Thomas Ades Conducts the Met Premiere of His Acclaimed Opera THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL

Thomas Adès conducts the Metropolitan Opera premiere of The Exterminating Angel with eight performances from October 26 to November 21, 2017. The critically acclaimed opera, staged by the librettist Tom Cairns, is a co-commission and co-production of the Metropolitan Opera; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Royal Danish Theatre; and Salzburg Festival, where the production premiered in 2016.

Winner of the Best World Premiere at the 2017 International Opera Awards, The Exterminating Angel is based on the screenplay by Luis Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza for the 1962 film, El ángel exterminador. The production draws on the film's playful surrealism, evoking a '60s-glam world that is at once wittily absurd and horrifyingly macabre. A well-off bourgeois couple returns home with their guests from a night at the opera for an elegant, glittering dinner party, only to find that while they have been away the servants have decided that they cannot remain in the house. As they begin their revels, it gradually becomes clear that the partygoers have entered a dream-like vortex from which there is no escape, where even the arrival of a bear and a flock of sheep seems commonplace.

The ensemble cast features soprano Audrey Luna as Leticia Maynar; soprano Amanda Echalazas Lucia de Nobile, mezzo-soprano Alice Coote as Leonora Palma, mezzo-soprano Christine Rice as Blanca Delgado, countertenor Iestyn Davies as Francisco de Ávila, tenor Joseph Kaiser as Edmundo de Nobile, tenor David Portillo as Eduardo, baritone Rod Gilfry as Alberto Roc, bass Kevin Burdette as Señor Russell, bass Christian Van Horn as Julio, and bass Sir John Tomlinson as Dr. Carlos Conde.The cast also includes the following company debuts: British soprano Sally Matthews as Silvia de Ávila, British soprano Sophie Bevan as Beatriz, Canadian tenor Frédéric Antoun as Raúl Yebenes, and American baritone David Adam Moore as Col. Álvaro Gómez.

Completing the creative team alongside Adès and Cairns are four artists making their Met debuts: set and costume designer Hildegard Bechtler, lighting designer Jon Clark, projection designer Tal Yarden, and choreographer Amir Hosseinpour.

Thomas Adès is regarded as one of the leading composers in the world of contemporary classical music. The Tempest was the first Adès opera to be staged at the Met, in 2012, and he made his company debut as a conductor of the work as well. His music has earned widespread recognition and numerous awards, including a Grammy Award for The Tempest and the prestigious Grawemeyer Award - a prize for which he is the youngest-ever recipient. The composer's first opera, Powder Her Face, has been staged all over the world, and his other works are regularly performed at leading opera houses, festivals, and symphonies.

Librettist Tom Cairns makes his Met debut directing The Exterminating Angel. His other opera directorial credits include Verdi's La Traviata and Harrison Birtwistle's The Second Mrs. Kong at Glyndebourne Festival; The Tempest at Royal Danish Opera, Opéra National du Rhin, and Royal Opera, Covent Garden; Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera at the Bavarian State Opera; Janá?ek's The Makropulos Case and Jen?fa and Massenet's Werther at Opera North; and Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Scottish Opera.

The Exterminating Angel Live in HD and Radio Broadcasts

The November 18 matinee performance of The Exterminating Angel will be transmitted live around the world at 12:55 p.m. ET hosted by Susan Graham. The transmission, the third in this season'sThe Met: Live in HD, will be seen in more than 2,000 movie theaters in 73 countries. The October 26performance will be broadcast live on Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS XM Channel 75, as will the performances on November 3 and November 14. The November 3 performance will also be streamed live on the Met's web site, www.metopera.org.

The Met: Live in HD series is made possible by a generous grant from its founding sponsor, The Neubauer Family Foundation. Digital support for The Met: Live in HD is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Transmission of The Met: Live in HD in Canada is made possible thanks to the generosity of Jacqueline Desmarais, in memory of Paul G. Desmarais Sr. A recording of a performance from the fall will be broadcast over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network on April 21.

Related Events

On Monday, October 16 at 7:30 pm, the Guggenheim Museum's Works & Process series welcomes a conversation with Adès and Cairns moderated by Met General Manager Peter Gelb, about adapting The Exterminating Angel for the stage. Met singers from the production will perform excerpts from the score. For more information, please visit www.guggenheim.org.

On Thursday, October 20 at 4:00 pm at the Remarque Institute at NYU, history professor and director for European and Mediterranean Studies at New York University Larry Wolff interviews Adès,along with other guest panelists about the adaptation of The Exterminating Angel. For more details, please visit www.metopera.org.

Photo: Christian Van Horn as Julio and Amanda Echalaz and Joseph Kaiser as Lucia and Edmundo de Nobile in Thomas Ades's "The Exterminating Angel." Photo: Paola Kudacki/Metropolitan Opera

To post a comment, you must register and login.