The MET
Orchestra
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is regarded as one of
the world’s finest orchestras. From the time of the company’s inception in
1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert
performances and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish
and style.
The
MET Orchestra (as the ensemble is referred to when appearing in concert outside
the opera house) maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals
during its 32-week New York season, when the company performs seven times a
week in repertory that normally encompasses approximately 27 operas.
Arturo Toscanini conducted almost 500
performances at the Met, and Gustav Mahler,
during the few years he was in New York, conducted 54 Met performances. More
recently, many of the world’s great conductors have led the orchestra: Walter,
Beecham, Reiner, Mitropoulos, Kempe, Szell, Böhm, Solti, Maazel, Bernstein,
Mehta, Abbado, Karajan, Dohnányi, Haitink, Tennstedt, Ozawa, Gergiev,
Barenboim, and Muti. Carlos Kleiber’s only US opera performances were with the
MET Orchestra.
In addition to its opera schedule, the orchestra has a distinguished history of
concert performances. Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic
conductor with the Met Orchestra
in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who appeared with the
orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein,
Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moritz
Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler. Since the
orchestra resumed symphonic concerts in 1991, instrumental soloists have
included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, and Evgeny Kissin, and
the group has performed five world premieres: Babbitt’s Piano Concerto No. 2
(1998), Bolcom’s Symphony No. 7 (2002), Shen’s Legend (2002), and Wuorinen’s Theologoumenon
(2007) and Time Regained (2009).
The orchestra’s high standing led to
its first commercial recordings in nearly 20 years: Wagner’s complete Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine.
Recorded by Deutsche Grammophon over a period of three years, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung
were winners of an unprecedented three consecutive Grammy Awards in 1989, 1990,
and 1991 for Best Opera Recording. Other recordings under Maestro Levine
include L’elisir d’amore, Idomeneo, Le nozze di Figaro, Der
fliegende Holländer, Parsifal, Erwartung, Manon Lescaut, and seven Verdi operas. Maestro Levine has also led
the orchestra for recordings of Wagner overtures, Verdi ballet music, an
all-Berg disc with Renée Fleming, and aria albums with Bryn Terfel, Kathleen
Battle, and Ms. Fleming. The orchestra’s first symphonic recordings are
pairings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an
Exhibition with Stravinsky’s Le Sacre
du printemps; Beethoven’s “Eroica” with Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphonies;
and Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote and
Tod und Verklärung.
In spring 1991 the orchestra, under the
leadership of Maestro Levine, began concert touring. They have since traveled
across the US and to Europe (including their debut at the Salzburg Festival in
2002), as well as annually to Carnegie Hall.
Fabio Luisi
Fabio
Luisi was named principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in September
2011. He made his Met debut in 2005, leading Verdi’s Don Carlo, and has since returned to the company for performances
of Die Ägyptische Helena, Simon Boccanegra, Turandot, Elektra, Le Nozze di Figaro, Hansel and Gretel, Ariadne
auf Naxos, Rigoletto, Tosca, Lulu, and Das Rheingold.
This past summer, he joined the company for a tour of Japan, leading Don Carlo, La Bohème, and a concert with the MET Orchestra in Tokyo. In May
2011, he conducted the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall with soloist Natalie
Dessay. This season, Maestro Luisi appears at the Met conducting new
productions of Siegfried, Don Giovanni, Massenet’s Manon, and a revival of La Traviata.
A native of Genoa, Italy, Maestro Luisi is currently chief conductor of the
Vienna Symphony and artistic director of the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo,
Japan. He served as general music director of the Saxon State Opera and
Staatskapelle Dresden from 2007 to 2010, artistic director of the MDR Symphony
Orchestra in Leipzig from 1999 to 2007, music director of the Orchestre de la
Suisse Romande from 1997 to 2002, and chief conductor of Austria’s Tonkünstler
Orchestra from 1995 to 2000. He has appeared with many of the world’s most renowned orchestras and opera companies,
including the New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio
Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, the Chicago and Boston Symphony Orchestras, the
Philadelphia Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Santa
Cecilia Orchestra, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Vienna State
Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Berlin’s Deutsche Oper and State Opera, and the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 2002.