The Metropolitan Opera celebrates its 50th anniversary year at Lincoln Center with a gala performance on Sunday, May 7 at 6:00 p.m., featuring performances by many of the company’s most prominent artists. Met Music Director Emeritus James Levine, future Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Marco Armiliato will conduct the evening. The gala will be fully staged in a production featuring direction and scenic design by Julian Crouch, costume design by Kevin Pollard, and projection design by 59 Productions, the production team behind the Met’s 125th Anniversary Gala in 2009.
The gala features Met stars singing arias, duets, and excerpts from a variety of operas in the company’s repertory. These singers include Piotr Beczala, Ben Bliss, Stephanie Blythe, Joseph Calleja, Javier Camarena, Dwayne Croft, Diana Damrau, David Daniels, Joyce DiDonato, Plácido Domingo, Yusif Eyvazov, Michael Fabiano, Renée Fleming, Juan Diego Flórez, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Elīna Garanča, Susan Graham, Vittorio Grigolo, Christopher Job, Mariusz Kwiecien, Isabel Leonard, Željko Lučić, Angela Meade, Latonia Moore, James Morris, Anna Netrebko, Kristine Opolais, Eric Owens, René Pape, Matthew Polenzani, Rolando Villazón, Yunpeng Wang, Michael Volle, Pretty Yende, Sonya Yoncheva, and Dolora Zajick, as well as the Met Orchestra and Chorus.
The staging for the gala will feature visual representations of past Met productions, including an excerpt from Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, the opera that opened the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1966.