After the acclaimed Met premiere of Thomas Adès's "The Tempest" in 2012, the composer returned with another masterpiece, this time inspired by filmmaker Luis Buñuel's seminal surrealist classic "El Ángel Exterminador", during the 2017–18 season. As the opera opens, a group of elegant socialites gather for a lavish dinner party, but when it is time to leave for the night, no one is able to escape. Soon, their behavior becomes increasingly erratic and savage. The large ensemble cast tackles both the vocal and dramatic demands of Adès's opera with one riveting performance after another. Tom Cairns, who also penned the work's libretto, directs an engrossing and inventive production, using a towering wooden archway to trap the characters onstage. And Adès himself takes the podium to conduct the frenzied score, which features a host of unconventional instruments, including the eerie electronic ondes Martenot.

After last season’s The Dante Project, the Paris Opera continues to explore the music of contemporary composer Thomas Adès with the French premiere of The Exterminating Angel. Inspired by Luis Buñuel’s 1962 surrealist film, which offered a scathing critique of the bourgeoisie, the work begins with a dinner among upper-class friends in a plush mansion after an opera performance. But, gradually, a mysterious force prevents the fifteen guests from leaving the reception. In this confinement for no apparent reason, drawn out over several days, the veneer of propriety cracks, revealing the worst of human nature. Thomas Adès has written a rich and tense score, amplifying the libretto’s strange atmosphere with unusual instruments such as the ondes Martenot. The Paris Opera has entrusted the staging of this huis-clos to Calixto Bieito. The director has long been fascinated by Buñuel’s universe.

Composer Thomas Adès conducts the Met premiere of his powerful opera based on Shakespeare’s last play, in Robert Lepage’s brilliantly inventive production. Simon Keenlyside is the magician Prospero, who conjures the storm that shipwrecks his enemies and sets in motion the course of events. Rising Met stars Isabel Leonard and Alek Shrader are the young lovers, Miranda and Ferdinand, Alan Oke sings the sinister Caliban, and Audrey Luna gives a memorable performance as the sprite Ariel.

Acclaimed artist William Kentridge directed and designed this visually dazzling Met premiere production of Shostakovich’s satirical opera, adapted from the classic short story by Nikolai Gogol. Baritone Paulo Szot leads the cast as Kovalyov, the hapless bureaucrat whose nose has mysteriously gone missing. Alexander Lewis and Andrey Popov co-star, and Pavel Smelkov conducts.

Renée Fleming makes her highly anticipated return to the Met in the world-premiere production of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Kevin Puts’s The Hours, adapted from Michael Cunningham’s acclaimed novel. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and made a household name by the Oscar-winning 2002 film version starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, the powerful story follows three women from different eras who each grapple with their inner demons and their roles in society. The exciting premiere radiates with star power, with Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato joining Fleming as the opera’s trio of heroines. Phelim McDermott directs this compelling drama, with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium to conduct Puts’s poignant and powerful score.

Massenet’s tale of passion, excess, and their consequences stars rising soprano Lisette Oropesa in the effervescent title role. Tenor Michael Fabiano is her ardent admirer, Chevalier des Grieux, with Maurizio Benini conducting Laurent Pelly’s enchanting production.

Composer Nico Muhly unveils his second new opera for the Met with this gripping reimagining of Winston Graham’s novel, set in the 1950s, about a beautiful, mysterious young woman who assumes multiple identities. Director Michael Mayer and his creative team have devised a fast-moving, cinematic world for this exhilarating story of denial and deceit, which also inspired a film by Alfred Hitchcock. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings the enigmatic Marnie, and baritone Christopher Maltman is the man who pursues her—with disastrous results. Robert Spano conducts.

William Kentridge’s multi-layered production of Berg’s masterpiece stars charismatic soprano Marlis Petersen in the title role—the enigmatic and alluring woman who is equal parts femme fatale, innocent girl, and abused victim. The men around her, whose lives she forever alters, are Johan Reuter as newspaper publisher Dr. Schön; Daniel Brenna as his composer son, Alwa; Paul Groves as the Painter; and Franz Grundheber as Schigolch. Susan Graham sings Countess Geschwitz, and Lothar Koenigs conducts Berg’s landmark score.

Strauss’s elegant romance brings the glamour and enchantment of 19th-century Vienna to cinemas worldwide in a sumptuous production by legendary director Otto Schenk that “is as beautiful as one could hope” (The New York Times). Soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen stars as the title heroine, a young noblewoman in search of love on her own terms. Radiant soprano Louise Alder is her sister, Zdenka, and bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny is the dashing count who sweeps Arabella off her feet.

Philip Glass’ opera “Akhnaten”, premiered in Stuttgart in 1984, forms the third part of the portrait opera trilogy about personalities who have influenced the course of human history. The conclusion of the trilogy deals with the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, who attempted to establish a kind of monotheistic cult around the god Aton during his reign in the 14th century BC, but failed due to the resistance of the priesthood. The production presented here was undoubtedly one of the very great successes of the 2019/20 season at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, due not only to the outstanding cast of singers (led by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo) but also to Phelim McDermott’s imaginative staging, which captivates with sometimes breathtaking imagery.