Tony Winners Michael Mayer and Bartlett Sher Tapped to Direct at the Metropolitan Opera During the 2012-2013 Season

Tony Award winners Michael Mayer and Bartlett Sher will direct productions during the Metropolitan Opera’s 2012-13 season, which will include seven new productions and 21 revivals. The season officially opens on September 24.

Sher's staging of Donizetti’s comic masterpiece L’Elisir d’Amore, conducted by Maurizio Benini, and starring Anna Netrebko and Matthew Polenzani kicks off the season on September 24. Mayer's new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto begins January 28, 2013. The show, which marks Mayer's Met debut, stars Željko Lučić, Diana Damrau and Piotr Beczala.

Sher is Resident Director at Lincoln Center Theater and has directed the LCT productions of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Awake and Sing!, The Light in the Piazza and South Pacific, for which he won a Tony Award. He is the former artistic director of Seattle’s Intiman Theater, and his other New York credits include productions at Playwrights Horizons and Theatre for a New Audience.

Mayer received a Tony Award in 2007 for his direction of Spring Awakening. His other Broadway credits include American Idiot, The Lion in Winter, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Side Man and the 2011 revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.


The Met’s 2012-2013 also features productions of The Tempest, Rigoletto, Maria Stuarda and Un Ballo in Maschera.