Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera, New York's leading opera house, located in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The Metropolitan Opera performs a 26-week season every year, and its performances are also televised and recorded. The company had a long tradition of taking its productions on tour through the United States every spring, but this regular touring was abandoned in 1986, television being seen as a more efficient way of achieving national coverage of its work.

The history of the Metropolitan Opera dates from 1880, when a group of millionaires decided to build an opera house offering more seats than the existing Academy of Music. The Metropolitan Opera House opened in October 1883, on Broadway and 39th Street, with a performance of Faust by Gounod. It soon established an international reputation, and over the years nearly every major opera singer performed there (including Enrico Caruso, Nellie Melba, Feodor Chaliapin, and Kirsten Flagstad). In its early years, operas were performed in German (whether or not they were written in German), but by the 1890s a more eclectic approach was taken.

Various distinguished general managers built up the reputation of the Metropolitan Opera throughout the 20th century, including Guilio Gatti-Casazza and Rudolf Bing. The latter brought to the Metropolitan great stars such as Maria Callas, Grace Bumbry, Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, and Plácido Domingo, as well as conductors including Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, and the American James Levine, who became the company's current artistic director.

The Metropolitan Opera moved to its current home in the Lincoln Center, which can seat nearly 3,800, in 1966. It maintains its international reputation as a showcase for the best opera singers worldwide.