Metropolitan Opera
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Metropolitan Opera Association of New York City, founded in April 1880, is a major presenter of all types of opera including Grand Opera. Peter Gelb is the company's general manager and James Levine is music director.
The Metropolitan Opera is America's largest classical music organization, and annually presents some 220 opera performances. The home of the company, the Metropolitan Opera House, is considered by many to be one of the premier opera stages in the world, and is among the largest in the world. The Met, as it is commonly called, is one of the twelve resident organizations at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
The Met presents a wide array of about twenty-seven operas each year in a season which lasts from mid-September through May. The operas are presented in a rotating repertory schedule with seven performances of four different works presented each week. Performances are given in the evening Monday through Saturday with a matinée on Saturday. Several new opera productions are offered each season. Sometimes these are borrowed from or shared with other major opera houses. The rest are given in revivals of productions from previous seasons.
The Met's huge performing company consists of a large symphony-sized orchestra, a chorus, children's choir, ballet company, and many supporting and leading solo singers. The Met's roster of singers is drawn from the ranks of the world's most famous artists. Some of its singers' careers have been developed by the Met itself through its young artists programs. Others have been engaged from companies around the world. Many, such as Luciano Pavarotti, have achieved world fame while singing at the Met, and a number, such as Renée Fleming and Plácido Domingo, are longtime regular members of the Met's roster (Domingo has sung at the Met since the late 1960s).
The Met's artistic standards are considered to be among the highest in the world. The company's stage facilities and technical staff offer leading directors and designers a state of the art environment in which to create any kind of production. The Met's production designs range from elegant and traditional to highly innovative and avant-garde.
Beyond performing in the opera house in New York, the Met has gradually expanded its audience as new technologies have become available. It has broadcast live weekly on radio since 1931 and has regularly presented performances on television since 1977. In 2006, the Met further introduced the innovations of live satellite radio broadcasts four times a week and live high-definition video transmissions presented to audiences in cinemas throughout the world.
