New York, NY, September 22, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Metropolitan Opera has announced the cancellation of the entirety of the 2020-2021 season. The Met had previously cancelled all scheduled performance through the end of 2020 but, based on the recommendations of the health officials who advise the Met and Lincoln Center, this decision has now been extended to the remainder of the current season. Because of the many hundreds of performers who are required to rehearse and perform in close quarters and because of the company’s large audience, it was determined that it would not be safe for the Met to resume its opera performances until a vaccine is widely in use, herd immunity is established, and the wearing of masks and social distancing are no longer public health requirements.
In the meantime, The Metropolitan Opera’s 2021–22 season has been announced and is scheduled to open September 27, 2021, with the Met premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, conducted by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and starring baritone Will Liverman and sopranos Angel Blue and Latonia Moore. Six new productions will be featured, including Met premieres of Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice and Brett Dean’s Hamlet, the company’s first-ever performances of the original five-act, French-language version of Verdi’s Don Carlos, and new stagings of Verdi’s Rigoletto and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Two extremely popular productions will return–The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess and Philip Glass’s Akhnaten. Other noteworthy productions include Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and Puccini’s Tosca. The Met’s Live in HD series of cinema transmissions will return for the 2021–22 season with ten presentations, including all six new productions. To learn more about the newly announced 2021–22 season, click here.