dallas Opera this fall.)

Yoncheva will appear at the Met in 2016-17 as Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata in a run of performances beginning in February 2017.

Photo: Dario Acosta