Karita Mattila Stars in The Makropulos Case Revival at The Met, Opening Tonight

Karita Mattila will make her Met role debut as the enigmatic Emilia Marty in Janácek's supernatural thriller The Makropulos Case, opening tonight, April 27 for its first Met revival in more than a decade.

Janácek specialist Jirí Belohlávek conducts the opera, which also stars Kurt Streit, Johan Reuter (in his Met debut), and Tom Fox. Acclaimed director Elijah Moshinsky, absent from the Met since 2001, returns to the direct the revival of his production, which premiered in 1996.Emilia Marty is Mattila's third Janá?ek heroine at the Met, following the title roles in Jenufa and Kát'a Kabanová. Last season, she sang the role for the first time, triumphing at the San Francisco Opera. At the Met, she has starred in seven new production premieres, singing the title roles in Puccini's Tosca (2009), Strauss's Salome (2004), and Jen?fa (2003); Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio (2000); Lisa in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades (1995); Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1993); and Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni (1990). Her Met repertory also includes Tatiana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Chrysothemis in Strauss's Elektra, the title role in Puccini's Manon Lescaut, Amelia in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, and Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin.

Streit sang Skuratov in the critically acclaimed Met premiere performances of Janácek's From the House of the Dead (2009). His additional Met appearances include Cassio in Verdi's Otello, Lysander in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Count Almaviva in Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, and Tamino in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. Danish baritone Reuter sang Jaroslav Prus at the Salzburg Festival last summer. In recent seasons, he has also sung Wotan in Wagner's Das Rheingold at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich; Grigory Gryaznoy in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride and Jochanaan in Salome at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden; and, at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen, Barak in Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, Struensee in Holten's The Visit of the Royal Physician, Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, and the title role of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. Fox sang the role of Jaroslav Prus in the two previous Met revivals of The Makropulos Case (1998 and 2001). He has also appeared at the Met as the Speaker in Die Zauberflöte, Don Pizarro in Fidelio, and Alberich in Wagner's Siegfried and Götterdämmerung.

Emalie Savoy, a member of the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, makes her Met debut in the role of Kristina. Savoy recently sang the title role in the Met/Juilliard co-production of Gluck's Armide.

Belohlávek, the Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, made his Met debut in 2004 leading Kát'a Kabanová and returned to conduct revivals of Jenufa, Eugene Onegin, and Dvorák's Rusalka. Last season, he conducted The Makropulos Case at San Francisco Opera, featuring Mattila in her role debut. Later this year, Belohlávek will become chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.

Moshinsky made his Met debut in 1980 with a staging of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera. He created eight additional Met productions in the decades that followed, including the Met premiere of Handel's Samson (1986); Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos (1993); Otello (1994); The Queen of Spades (1995); Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila (1998); Verdi's Nabucco (2001); and Verdi's Luisa Miller (2001).

The April 27 opening performance will be broadcast live on Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS XM Channel 74, as will the performances on May 5 and 8. The May 5 performance will also be broadcast live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network.

For more information, including bios of the performers and production team, and general information about the Met season, please visit the Met's Web site at http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/news/press/.

Photo courtesy The Metropolitan Opera

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