Montrealer to take over Met Opera next season
Montreal’s Yannick Nezet-seguin will become the Metropolitan Opera’s music director next season, two years earlier than planned, providing a leader to an orchestra fighting drift and defections for more than a decade.
Nezet-seguin’s appointment was announced in June 2016, two months after Parkinson’s disease caused the end of James Levine’s 40 year-run.
The company announced Nezet-seguin would start a five-year contract in 202021 after three seasons as music director designate.
Levine became music director emeritus but was suspended in December following multiple allegations of sexual harassment from the 1960s to 1980s.
Nezet-seguin studied piano, conducting, composition and chamber music at the Conservatoire de musique du Quebec in Montreal and choral conducting at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. He became artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Metropolitain in 2000 and also went on to work with leading orchestras in Philadephia and Rotterdam.
The Met said Thursday that Nezet-seguin had opened additional time in his schedule and will conduct 17 performances next season, agreeing to add a revival of Debussy’s “Pelleas et Melisande’’ to his previous commitment of a new production of Verdi’s “La Traviata’’ and a revival of Poulenc’s “Dialogues des Carmelites.’’ He will conduct three operas in 2019-20, then at least five each season starting in 2020-21.
“I think he realizes how important it is for the Met to have a music director who can also handle the important decisionmaking that only a musical director from a contractural point of view can do in terms of tenured positions in the orchestra,’’ Met general manager Peter Gelb said.
“This obviously has not been the easiest time for the company with the news about maestro Levine, so it will be very comforting and reassuring to the orchestra and the chorus to know his tenure is starting earlier than originally planned.’’
Nezet-seguin turns 43 next month and represents a generation change.
He was not available for comment, Met spokesman Tim Mckeough said.
Gelb said the Met’s investigation of Levine is getting “very, very close to its conclusion.’’ Levine, who turns 75 in June, is not scheduled to conduct next season.
While Levine helped raise the Met orchestra to among the world’s best in the 1980s and ‘90s, his physical ability started to deteriorate in 2001, when he began to conduct from a chair.
Tremors in his left arm and leg became noticeable in 2004, and his health worsened with shoulder and kidney surgery followed by three back operations.
His frequent absences led to orchestra players feeling a lack of direction, and many left.
An improved relationship with the orchestra and other unions could be significant heading into labour negotiations this summer, when the Met is expected to ask for permission to schedule regular Sunday performances for the first time.