The Metropolitan Opera announces its first-ever Met Orchestra Asia tour, with performances in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, June 19–30
Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin to lead Met Orchestra with guests soprano Lisette Oropesa, mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn
Concert programs to include Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, the overture of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer, selections from Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, and music by Brahms, Mozart, Mahler, and Jessie Montgomery
New York, NY (March 7, 2024)—The Metropolitan Opera announced today its first-ever Met Orchestra Asia Tour this summer, June 19–30, immediately following its annual June residency at Carnegie Hall. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, will conduct the Met Orchestra, with guest artists soprano Lisette Oropesa, mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn. The concerts will take place at the Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, South Korea, on June 19 and 20; the Hyogo Performing Arts Center in Hyogo, Japan, on June 22 and 23; Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Japan, on June 25, 26, and 27; and the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 29 and 30.
The programs will feature a concert performance of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, the overture from Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer, selections from Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, and music by Brahms, Mozart, Mahler, and contemporary composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery.
“At a time of increasing global unrest, the Met offers musical solace to audiences everywhere through our international broadcasts,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s Maria Manetti Shrem General Manager. “But with this first orchestral tour of Asia in our history, we will be bringing our music directly to audiences that, up to now, have only known us from afar.”
“As a conductor, bringing live music and performances to audiences around the world is my passion. It is an absolute joy to lead the wonderful musicians of the Met Orchestra and three of the best opera singers of this generation for audiences in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan for the first time. We look forward to presenting our world-renowned interpretations of Wagner, Debussy, Mozart, and others, but also a new work the world needs now in Jessie Montgomery’s unifying Hymn for Everyone,” said Nézet-Séguin.
“The Met Opera’s Asia Tour is an exciting opportunity for audiences to hear music by an institution that sets a benchmark for artistic performance," says Arnaud Boetsch, Director of Communication & Image at Rolex. “The Met Opera has been a partner since 2011 and benefits from our commitment through the Perpetual Arts Initiative to perpetuate excellence and contribute to global culture. This tour will be a celebration of the universal connections that opera creates.”
“The arts help connect communities across the world,” said Brian Siegel, Bank of America Global Arts, Culture and Heritage Executive. “As a longtime partner of the Metropolitan Opera, we are proud to support The Met Orchestra’s inaugural trip to Asia.”
The 2024 Asia Tour will immediately follow the Met Orchestra’s annual June residency at Carnegie Hall, which features concerts on June 11, with Oropesa performing two arias by Mozart, and June 14, with Garanča and Van Horn headlining Bluebeard’s Castle.
Although this will be the Met Orchestra’s first Asia tour on its own, the full Metropolitan Opera company has visited Japan previously, most recently in 2011, when it presented fully staged operas in Tokyo and Nagoya. This will be the Met’s first-ever performances in South Korea and Taiwan.
Sponsors of the Met’s 2024 Asia Tour are Rolex, Bank of America, and So-Chung Shinn Lee and Tony W. Lee. Thomastik-Infeld is the official strings provider of the Metropolitan Opera. The Met is touring in association with Askonas Holt, Lotte Concert Hall, Fuji Television Network, Inc., and the Management of New Arts.
The Met Orchestra 2024 Asia Tour
Wednesday, June 19, 7:30PM
Lotte Concert Hall, Seoul
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Wagner: Overture to Der Fliegende Holländer
Debussy (arr. Leinsdorf): Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande
Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle, featuring Elīna Garanča and Christian Van Horn
Thursday, June 20, 7:30PM
Lotte Concert Hall, Seoul
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Montgomery: Hymn for Everyone
Mozart: Concert arias, featuring Lisette Oropesa
“Vado ma dove?,” K. 583
“A Berenice … Sol nascente,” K. 70
Mahler: Symphony No. 5
Saturday, June 22, 3PM
Hyogo Performing Arts Center, Hyogo
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Wagner: Overture to Der Fliegende Holländer
Debussy (arr. Leinsdorf): Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande
Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle, featuring Elīna Garanča and Christian Van Horn
Sunday, June 23, 3PM
Hyogo Performing Arts Center, Hyogo
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Montgomery: Hymn for Everyone
Mozart: Concert arias, featuring Lisette Oropesa
“Vado ma dove?,” K. 583
“A Berenice … Sol nascente,” K. 70
Mahler: Symphony No. 5
Tuesday, June 25, 7PM
Suntory Hall, Tokyo
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Wagner: Overture to Der Fliegende Holländer
Debussy (arr. Leinsdorf): Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande
Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle, featuring Elīna Garanča and Christian Van Horn
Wednesday, June 26, 7PM
Suntory Hall, Tokyo
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Montgomery: Hymn for Everyone
Mozart: Concert arias, featuring Lisette Oropesa
“Vado ma dove?,” K. 583
“A Berenice … Sol nascente,” K. 70
Mahler: Symphony No. 5
Thursday, June 27, 7PM
Suntory Hall, Tokyo
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Wagner: Overture to Der Fliegende Holländer
Debussy (arr. Leinsdorf): Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande
Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle, featuring Elīna Garanča and Christian Van Horn
Saturday, June 29, 2:30PM
National Concert Hall, Taipei
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Wagner: Overture to Der Fliegende Holländer
Debussy (arr. Leinsdorf): Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande
Gounod: Arias from Roméo et Juliette, featuring Lisette Oropesa
“Je veux vivre dans ce rêve”
“Dieu! Quel frisson … Amour, ranime mon courage”
Brahms: Symphony No. 1
Sunday, June 30, 7:30PM
National Concert Hall, Taipei
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Montgomery: Hymn for Everyone
Mozart: Concert arias, featuring Lisette Oropesa
“Vado ma dove?,” K. 583
“A Berenice … Sol nascente,” K. 70
Mahler: Symphony No. 5
The Met Orchestra
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is regarded as one of the world’s finest orchestras. From the time of the company’s inception in 1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert performances and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish and style. The Met Orchestra maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals during its 33-week New York season, when the company performs as many as seven times a week in repertory that this season encompasses 19 works.
In addition to its opera schedule, the orchestra has a distinguished history of concert performances. Arturo Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with the Met Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who appeared with the orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moriz Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler.
In recent years, instrumental and vocal soloists have included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, Maurizio Pollini, Evgeny Kissin, Christian Tetzlaff, Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Natalie Dessay, Diana Damrau, Christine Goerke, Joyce DiDonato, Matthew Polenzani, and Peter Mattei. The group has also performed six world premieres: Milton Babbitt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998), William Bolcom’s Symphony No. 7 (2002), Hsueh-Yung Shen’s Legend (2002), Charles Wuorinen’s Theologoumenon (2007) and Time Regained (2009), and John Harbison’s Closer to My Own Life (2011).
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Canadian-born conductor and pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin became the Metropolitan Opera’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director with the beginning of the 2018–19 season. He made his company debut in 2009 with a new production of Carmen and has since returned every season, conducting more than 200 performances of 23 operas, as well as numerous galas and concerts with the Met Orchestra. During the 2023–24 season, he leads the Met premieres of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas, a new production of La Forza del Destino, a revival of Roméo et Juliette, Verdi’s Requiem, and concerts with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
He has been music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2012 and held the same position with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra—where he now serves as honorary conductor—between 2008 and 2018. Since 2000, he has served as artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain. From 2008 to 2014, he was principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He also enjoys close collaborations with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Chamber Orchestra of Europe and has led performances at La Scala, Covent Garden, Dutch National Opera, Vienna State Opera, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, and the festivals of Salzburg, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Grafenegg, Lanaudière, Vail, and Saratoga.
Recent recordings include Terence Blanchard’s Champion and Fire Shut Up in My Bones, A Concert for Ukraine, Verdi’s Requiem: The Met Remembers 9/11, and Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice with the Met; his first solo piano album, Introspection: Solo Piano Sessions; Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and the complete symphonies of Schumann with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe; Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (featuring pianist Daniil Trifonov), Bernstein’s Mass, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, and Price’s Symphonies No. 1, 3, and 4 with the Philadelphia Orchestra; and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 with the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He has won four Grammy Awards (out of 13 nominations), including most recently for conducting the Met’s recording of Champion.
Lisette Oropesa
A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, soprano Lisette Oropesa was the 2019 recipient of the Metropolitan Opera’s Beverly Sills Artist Award, established by Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman. She is a graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and made her debut with the company in 2006 as a Woman of Crete in Idomeneo. In the years since, she has sung nearly 150 performances of 18 roles, most notably Gilda in Rigoletto, Violetta in La Traviata, the title role of Manon, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, Sophie in Werther, Nannetta in Falstaff, Miranda in The Enchanted Island, Amore in Orfeo ed Euridice, Lisette in La Rondine, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Woglinde in the Ring cycle.
During the 2023–24 season, she sings Violetta in Tokyo and Naples; Marie in La Fille du Régiment at Lyric Opera of Chicago; Elvira in I Puritani in Dresden; Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare and Violetta at the Paris Opera; Mathilde in Guillaume Tell at the Vienna State Opera; Amina in La Sonnambula in Rome; concerts with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, as well as performances at New Orleans Opera, La Scala, and the Hungarian State Opera, and in Paris, Barcelona, Graz, and Naples. In recent seasons, she has sung title role of Lucia de Lammermoor in concert in Aix-en-Provence; Juliette in Roméo et Juliette at the Savonlinna Opera Festival; Donna Fiorilla in Il Turco in Italia in Madrid and at the Bavarian State Opera; the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor at La Scala and the Vienna State Opera, in Zurich, and in concert at the Salzburg Festival; Ophélie in Hamlet at the Paris Opera; Amalia in I Masnadieri at the Bavarian State Opera; the title role of Alcina at Covent Garden; Elvira in Naples; Violetta in Verona, Rome, Barcelona, and at Covent Garden and the Bavarian State Opera; Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Vienna State Opera; Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi at La Scala; the title role of Theodora in concert with Il Pomo d’Oro; Gilda at Covent Garden; and Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Paris Opera.
She has also appeared at Dutch National Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, Pesaro’s Rossini Opera Festival, San Francisco Opera, LA Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Washington National Opera, and in concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, among others.
Elīna Garanča
Born in Riga, Latvia, mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča is one of the world’s most in-demand vocalists. She has been a regular on stage at the Met since her debut in 2008 as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and has also appeared as Marguerite in concert performances of La Damnation de Faust, Dalila in Samson et Dalila, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Sara in Roberto Devereux, the title roles of Carmen and La Cenerentola, and Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito.
She began her professional career as a resident artist with the Südthüringischer Staatstheater in Meiningen, followed by the Oper Frankfurt and Vienna State Opera, and she regularly appears at Covent Garden, the Salzburg Festival, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, the Bavarian State Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, London’s Wigmore Hall, and at various concert halls and festivals around the world. She recently made her debut at the prestigious Bayreuth Festival, appearing as Kundry in Parsifal. She has also received numerous national and international awards, most importantly the title of Kammersängerin from the Vienna State Opera, where she has sung nearly 200 performances of 18 roles since her house debut in 2003.
During the 2023–24 season, she sings excerpts from Samson et Dalila in concert with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg; Amneris in Aida at Staatsoper Berlin; the title role of Moreno Torroba’s Luisa Fernanda in concert in Madrid; Eboli in Don Carlo, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, and a recital with pianist Malcolm Martineau at La Scala; Verdi’s Requiem with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Kundry at the Vienna State Opera; Judit in Bluebeard’s Castle in Naples and in concert with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall; and concert appearances with the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra and Vienna Chamber Orchestra.
Christian Van Horn
Hailing from Rockville Centre, New York, bass-baritone Christian Van Horn made his Met debut in 2013 as Pistola in Falstaff. With the company, he has also appeared as Colline in La Bohème, Ramfis in Aida, Oroveso in Norma, Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress, Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro, the Doctor in Wozzeck, Publio in La Clemenza di Tito, the title role of Mefistofele, Julio in the company premiere of Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel, and the Speaker in Die Zauberflöte.
During the 2023–24 season, he returns to the Met as Colline, and also sings Colline in concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Bluebeard in Bluebeard’s Castle in concert with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Jacopo Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra at Opera Philadelphia, the Four Villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Paris Opera, Raimondo at the Bavarian State Opera, and the title role of Don Giovanni at the Vienna State Opera and in concert at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. In recent years, he has also appeared as Bluebeard at Des Moines Metro Opera; Ramfis in Verona; de Silva in Ernani, Banquo in Macbeth, and Walter in Luisa Miller at Lyric Opera of Chicago; Méphistophélès in Faust, Don Giovanni, and Publio at the Paris Opera; and Claggart in Billy Budd and Zoroastro in Orlando at San Francisco Opera.
He has also headlined productions at the Santa Fe Opera, LA Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Salzburg Festival, Dutch National Opera, and in Rome, Stuttgart, and Geneva, as well as in concert with the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and at the Mostly Mozart Festival, Bard Music Festival, and National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He was the 2018 recipient of the Richard Tucker Award and a 2003 winner of the Met’s National Council Auditions (now the Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition).