The Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD 2024/25

For the 2024/25 season, New York’s Metropolitan Opera has a schedule of HD broadcasts in store promising the global audience sensational experiences, original approaches and encounters with huge stars. These include Lise Davidsen, the Norwegian soprano gifted with extraordinary talents, in the leading roles of Fidelio and Tosca, and the wonderful French tenor Benjamin Bernheim taking on the title role of Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Making his debut as Cavaradossi after bursting onto the scene in 2021 will be the young British-Italian tenor star Freddie De Tommaso, with the likewise youthful Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina, a new audience favourite in the opera world, slated to sing Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. And René Pape, Pretty Yende, Erin Morley, Angel Blue and Piotr Beczała will all also be returning to the Met stage and screen. Blue and Beczała are getting ready to sing the leads in Michael Mayer’s spectacular brand new production of Aida. Also getting a new production is Salome, which director Claus Guth has reset in the Victorian era, the period when Oscar Wilde wrote the play that inspired Richard Strauss. It is already traditional for the Met’s line-up of HD broadcasts to include some contemporary opera: after its world premiere in Washington, Jeanine Tesori’s 2023 work Grounded will now find a global audience. Taking the podium for this run will be the Met’s chief music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who will also conduct Aida and Salome. Maestro Marco Armiliato (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) will also take up his baton for a broadcast this season, along with several maestras: Xian Zhang (Tosca), Susanna Mälkki (Fidelio) and Joana Mallwitz (Il nozze di Figaro). Naturally, we must also proudly mention the delightful fact that the Met’s HD broadcasts feature two outstanding Hungarian artists as well: Judit Kutasi as Amneris (Aida) and Péter Kálmán as Doctor Bartolo (Il Barbiere di Siviglia).