La Bohème Returns to the Met 11/18

Puccini's La Bohème will return to the Met on November 18 under the baton of Louis Langrée, who will lead his first house performances of Puccini's extraordinarily popular romantic opera. Hei-Kyung Hong will sing Mimì, a role she has sung more than 50 times with the company, in the opening performances of the revival; on November 25, Hibla Gerzmava will make her Met role debut as the frail seamstress. Dimitri Pittas and Alexey Markov will make Met role debuts as Rodolfo and Marcello, respectively, while Susanna Phillips and Patrick Carfizzi will reprise their performances of Musetta and Schaunard. English bass Matthew Rose makes his Met debut as Colline, and Paul Plishka returns to the dual roles of Benoit and Alcindoro. This season marks the thirtieth anniversary of Franco Zeffirelli's production, a staple of the Met repertory and an audience favorite since its premiere.

In the course of her three-decade Met career, Hong has sung more than 350 performances, most recently as Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen and as Juliette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. Last season, Russian soprano Gerzmava debuted at the Met as Antonia in Les Contes d'Hoffmann and also sang Mimì at the Bavarian State Opera and the Rome OperA. Phillips, the 2010 winner of the Beverly Sills Artist Award, debuted as Musetta in the 2008-09 season. She reprised the role in the 2010-11 season and on the Met's 2011 tour of Japan. She has also appeared at the Met as Pamina in both the German and English versions of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

Pittas's Met repertory includes Nemorino in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, and Macduff in Verdi's Macbeth, a role he sang in that opera's 2007 new production premiere, which was transmitted worldwide through The Met: Live in HD series. Russian baritone Markov appeared in two notable roles at the Met last season, singing Shchelkalov in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (new production premiere, also transmitted worldwide through The Met: Live in HD) and Tomsky in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades. Rose sang a diverse repertory around the world in the 2010-11 season: Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni and Nick Shadow in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at Glyndebourne; Raimondo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at Houston Grand Opera; and the title role in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Bavarian State Opera. Carfizzi, whose more than 30 Met roles have included Masetto in Don Giovanni and Haly in Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, most recently sang Schaunard at the Met in the 2009-10 season.

Langrée, the music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival, made his Met debut leading the 2007 new production premiere of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. His other Met appearances include Don Giovanni in 2008-09 and Hamlet in 2009-10 (new production premiere). Also this season, he leads several performances of Michael Grandage's new staging of Don Giovanni. Zeffirelli's production of La Bohème premiered at the Met in 1981 and has been revived in twenty-seven subsequent seasons, showcasing an extraordinary range of Met singers and conductors.

La Bohème Radio Broadcasts
The November 22 performance will be broadcast live on Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS XM Channel 74, as will the performance on November 28. The November 22 performance will also be streamed live on the Met's Web site, www.metopera.org.

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