Medea

Featuring one of the repertoire’s most ruthless and electrifying heroines, Medea was famously a star vehicle for opera’s ultimate diva, Maria Callas, in the 1950s. Seven decades later, one of today’s reigning sopranos picked up Callas’s torch when Sondra Radvanovsky opened the Met’s 2022–23 season as Cherubini’s mythic sorceress. In this performance, recorded as part of the company’s Live in HD series of cinema transmissions, Radvanovsky gives a tour-de-force performance, headlining an exhilarating new staging by director David McVicar—his 12th production for the Met. Maestro Carlo Rizzi is on the podium to conduct this rarely performed drama, which also features tenor Matthew Polenzani as Medea’s unfaithful lover, Giasone; soprano Janai Brugger as the new object of his affections, Glauce; mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova as Medea’s steadfast companion, Neris; and bass Michele Pertusi as the Corinthian king Creonte.