Just as a young woman is about to marry her sweetheart, she is discovered—by the entire village, to say nothing of her fiancé—asleep in the bedroom of a stranger. It takes the young man two acts to figure out that sleepwalking is to blame, and everything ends happily. Natalie Dessay as Amina and Juan Diego Flórez as Elvino deliver bel canto magic and vocal fireworks in Mary Zimmerman’s 2009 production. The Tony award-winning director transfers Bellini’s bucolic tale to a rehearsal room in contemporary New York, where an opera company rehearses La Sonnambula—and where the singers are truly in love with each other.
Anthony Dean Griffey creates a haunting portrait of the outcast fisherman who struggles under the burden of presumed guilt. This chilling production by Tony Award-winning director John Doyle also features the superb Patricia Racette as the sympathetic Ellen Orford and the Met chorus in a truly hair-raising performance as the oppressively judgmental fishing village.
One of today’s most compelling singing actresses, Karita Mattila takes on the irresistible role of Manon Lescaut, the headstrong young woman torn between a life of luxury and the call of her true love: the Chevalier des Grieux, played by Marcello Giordani. The young Puccini lavished some of his most sensual music on this early hit, conducted here by James Levine.
Elijah Moshinsky's production of Saint-Saëns's "Samson et Dalila", recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera 28 September 1998. Plácido Domingo and Olga Borodina star as Samson and Dalila with Sergei Leiferkus as Grand-prêtre de Dagon, Richard Paul Fink as Abimélech, and René Pape as Un vieillard hébreu. James Levine conducts.
The Met production easily has the most beautiful staging, designed by Otto Schenck, who also produced the fabulous set for the Met's previous Ring cycle. Kurt Moll is a wonderful Gurnemanz, but compared to his studio recording under Karajan a decade earlier it has lost some of its original velvety body and luster. As Parsifal, Jerusalem is starting to show some wear and tear on his voice at the Met in 1992 as opposed to his prime form at Bayreuth in 1981, but is still quite good; only Placido Domingo could compete with him in the role at that time.