VIDEO: Watch the Cast of THE GILDED AGE Chat with Met Opera Vice President C. Graham Berwind, III

The cast of HBO’s The Gilded Age visited the Met for a discussion with Met Vice President C. Graham Berwind, III, followed by a performance of Wagner’s Tannhäuser.

Watch clips from the discussion below!

The Gilded Age is an American historical drama television series created and written by Julian Fellowes for HBO that is set in the United States during the Gilded Age, the boom years of the 1880s in New York City. Originally announced in 2018 for NBC, it was later announced in May 2019 that the show was moved to HBO.

The series premiered on January 24, 2022. In February 2022, the series was renewed for a second season.

The series stars Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Louisa Jacobson, Denée Benton, Blake Ritson, Taissa Farmiga, Simon Jones, Harry Richardson, Jack Gilpin, Debra Monk, Kristine Nielsen, Taylor Richardson, Ben Ahlers, Kelley Curran, Douglas Sills, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Michael Cerveris, Erin Wilhelmi, Kelli O'Hara, Donna Murphy, Patrick Page, Sullivan Jones.

ABOUT WAGNER'S TANNHÄUSER

Wagner's Tannhäuser returns to the Met stage on November 30 for eight performances, with notable Met role debuts for three principal cast members: Austrian tenor Andreas Schager in the title role, following his performances as Siegfried in the Met's 2019 Ring cycle; South African soprano Elza van den Heever as Elisabeth, following her critically acclaimed performance as Senta in Wagner's Der Fliegende Holländer last season; and Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova, who appeared as Neris in last year's Met premiere of Cherubini's Medea, as Venus. The production also features German baritone Christian Gerhaher, lauded as “one of the finest Lieder singers of his generation” (The Guardian), in his company debut as Tannhäuser's companion knight Wolfram. Singing the role of Landgraf Hermann is German bass Georg Zeppenfeld, whose last Met performance was in 2021 as Pogner in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Maestro Donald Runnicles conducts.

Returning to the Met stage for the first time since 2015, director Otto Schenk's classic staging was first performed on December 22, 1977.  In a review of the production's premiere, The New York Times hailed it as “Imaginatively staged, it is a production Wagner might recognize.”  The creative team includes set designer Günther Schneider-Siemssen, costume designer Patricia Zipprodt, lighting designer Gil Wechsler, and choreographer Norbert Vesak.

Videography by Neville Braithwaite.

Photos by Evan Zimmerman.

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