Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato sings Sesto at the Met for the first time, and tenor Matthew Polenzani adds yet another role to his extensive Mozartean repertoire as Tito. Mozart’s opera of vengeance and forgiveness, set during the Roman Empire, also stars sopranos Elza van den Heever as Vitellia, with Ying Fang, Paula Murrihy, and bass Christian Van Horn completing the principal cast. Lothar Koenigs conducts.
The music of the Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), a prolific composer in virtually every form and genre known in his day, continues to enthrall audiences throughout the world. His achievements in his 22 operas, in terms of beauty, vocal challenge, and dramatic insight, are unparalleled. The text is an adaptation of a classic libretto by Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi (1698–1782), known as Metastasio. A Roman literary prodigy who became the prolific poet of the Imperial Court Theater in Vienna in 1730, he wrote 27 libretti that formed the basis for more than 300 operas.
PRODUCTION: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle