Taymor's THE MAGIC FLUTE Returns As Met's Holiday Presentation 12/22-1/1

Julie Taymor's hit production of Mozart's The Magic Flute returns to the Met as this season's special holiday presentation beginning December 22.  The abridged, English-language version is specially priced to appeal to families and will have four matinees and one holiday evening performance, running through January 1.

The young American soprano Nicole Cabell, winner of the prestigious 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, makes her Met debut as Pamina. The cast also includes Cyndia Sieden as the villainous Queen of the Night; Dimitri Pittas as the prince, Tamino; Rodion Pogossov as the birdcatcher Papageno; Kathleen Kim as his beloved Papagena; and Eric Owens as the high priest Sarastro. Russell Thomas sings Tamino at the performance on December 30. Asher Fisch conducts all five performances.

The holiday presentation of Taymor's fanciful 2004 production is a 110-minute abridged version of Mozart's opera in an English translation created for the Met by J. D. McClatchy. The specially priced tickets range from Prime Orchestra seats at $99 to $15 in the Family Circle. The four matinees are at 1:00 p.m. and the January 1 evening performance is at 7:00 p.m.

The Met initiated its holiday presentation in December 2006 with The Magic Flute, which launched the highly successful The Met: Live in HD transmission series and is now available on a newly released DVD, sold at the Met Opera Shop. In writing about those performances, The New York Times said, "Even before the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday matinee of Mozart's 'Magic Flute' began, this family-friendly version of Julie Taymor's 2004 production looked to be a huge success. Children were everywhere, a rare sight at the venerable institution." The Wall Street Journal commented that, "The shortened version preserved the delicate balance of gravity and humor in Mozart's magical tale of a prince, Tamino, who is dispatched to rescue a princess, Pamina, and discovers wisdom in the process."
About the performers

Nicole Cabell, the young American soprano who earned international attention as the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, makes her Met debut as Pamina. Marilyn Horne, a judge at that competition, said of Cabell's singing, "It's a voice that wraps itself around you." Later this season, Cabell will also appear at the Met as Adina in two performances of L'Elisir d'Amore opposite tenors Rolando Villazón and Joseph Calleja. She sang Pamina with Opera Pacific earlier this year, and in October she played Leila in Les Pêcheurs de Perles at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.  Next spring she will sing her first Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro at Cincinnati Opera as well Micaela in Carmen at Berlin's Deutsche Oper, where she made her debut in 2006 as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette.

The fiendishly demanding part of the Queen of the Night has become a signature role for the American soprano Cyndia Sieden, who has sung it with numerous opera companies. Her repertoire also includes Lulu, which she sang at her Met debut in 2001, and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, which she has performed at the Vienna State Opera, the Seattle Opera, and the English National Opera. Sieden was Ariel in the 2004 world premiere of Thomas Adès's The Tempest at London's Royal Opera House and has since sung it with several other companies, including Santa Fe Opera.

Soprano Kathleen Kim made her Met debut last season as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro and now adds another Mozart character to her repertoire with the company, Papagena. In March, she returns as a Sprite in Dvořák's Rusalka, which stars Renée Fleming in the title role. Last season at the Met, Kim also sang Oscar in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera.

New York native Dimitri Pittas sings Tamino for the first time at the Met. When he played Macduff in the new production of Macbeth at the Met last season, which was transmitted worldwide as part of The Met: Live in HD series, the New York Times reported that the tenor sang "with melting sound and dramatic urgency." A graduate of the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Pittas has appeared in several roles at the Met since his 2005 debut as the Herald in Don Carlo, including Tybalt in the new production of Roméo et Juliette (2005). He made his Bavarian State Opera debut as Macduff this fall. Later this season, he sings Nemorino in L'Elisir d'Amore with the Welsh National Opera and in a new production at the Santa Fe Opera.

Rodion Pogossov returns to the comic role of Papageno, which he sang at the premiere of this production in 2004 and again in the 2006-07 season. The New York Times critic, calling him "a natural charmer," said, "With his goofy grin, robust voice and physical nimbleness, Mr. Pogossov was utterly endearing." The young Russian baritone, a former member of the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program who sings with opera companies throughout the world, won rave reviews earlier this year for his performance as Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Canadian Opera Company.

After making his acclaimed Met debut this season as General Leslie Groves in the premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic, American bass-baritone Eric Owens takes on the role of Sarastro. A finalist at the Met National Council Auditions in 1996 and a former member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, Owens has a repertoire that ranges from the King of Scotland in Handel's Ariodante, which he sang in June at the San Francisco Opera, to Collatinus in Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. Later this season, Owens plays Capellio in I Capuleti e i Montecchi at London's Royal Opera and gives his first New York solo recital at Weill Recital Hall. 

Conductor Asher Fisch, who has previously led Met performances of The Merry Widow, Rigoletto, and Madama Butterfly, this season adds The Magic Flute. He began his conducting career as Daniel Barenboim's assistant at the Berlin State Opera and went on to become the music director at the Israeli Opera. Maestro Fisch, who is also a pianist, has conducted in major opera houses throughout the world in repertoire that spans three centuries. Last year Fisch was named the Principal Guest Conductor at the Seattle Opera.        

The Magic Flute will be experienced by millions of people around the world this season on the radio and the internet, through distribution platforms the Met has established with various media partners.

The Saturday matinee performance on December 27 will be broadcast live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network.

The matinee performance on December 27 will also be broadcast live on the Metropolitan Opera on SIRIUS Satellite Radio channel 78, as will the performance on January 1.

The same December 27 performance will also be available via RealNetworks internet streaming at the Met's web site, www.metopera.org.

Under the leadership of General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director James Levine, the Met has a series of bold initiatives underway that are designed to broaden its audience and revitalize the company's repertory.  The Met has made a commitment to presenting modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, with highly theatrical productions featuring the greatest opera stars in the world.

The Metropolitan Opera's 2008-09 season pays tribute to the company's extraordinary history on the occasion of its 125th anniversary, while also emphasizing the Met's renewed commitment to advancing the art form. The season features six new productions, 18 revivals, the final performances of Otto Schenk's production of Wagner's Ring cycle conducted by Levine, and two gala celebrations; the galas include the season-opening performance featuring Renée Fleming as well as a 125th anniversary celebration on March 15.  New productions include the company premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic as well as the Met's first staged production of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust since 1906, Massenet's Thaïs, Puccini's La Rondine, Verdi's Il Trovatore, and Bellini's La Sonnambula.

Building on its 77-year-old radio broadcast history – currently heard over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network – the Met now uses advanced media distribution platforms and state-of-the-art technology to attract new audiences and reach millions of opera fans around the world.

The Emmy Award-winning The Met: Live in HD series reached more than 935,000 people in the 2007-08 season, more than the number of people who saw performances in the opera house.  These performances began airing on PBS in March 2008, and nine of these HD performances are now available on DVD. The most recent, The Magic Flute is released by the Met and will be available in mid-December at the newly renovated Met Shop in the opera house lobby. The other eight are on the EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, and Decca labels.   In the 2008-09 season, the HD series expands to feature 11 live transmissions, starting with the Met's Opening Night Gala and spanning the entire season. The HD productions are seen this season in over 850 theaters in 28 countries around the world. Five new productions are featured, including the Met premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic. The Opening Night transmission was seen in the Americas only; the remaining ten high-definition productions are shown live worldwide on Saturdays through May 9 with encores scheduled at various times.

Live in HD in Schools, the Met's new program offering free opera transmissions to New York City schools in partnership with the New York City Department of Education and the Metropolitan Opera Guild, reached more than 7,000 public school students and teachers during the 2007-08 season. This season, Live in HD in Schools expands to reach schools in 18 cities and communities nationwide.

Continuing its innovative use of electronic media to reach a global audience, the Metropolitan Opera introduces Met Player, a new subscription service that will make its extensive video and audio catalog of full-length performances available to the public for the first time online, and in exceptional, state-of-the-art quality. During the first month of the new service, 120 historic audio recordings and 50 full-length opera videos will be available, including over a dozen of the company's acclaimed The Met: Live in HD transmissions, known for their extraordinary sound and picture quality.  New content, including HD productions and archival broadcasts, will be added monthly.

Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS channel 78 is a subscription-based audio entertainment service broadcasting both an unprecedented number of live performances each week throughout the Met's entire season, as well as rare historical performances, newly restored and remastered, spanning the Met's 77-year broadcast history.

In addition to providing audio recordings through the new Met on Rhapsody on-demand service, the Met also presents free live audio streaming of performances on its website once every week during the opera season with support from RealNetworks®.

The company's groundbreaking commissioning program in partnership with New York's Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), provides renowned composers and playwrights with the resources to create and develop new works at the Met and at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater.  The Met's partnership with LCT is part of the company's larger initiative to commission new operas from contemporary composers, present modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, and provide a venue for artists to nurture their work.

The Met has launched several audience development initiatives such as the company's Open House Dress Rehearsals, which are free and open to the public.  Two are planned for the 2008-09 season: La Damnation de Faust on November 4 and La Sonnambula on February 27.  Just prior to beginning the current season, the Met presented a free performance of the Verdi Requiem on September 18, in tribute to the late Luciano Pavarotti.  Other company initiatives include the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met which exhibits contemporary visual art; the immensely successful Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Rush Ticket program which provides deeply discounted orchestra seats two hours before curtain time; and an annual Holiday Series presentation for families.  This season's special Holiday Presentation is Julie Taymor's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, an abridged, English-language version of the opera which is given four special matinee performances and one holiday evening performance as a way for families to celebrate the holiday season.

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