19.11.10 Ster Kinekor’s Cinema Nouveau launched their fourth opera season with a showing of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov as the second offering.

Donizetti’s Don Pasquale opens on Fri 10 December 2010, with Anna Netrebko returning to the role that made her a Met star and also featuring Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecien, and John Del Carlo. Musical Director James Levine conducts. When Otto Schenk’s production premiered in 2006, the New York Times called it “brilliant” and “wonderful”.

Verdi’s Don Carlo opens on 7 January 2011 with director Nicholas Hytner making his Met debut with a brand new production of Verdi’s most ambitious opera. Roberto Alagna leads the cast, and Ferruccio Furlanetto, Marina Poplavskaya, Anna Smirnova, and Simon Keenlyside also star. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, back after his triumphant debut leading Carmen, conducts.

Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by David Belasco, opens on 4 February 2011.

Puccini’s wild-west opera had its world premiere in 1910 at the Met. Now, on the occasion of its centennial, all-American diva Deborah Voigt sings the title role of the “girl of the golden west,” starring opposite Marcello Giordani. Nicola Luisotti conducts.

John Adams’s most famous opera, Nixon in China, opens on 4 March 2011, with the composer conducting.

“All of my operas have dealt on deep psychological levels with our American mythology,” says Adams. “The meeting of Nixon and Mao is a mythological moment in world history, particularly American history.” Acclaimed director and longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars makes his Met debut with this groundbreaking 1987 work, an exploration of the human truths beyond the headlines surrounding President Nixon’s 1972 encounter with Communist China. Baritone James Maddalena stars in the title role.

Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride opens on 25 March 2011 with Susan Graham, Plácido Domingo, and Paul Groves reprising their starring roles. Gluck’s nuanced and elegant interpretation of this primal Greek myth features tenor Paul Groves and Patrick Summers conducts. Stephen Wadsworth’s insightful production was first seen in 2007.

Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor is next, opening on 8 April 2011 and starring Joseph Calleja and Natalie Dessay.

Dessay triumphed as the fragile heroine of Donizetti’s masterpiece on opening night of the 2007–08 season in Mary Zimmerman’s hit production. Now she returns to the role of the innocent young woman driven to madness, opposite Joseph Calleja, who sings her lover Edgardo.

Rossini’s Le Comte Ory will follow from 6 May 2011. The vocally dazzling comedy stars bel canto sensation Juan Diego Flórez in the title role of this Met premiere production. He stars with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, in the trouser role of Isolier, for the love of the lonely Countess Adèle, sung by soprano Diana Damrau.

Bartlett Sher, director of the Met’s hit productions of The Barber of Seville and The Tales of Hoffmann, describes the world of the opera as, “a place where love is dangerous. People get hurt. That can be very funny and very painful. Rossini captures both—with the most beautiful love music Rossini ever wrote.”

Renee Fleming starts in Strauss’s Capriccio opening on 20 May 2011.

On opening night of the 2008–09 season, Renée Fleming dazzled audiences when she sang the final scene of Strauss’s wise and worldly meditation on art and life. Now she performs the entire work, in which the composer explores the essence of opera itself. Joseph Kaiser and Sarah Connolly also star and Andrew Davis conducts.

Verdi’s Il Trovatore opens on 27 May 2011 with Patricia Racette, Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Željko Lucic. James Levine and Marco Armiliato conduct.

David McVicar’s stirring production of Verdi’s intense drama premiered in the 2008–09 season. James Levine leads this revival, starring four extraordinary singers - Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

The season closes with the second installment of Robert Lepage’s new production of the Ring cycle, Wagner’s Die Walküre from 10 June 2011. A stellar cast comes together for this second installment of Robert Lepage’s new production of the Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine. Bryn Terfel is Wotan, lord of the Gods. Deborah Voigt adds the part of Brünnhilde to her extensive Wagnerian repertoire at the Met. Jonas Kaufmann and Eva-Maria Westbroek star as the twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde, and Stephanie Blythe is Fricka.

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