Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin to lead orchestra with stops in London, Paris, and Baden-Baden
New York, NY (February 24, 2020)—The Metropolitan Opera today announces that the Met Orchestra will tour Europe in the summer of 2021, immediately following its annual residency at Carnegie Hall. With all performances conducted by the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the tour includes stops at the Barbican Centre in London on June 29, 2021; the Philharmonie in Paris on June 30 and July 1, 2021; and the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, Germany, on July 3 and 4, 2021. Four of the world’s leading opera stars join the Met Orchestra: mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who will sing selections from Berlioz’s Les Troyens, and soprano Christine Goerke, tenor Brandon Jovanovich, and bass Günther Groissböck, who will perform the first act of Wagner’s Die Walküre.
The tour also features performances of American composer Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres). Nézet-Séguin and the Met Orchestra will perform Mazzoli’s chamber opera Breaking the Waves at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the summer of 2020, and Mazzoli has been commissioned to compose an opera for a future season at the Met. The complete itinerary and programming for the tour is below.
“These concerts will show off the Met Orchestra at full capacity under Yannick,” said Met General Manager Peter Gelb, “demonstrating their dual strengths in symphonic and operatic repertoire.”
“This is a major milestone in the Met’s recent history. I am very grateful for the music we make all season long at the Met, and I cannot wait to have European audiences experience the Met Orchestra’s brilliant artistry in person. And what better way to celebrate their excellence than to bring along dear friends Joyce, Christine, Brandon, and Günther as collaborators?” said Nézet-Séguin. “I am proud that the Met is continuing to reach audiences beyond Lincoln Center. This European tour is the perfect capstone to the coming season.”
The Met Orchestra last toured in 2002, when it performed in Salzburg, Austria; Lucerne, Switzerland; and Baden-Baden and Wiesbaden, Germany.
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra 2021 European Tour
Tuesday, June 29, 2021, at 7:30 p.m.
Barbican Centre, London
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Berlioz: Les Troyens, “Chers Tyriens,” featuring Joyce DiDonato
Berlioz: Les Troyens, Royal Hunt and Storm
Berlioz: Les Troyens, “Adieu, fière cite,” featuring Joyce DiDonato
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
Wednesday, June 30, 2021, at 8:30 p.m.
Philharmonie, Paris
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
- Strauss: Don Juan, Op. 20
Missy Mazzoli: Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)
Wagner: Die Walküre, Act I, featuring Christine Goerke, Brandon Jovanovich,
and Günther Groissböck
Thursday, July 1, 2021, at 8:30 p.m.
Philharmonie, Paris
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Berlioz: Les Troyens, “Chers Tyriens,” featuring Joyce DiDonato
Berlioz: Les Troyens, Royal Hunt and Storm
Berlioz: Les Troyens, “Adieu, fière cite,” featuring Joyce DiDonato
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
Saturday, July 3, 2021, at 6:00 p.m.
Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Berlioz: Les Troyens, “Chers Tyriens,” featuring Joyce DiDonato
Berlioz: Les Troyens, Royal Hunt and Storm
Berlioz: Les Troyens, “Adieu, fière cite,” featuring Joyce DiDonato
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
Sunday, July 4, 2021, at 5:00 p.m.
Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
- Strauss: Don Juan, Op. 20
Missy Mazzoli: Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)
Wagner: Die Walküre, Act I, featuring Christine Goerke, Brandon Jovanovich,
and Günther Groissböck
About Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin
With the start of the 2018–19 season, Yannick Nézet-Séguin became the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director. He made his Met debut in the 2009–10 season, conducting a new production of Bizet’s Carmen. The Canadian conductor has returned to the Met in every subsequent season, leading performances of Wagner’s Parsifal and Der Fliegende Holländer, Strauss’s Elektra, Verdi’s Don Carlo, Gounod’s Faust, Verdi’s La Traviata, and Dvořák’s Rusalka. He also led the opening night performance of the Met’s 2015–16 season, a new production of Verdi’s Otello. Last season, he conducted the Met’s new production of La Traviata as well as performances of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. He has conducted a wide breadth of repertoire at many of the world’s leading companies, including the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, Dutch National Opera, the Salzburg Festival, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He is also a frequent guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Since 2012, he has been music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is also music director of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain. This season at the Met he conducts Puccini’s Turandot, Berg’s Wozzeck, and Massenet’s Werther, as well as the New Year’s Eve Gala of selected acts from Puccini’s La Bohème, Tosca, and Turandot with Anna Netrebko and two concerts at Carnegie Hall. In the 2020–21 season, he will conduct six operas at the Met, including new stagings of Verdi’s Aida, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, as well as revivals of Beethoven’s Fidelio, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, and Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten; all six operas will be seen in cinemas around the world as part of The Met: Live in HD series. In addition, he will lead the Met Orchestra in two concerts at Carnegie Hall and on its three-city European tour.
