NEW YORK CITY (CelebrityAccess) — New York’s Metropolitan Opera announced that they have canceled virtually all remaining dates for the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Met said they now plan to re-open for public performances with a special gala on December 31st, 2020, with the full details of the event to be announced.
The cancellations will impact the presentations of some upcoming operas, including Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni which will be performed revivals of the Julie Taymor and Michael Grandage productions, respectively, rather than the previously announced new stagings by Simon McBurney and Ivo van Hove.
The new productions, along with scheduled fall new stagings of Verdi’s Aida and Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, will be rescheduled for later seasons, the Met said.
Van Hove’s Met-premiere production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, conducted by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, remains on the schedule as planned.
Other productions, including Puccini’s La Bohème, Bizet’s Carmen, and Verdi’s La Traviata, will take place in February 2021, when the opera house was previously scheduled to be dark.
For scheduling reasons, the revival of Berg’s Lulu, originally planned to open March 5, has been canceled, and will be replaced by additional performances of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, featuring soprano Brenda Rae.
As well, the shortened season will now feature seven Live in HD movie-theater presentations: Die Zauberflöte, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Don Giovanni, Dead Man Walking, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Verdi’s Nabucco, and Bellini’s Il Pirata. The three HD transmissions scheduled for the fall will be replaced by encore showings of past presentations of the same titles: Verdi’s Aida and Il Trovatore and Beethoven’s Fidelio.
For tickets, the Met announced that all exchange fees will be waived for the 2020-2021 season. Tickets for canceled performances will have the full value credited to the purchaser’s Met account, which can be used for additional ticket purchases, or a full refund can be requested.
