Marina Rebeka and Jonas Kaufmann in concert at the Arena di Verona, 2025 / Photo: Ennevi

Next month, Gustavo Dudamel’s New York Philharmonic takes on unfamiliar repertoire on unfamiliar turf as part of a new initiative: a complete opera performance at Carnegie Hall. The opera selected to ring in this new tradition (that will play out over the next five years) is Tosca with Marina Rebeka in her title role debut as well as Jonas Kaufmann and Ludovic Tézier. In anticipation, this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag features the leading couple in a bit of a different Puccini work — Manon Lescaut.

Rebeka has never performed the title role in its entirety, though she has sung “In quelle trine morbide” in concerts; Kaufmann is a somewhat more experienced Des Grieux, though he famously never made it to New York in this opera despite the new production that was mounted for him and Kristine Opolais. In fact, Kaufmann hasn’t been to the Met since Fanciulla in 2018 — and can you believe that is has been 16 years since the first (and last) time he brought his Cavaradossi to New York, back during the season that Luc Bondy’s much maligned staging was new? And these two performances at Carnegie are the only ones he has scheduled of this calling card role of his for the rest of the season (alongside single runs each of Otello, Fanciulla, Parsifal, and Tannhaüser), which also includes over half-a-dozen concerts with Rebeka.

New Yorkers will have no reason to be Tosca-starved next month; this season’s revival opens on 1 November with Saioa Hernandez in the title role and includes a matinée performance in between the Philharmonic’s two Carnegie Hall dates! (Later performances feature Aleksandra Kurzak, Eleonora Burrato, Natalya Romaniw, and Sondra Radvanovsky, in her only Met appearances this season.)

Puccini: Manon Lescaut, “Tu, tu, amore tu?”

Marina Rebeka
Jonas Kaufmann

Conductor: Jochen Rieder
Arena di Verona
3 August 2025
In-house