EGN NEWS DESK
The refrain grasp on the Metropolitan Opera has one of many firm’s most demanding jobs. There are singers to corral, notes to right and centuries-old scores to pore over.
Donald Palumbo, who introduced the refrain to new heights throughout his 17-year tenure as refrain grasp, introduced final fall that he would step down in June. And on Wednesday, the Met introduced his successor: the German conductor Tilman Michael, who has served as refrain grasp of the Frankfurt Opera for the previous decade.
Michael, 49, who will be part of the corporate at first of the 2024-25 season within the position of refrain director, mentioned in an interview that he was longing for a “new and thrilling” problem, describing the Met as “one of the necessary opera homes on the earth.”
“Choral singing and choral conducting is my life — it’s what I’ve completed since I used to be a toddler,” he mentioned. “I’ve cherished this work from the very first day.”
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, who chosen Michael, mentioned in a press release that he was a “longtime collaborator and good friend whose work I deeply respect.”
“I welcome him wholeheartedly to the Met household,” he mentioned. “He has an innate understanding of the complexity of the voice and attracts out the perfect within the choruses he works with.”
Under Palumbo, 75, the Met refrain, with 74 common members and 85 extras, has grow to be an equal accomplice with the corporate’s world-class orchestra.
Michael, who has additionally led the refrain on the National Theater in Mannheim, Germany, and served as an assistant refrain grasp on the Bayreuth Festival and the Hamburg State Opera, mentioned he hoped to construct on Palumbo’s legacy. He mentioned he felt a particular connection to the choristers when he traveled to New York in February to satisfy them and check out some repertoire. They labored collectively on Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” Puccini’s “La Rondine” and Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s “The Hours.”
“The Met Opera refrain is a improbable refrain,” he mentioned. “But I feel we are able to after all each day enhance and seek for new colours and seek for new skills.”
Michael mentioned he was trying ahead to a manufacturing of Richard Strauss’s fairy-tale opera “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” subsequent season, in addition to to new operas by John Adams, Jeanine Tesori and different composers.
“When choral music is completed nicely, it’s magic,” he mentioned. “It is nearly listening to one another and creating a singular sound collectively — to really feel this power out of your physique, out of your ears, in your coronary heart.”
