Bartlett Sher to Helm Metropolitan Opera 2015-16 Season Opener Otello; Complete Lineup Announced

The Metropolitan Opera’s 2015-16 season will begin on September 21 with a new production of Verdi’s Otello, directed by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher. The new staging is set to star Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello, with rising star Sonya Yoncheva as Desdemona and Zeljko Lucic as Iago.

Sher’s previous Met credits include L’Elisir d’Amore and The Barber of Seville (which will both be revived as part of the new season), Le Comte Ory and The Tales of Hoffman. He is the Resident Director at Lincoln Center Theater, where he has directed productions including Golden Boy, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, The Light in the Piazza and South Pacific, for which he won a Tony Award. He will also helm their upcoming revival of The King and I this spring.

The season will also include a new production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, directed by Olivier-winning director Richard Eyre (whose production of Le Nozze di Figaro kicked off this current season and will return again next season). The production is slated to star Kristine Opolais and Jonas Kaufmann. Also on the bill is the return of Tony Award winner Michael Mayer’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto, which transports the action to 1960s Las Vegas, as well as J. Strauss’ Die Fledermaus; the updated production, which premiered on New Year’s Eve 2013, features a book by Tony nominee Douglas Carter Beane.

And while Helen Mirren is bringing the Queen to Broadway this spring in The Audience, a star of the opera world—soprano Sondra Radvanovsky—will take on the immense challenge of playing all three of Donizetti’s Tudor queens in the same season. She starts with Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarada, and completes the hat trick as Queen Elizabeth I in a new production of Roberto Deverux.

The complete 2015-16 is as follows:
Otello, beginning September 21*
Turandot, beginning September 23
Il Trovatore, beginning September 25
Anna Bolena, beginning September 26
Tannhäuser, beginning October 8
Tosca, beginning October 16
Rigoletto, beginning October 20
Lulu, beginning November 5*
La Bohème, beginning November 23
Die Fledermaus, beginning November 4
La Donna del Lago, beginning December 11
The Barber of Seville, beginning December 16
Les Pêcheurs de Perles, beginning December 31*
Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci, beginning January 21
Maria Stuarda, beginning January 29
Manon Lescaut, beginning February 12*
Madama Butterfly, beginning February 19
Le Nozze di Figaro, beginning February 25
Don Pasquale, beginning March 4
L’Elisir d’Amaroe, beginning March 10
Roberto Devereux, beginning March 24*
Simon Boccanegra, beginning April 1
Elektra, beginning April 14*
Die Entführung aus dem Serail, beginning April 22

*Denotes new production