The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Embarks on its First Asian Tour

The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra will tour Asia for the first time from June 19 to 30. After the orchestra's June residency at Carnegie Hall, it will perform in South Korea (Lotte Concert Hall, June 19 and 20), Japan (Hyogo Performing Arts Center, June 22 and 23, and Suntory Hall, June 25 to 27), and Taiwan (National Concert Hall, June 29 and 30).

With the orchestra are guest artists soprano Lisette Oropesa, mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, all of whom performed with the orchestra at Carnegie.

Under the leadership of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met's Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, the ensemble will deliver a concert performance of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, the overture from Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, and selections from Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, as well as works by Brahms, Mozart, and Mahler. Also on the program is the Hymn for Everyone by contemporary composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery, described by Nézet-Séguin as "a new work the world needs now."

The Asian tour will also mark the Met's first performance in Japan in thirteen years, the last one taking place in 2011, when the Met staged operas in Tokyo and Nagoya. Last year, the orchestra embarked on its first international tour since 2002.

"At a time of increasing global unrest, the Met offers musical solace to audiences everywhere through our international broadcasts," says Peter Gelb, the Met's Maria Manetti Shrem General Manager. "But with this first orchestral tour of Asia in our history, we will be bringing our music directly to audiences that, up to now, have only known us from afar."