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Keywords: live-broadcast, new-york-city, opera
The Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager. The music director is James Levine.
The Met performs at the Metropolitan Opera House, which is located in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on Broadway, in New York's Upper West Side. The Met was a founding member of Lincoln Center where it remains one of the center's twelve resident organizations.
The Metropolitan Opera is the largest classical music organization in North America. It presents about 27 different operas each year in a season which lasts from late September through May. The operas are presented in a rotating repertory schedule with up to seven performances of four different works staged each week. Performances are given in the evening Monday through Saturday with a matinée on Saturday. Several operas are presented in new productions each season. Sometimes these are borrowed from or shared with other opera houses. The rest of the year's operas are given in revivals of productions from previous seasons.
James Lawrence Levine ( /lɨˈvaɪn/; born June 23, 1943) is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently on hiatus from his work as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, a situation necessitated by health problems and not due to end before the fall of 2013; the hiatus began in May 2011.
Levine's first performance conducting the Metropolitan Opera was on June 5, 1971, and, as of June 2011, he had conducted 2,442 Met performances, a record. The conductor has held music director positions with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic. In 1997, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a musical family: his maternal grandfather was a cantor in a synagogue, his father was a violinist who led a dance band, and his mother was an actress. He began to play the piano as a small child. At the age of 10, he made his concert debut as soloist in Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Anna Yuryevna Netrebko (Russian: Анна Юрьевна Нетребко, born 18 September 1971) is a Russian operatic soprano. She now holds dual Russian and Austrian citizenship and currently resides in Vienna. She has been nicknamed "La Bellissima" by fans.
Netrebko was born in Krasnodar (Russia), in a family of Kuban Cossack background. While a student at the Saint Petersburg conservatoire, Netrebko worked as a janitor at Saint Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre. Later, she auditioned for the Mariinsky Theatre, where conductor Valery Gergiev recognized her from her prior work in the theater. He subsequently became her vocal mentor. Under Gergiev's guidance, Netrebko made her operatic stage debut at the Mariinsky at age 22, as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. She went on to sing many prominent roles with the Kirov Opera, including Amina in La sonnambula, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor.
In 1994, she sang the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte with the Riga Independent Opera Avangarda Akadēmija under conductor David Milnes.
Nathan T. Gunn (born November 26, 1970) is an American operatic baritone.
Gunn was born in South Bend, Indiana.
He has appeared in many of world's well-known opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Opera, Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), Paris Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Glyndebourne Festival, and the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. He has also appeared at the Mostly Mozart Festival.
While he is noted for his vocal prowess and acting, Gunn has received almost more fame for his physique, a peculiar feat for an opera singer. In 2008, he was featured in People magazine's list of "The Sexiest Men Alive."
Was was appointed a tenured professor of voice at the University of Illinois, beginning in the fall semester of 2007. His wife, Julie Jordan Gunn, who holds a doctorate in accompaniment from University of Illinois, was also appointed an associate professor in accompaniment at the University of Illinois.
Marlis Petersen (born 1968) is a German coloratura soprano, particularly known for her performances in the title role of Alban Berg's opera Lulu, and as Konstanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos.
Born in Tuttlingen, Marlis Petersen won six important piano competitions before eventually going to the Stuttgart Conservatory where she studied music education, flute and dance as well as voice. She made her operatic debut at the Staatstheater in Nuremberg as Ännchen in Der Freischütz which led to a contract with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, where she primarily sang in operas by Mozart and Strauss. On 6 September 2007, she sang the role of Aphrodite in the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze's Phaedra at the Berlin State Opera. Another world premiere came in May 2008, when she sang the role of Marta in Manfred Trojahn's La Grande Magia at the Dresden Semperoper. She has also appeared on the stages of Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, London and Paris, Geneva, and Monte Carlo. In addition to her operatic roles, she is known for her performances in works by Johann Sebastian Bach with conductors Ton Koopman and Helmuth Rilling and for her Lieder recitals with pianist Jendrik Springer. She sang the title rôle in the premiere of the opera Medea by Aribert Reimann at the Vienna State Opera in 2010.