The closure of opera houses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic created an alarming decrease in audience attendance that many companies are still struggling with, especially those in the U.S. In response, the Metropolitan Opera’s general director Peter Gelb has embarked on a plan to expand the company’s repertoire by producing new works, but public response to the operas presented has so far been mixed. The most common strategy at the Met and elsewhere to address sagging attendance has been to dramatically increase the number of performances of the traditionally most popular operas, particularly those by Mozart, Verdi and Puccini.
The current Met season has been dominated by familiar titles, including seventeen performances of the company’s new Aida, plus nineteen of La Bohème and seventeen of Rigoletto. Both Tosca and Le Nozze di Figaro were done thirteen times, with Il Barbiere di Siviglia just behind with twelve. Many faithful operagoers have been distressed by this sweeping retreat to classics, but perhaps in response, the Met has shown particular care in presenting them with unusually interesting singers and conductors, as demonstrated by late-season iterations of Aida, Nozze, Barbiere and Bohème, which featured some fine debuts and returns.
Michael Mayer’s arid new Aida made a fraught debut on New Year’s Eve, but made a much happier reappearance in late April and found Angel Blue in increasingly confident form. This time she was surrounded by the familiar clarion Radamès of Brian Jadge and especially gratifying reappearances by Mongolian baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat as a commanding Amonasro and, most potently, by superstar Elina Garanča as the glamorously aggrieved Amneris. The Latvian mezzo, usually perceived as a coolly accomplished artist, gave such a fiercely committed performance that long and loud cheers greeted her passionate Judgment Scene.
Following a fine first series, a new group of principals took over Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro, including debuting American soprano Jacquelyn Stucker as a plucky Countess, more actively involved in the comic intrigues than her predecessor, the patrician Federica Lombardi. Though nerves may have caused a rocky “Porgi amor,” Stucker revealed an interestingly smoky soprano that rose easily to bright high notes in a poignant “Dove sono.” Unfortunately, she was paired with the monstrously boorish Count of Adam Plachetka, whose increasingly gritty bass-baritone makes his continued presence in the Met’s Mozart productions difficult to understand.
The newlywed servants featured a far happier pairing, with the familiar Figaro of Luca Pisaroni delighting in his new Susanna—fellow Italian Rosa Feola, whose warmly mercurial portrayal betrayed no trace of soubrette brittleness. Her teasingly seductive “Deh vieni non tardar” proved the evening’s highlight and was greeted by the audience’s biggest ovation. Conductor Joana Mallwitz again led her second cast with verve, and they responded to the comic Richard Eyre staging with engaging enthusiasm, none more than Emily D’Angelo’s horny Cherubino, sung with roguish charm.
A similarly accomplished second cast convened for Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia, Nozze’s “prequel,” on May 16 in Bartlett Sher’s effervescent first and best Met production. It brought two company debuts: American tenor Jack Swanson as Count Almaviva and Hungarian bass-baritone Peter Kálmán as Don Bartolo. The latter brought considerably more voice and far less clichéd buffo shtick than usual to the role of Rosina’s intemperate guardian. Though stylish new conductor Giacomo Sagripanti set a breathless tempo for “A un dottor della mia sorte,” Kálmán handled the patter with wonderfully exasperated aplomb.
Tall and handsome, Swanson made a more equivocal impression. While his Count began by uneasily serenading Rosina, he relaxed and was genuinely amusing in his duo disguises as the drunken soldier and as Don Alonso, the faux music teacher. But Swanson seized on the current trend to include the Count’s extended, extraneous scena near the opera’s end—but its elaborate coloratura showed the tenor hasn’t yet unlocked the secret to making it sound smoothly effortless.
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Moldovan baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky hadn’t returned to the Met since his 2019 debut as Schaunard in La Bohème, but he came back with a restlessly livewire Figaro, one who vigorously sought to dominate his namesake opera. His bold “Largo al factotum” signaled that his sturdy baritone belonged at the Met, and if his coloratura wasn’t particularly suave, it still moved more easily than Swanson’s. Russian baritone Alexander Vinogradov (a holdover from the premiere cast), usually seen at the Met as dour types like Ramfis in Aida or Wurm in Luisa Miller, displayed deft comic flair as Don Basilio, and his cleverly underplayed “La calunnia” really clicked.
Berta’s aria di sorbetto often passes quietly, but soprano Kathleen O’Mara’s brightly agile, neatly ornamented rendition signaled that the young prize-winner is a welcome Met addition. But most of all, this Barbiere reiterated that Aigul Akhmetshina is one of today’s brightest new stars. Her bewitching Carmen last season was the lustrous center of Carrie Cracknell’s misbegotten new Carmen, while this time her slyly anarchic Rosina dazzled with witty energy and a voluptuous mezzo that soared from booming contralto lows to the stunning high D that capped her urgent “Contro un cor.” Her easy chemistry with both Swanson and Zhilikhovsky and her mischievous mocking of Kálmán bound together this especially delightful Rossini romp.
The season’s fourth Bohème cast came together in a May 25 matinee of striking unanimity. Though they likely had little rehearsal together, they exuded an easy camaraderie that suggested they had united as Puccini’s young crew many times. Only occasional waywardness between the stage and Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s enthusiastic baton betrayed that it was their maiden voyage together. When scheduled conductor Riccardo Frizza withdrew, Nézet-Séguin stepped in for the first of the cast’s four performances, with Sagripanti taking over for the remaining three.
Much of the interest in this late-season Bohème centered on its Mimi, American soprano Corinne Winters, who had been away from the Met since her 2011 debut in the tiny role of Countess Ceprano in Rigoletto, a role that also served as the Met debut for Dawn Upshaw and Sondra Radvanovsky. Winters has recently become a major star in Europe, thanks particularly to her acclaimed portrayals of Janáček heroines.
As the modest seamstress, Winters brought an expressive if slender soprano with a vibrant top and created an achingly poignant portrayal. In her haunting “Mi chiamano Mimi,” Winters imbued Mimi’s ecstatic outburst to spring—“Ma quando vien lo sgelo”—with a fragile optimism tempered by an undeniable awareness of her frail mortality. She made palpable Mimi’s intense eagerness for love so that the duet “O soave fanciulla” and the Café Momus scene conveyed a desperate happiness she knew wouldn’t last.
Her encounters with Marcello, then Rodolfo, in the third act showed a woman painfully cognizant of her illness. While Anthony Clark Evans was a warm and friendly Marcello to the struggling Mimi, Dmytro Popov, who has sung Rodolfo at the Met since 2016, appeared more concerned with lunging big high notes to the Family Circle. His completely prosaic approach to some of opera’s most soulfully romantic music did a disservice to both Winters and Puccini.
Debuting Hungarian-Romanian bass Alexander Köpezi offered a winning Colline, but the biggest impression among the four Bohemian roommates came from Sean Michael Plumb’s ebullient Schaunard, whose lustrously smooth baritone shone in every appearance. The venerable 1981 Franco Zeffirelli production requires that its Musetta make an outrageously over-the-top spectacle of herself during the second act, but Gabriella Reyes’s take was even more vulgar than most. Her excesses continued into the third act, so much so that Musetta’s generosity to the dying Mimi in the final scene rang hollow. Her big, bright soprano was also undermined by an insistent vibrato that marred her singing throughout.
As these popular revivals demonstrated, the Met has been trying diligently to populate its long-running classics with fresh, vital casts that should invite even the most seasoned audience members to revisit operas they’ve seen many times. I was, for the most part, surprised and delighted by these second, third or even fourth casts, which in most cases surpassed the season premieres that usually get the most attention.
Next season, the Met will present twenty-one performances of La Traviata—the only Verdi opera programmed—as well as twenty, seventeen and fifteen of the Puccini trifecta of La Bohème, Turandot and Madama Butterfly. While the premieres of each offer tantalizing stars, again take special note of their later casts, which will include, for example, Feola, Enkhbat and debuting Liparit Avetisyan in Traviata; sonya yoncheva and Elena Stikhina as Cio-Cio-San, the former paired with the deluxe Sharpless of Quinn Kelsey; and returning soprano Anna Pirozzi as Turandot.
In addition to continuing many performances of these standard repertory works, the Met is also revealing a new scheduling approach. This season, one Bohème cast followed another by weeks—or even months. But in 2025-26, two casts will often perform in the same week. On March 14, 2026, for example, the Yoncheva Butterfly cast will appear at the matinee, followed by Stikhina committing harakiri in the evening.
