Abraham Lincoln Opera, Kevin Puts' Pulitzer-Winning Silent Night, More to Feature in Met Opera's 2026-27 Season

The Metropolitan Opera has announced its 2026-27 season, which will include four new productions, with two Met premieres, as well as 14 revivals from the company's repertoire. Highlights include Missy Mazzoli's Lincoln in the Bardo, a whole-new opera directed by Tony nominee Lileana Blain-Cruz, about Abraham Lincoln; the Met premiere of Kevin Puts' Pulitzer-winning opera Silent Night; new productions of Janáček’s Jenůfa and Verdi's Macbeth; and starry revivals of La Fanciulla del West, Maria Stuarda, and more. 

The season will open this fall, on September 22, with a new production of Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth, starring baritone Quinn Kelsey and soprano Lise Davidsen in their house role debuts as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The new production, helmed by director Louisa Proske in her Met debut, will also feature tenor Freddie De Tommaso as Macduff, and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as Banquo. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will conduct.

But that's not all for the Bard. A second Verdian adaptation of a Shakespeare tragedy, Verdi's Otello, will run January 11–May 1, 2027. The revival of Tony winner Bartlett Sher's 2015 production will star tenors Michael Fabiano and Brian Jagde as Otello, with sopranos Angel Blue and Ailyn Pérez sharing the role of Desdemona, and baritones Amartuvshin Enkhbat and Artur Ruciński. Contrasting the acrobatic, bel canto-influenced score of the earlier Macbeth, Verdi's Otello, composed 40 years later, shows the grander and more dramatic musical scope of the composer's later career, with a title role which is considered one of the most challenging tenor parts in the operatic canon. Daniele Rustioni, kicking off the second year of his three-season term as Principal Guest Conductor, will share conducting duties with Michele Mariotti.

Two contemporary works will take the Met stage this season, starting with Missy Mazzoli's Lincoln in the Bardo, which will have its world premiere October 19 in a production directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. The Met Opera commission is based on the 2017 novel of the same name by George Saunders. Set in the bardo—a Buddhist concept of a liminal state between life and death—the work concerns President Abraham Lincoln dealing with grief over the death of his son William in 1862, at the age of 11. The world premiere will be the much-anticipated Met debut of Mazzoli, who has been one of the most prolific and frequently-performed American opera composers of the past decade. The opera will be given nine performances through November 14, conducted by Nézet-Séguin and with a star-studded cast including baritone Peter Mattei as Lincoln, soprano Christine Goerke as the Reverend, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as Mrs. Baron, and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo as Miss Elise Traynor. 

Kevin Puts' Silent Night will have its Met debut March 8–April 3, 2027. The 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning opera is based on the 1914 World War I Christmas truce. The production, directed by James Robinson, will be conducted by Dalie Stasevska in her Met debut and feature another starry cast including soprano Elza van den Heever, tenors Ben Bliss and Rolando Villazón, and baritone Mattia Olivieri.

The rest of the Met season is as follows:

Mozart's comic opera Cosí fan tutte will return to the Met stage for the first time since 2020. Running September 23–October 23, the third and final opera written by Mozart with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, Cosi fan tutte follows two soldiers who, on a bet, don disguises and attempt to woo each other's fiancées in order to prove their faithfulness. Duke Kim and Andre Zhilikhovsky play Ferrando and Guglielmo, with Samantha Hankey and Federica Lombardi as the sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi. Gerald Finley plays the scheming Don Alfonso, who instigates the wager, and Ana María Martínez plays the mischievous maid Despina, who joins in the plot for an opportunity to humiliate her social superiors.

Opening September 25, Puccini's La Bohéme will receive 24 performances over the course of the season, through April 29, 2027. The classic production by Franco Zeffirelli will feature five different casts over the course of the run.

Cherubini's Medea will be revived October 30–November 21, starring soprano Sonya Yoncheva as the titular tragic figure. Tenor Michael Spyres will play Giasone, with soprano Elena Villalón as Glauce and bass Alexandros Stavrakakis as Creonte in the revival of David McVicar's visually spectacular production, which features a large tilted mirror across the stage to create painting-like tableaus.

Puccini's Tosca, will be revived for 25 performances throughout the season with runs in November, January, and May. Across the three runs, five different sopranos will take on the title role, including Sondra Radvanovsky, Aleksandra Kurzak, Eleonora Buratto, Natalya Romaniw, and Saioa Hernández, the latter two making their Met debuts. Tenors SeokJong Baek, Piotr Beczala, Matthew Polenzani, and Roberto Alagna will share the role of Cavaradossi, with baritones Quinn Kelsey, George Gagnidze, Željko Lučić, and Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Baron Scarpia.

Soprano Asmik Grigorian will return to the Met in a new production of Janáček’s Jenůfa, directed by Claus Guth. Based on a play by Czech playwright Gabriela Preissová, the opera follows the titular Jenůfa as she is mired in scandal when she has a child out of wedlock. Tenors Allan Clayton and Sean Panikkar play Laca and Števa, half-brothers and rivals for Jenůfa's hand, while soprano Nina Stemme will play the Kostelnička, Jenůfa's stepmother, who will go to tragic lengths to secure her stepdaughter's future. Czech conductor Tomáš Hanus will make his Met debut with the production. Jenůfa will run November 16–December 4, with Grigorian also giving a solo recital on the Met stage November 18.

Tony winner Darko Tresnjak's production of Camille Camille Saint-Saëns' Samon et Dalila will take the stage November 27–December 23. Based on the biblical story from the Book of Judges, the production will star tenor Clay Hilley making his Met debut as the titular Nazirite, and mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina as the woman who subjects him to the world's worst haircut. Alfred Walker as Abimélech, Quinn Kelsey as the High Priest, and Morris Robinson as the descriptively-named Old Hebrew round out the cast, with Giacomo Sargipanti conducting.

Donizetti's Maria Stuarda will be revived for the first time since 2016, after a planned 2020 revival was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart, the opera tells of the final days of Mary, Queen of Scots, as she is imprisoned and executed by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England, who fears Mary's claim to the throne. Acclaimed as a virtuosic vocal showpiece of the bel canto era, Maria Stuarda will star sopranos Lisette Oropesa and Angela Meade as the rival queens Mary and Elisabeth, with tenor René Barbera as the Earl of Leicester. Maria Stuarda will run December 6–22.

Soprano Kathryn Lewek, the Met's longest-tenured Queen of the Night, will break up her usual routine winter 2026. In the Met's annual holiday production The Magic Flute, running December 11, 2026 - Janury 2, 2027, she will play two performances in her signature role as the Queen, and three as the Queen's daughter Pamina. Lewek will also play four performances as Musetta in Puccini's La Bohéme, marking the soprano's first ever Met performances in any roles other than the Queen of the Night.

Another iconically American Met Commission will return to the Met on New Year's eve. Puccini's La Fanciulla del West, the first opera ever commissioned by the company back in 1910, will be revived December 31, 2026–January 30, 2027, starring soprano Sondra Radvanovsky as the saloon owner Minnie, tenor SeokJong Baek as the bandit Dick Johnson, and baritone Christopher Maltman as the sheriff Jack Rance. Based on David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West, the opera depicts life in a California mining town amid the 1840s gold rush. The plot bears similarities to the composer's earlier hit Tosca, transplanted to the Western genre. Often considered one of Puccini's finest scores, the work is nevertheless infrequently performed due to the difficulty of its three leading roles.

Following a midwinter hiatus, Tony winner Michael Mayer's production of Verdi's Aida will receive 21 performances from March 9–June 10, 2027 with alternating casts including sopranos Angel Blue, Anna Pirozzi, and Leah Hawkins in the role of Aida. Mezzo-sopranos Judit Kutasi and Olesya Petrova will play Amneris, with tenors Michael Fabiano and SeokJong Baek as Radames.

Soprano Nadine Sierra will make her role debut in the titular part of Massenet's Manon, running March 12–April 8, 2027. Sierra stars as the commoner Manon with tenor Matthew Polenzani as the Chevalier des Grieux, with whom Manon embarks on a scandalous and class-defying affair. Yves Abel will conduct the revival of Laurent Pelly's production, which also features baritone Andrzej Filończyk as Lescaut, baritone Rod Gilfry as De Brétigny, and bass Jean Teitgen as the Comte des Grieux.

Fresh off of her acclaimed run in the titular role of Arabella this season, soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen will return to the Met to play another Strauss protagonist, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, running March 24–April 10, 2027. Mezzo-soprano Emily D'Angelo will play her lover Octavian, who unwittingly becomes a pawn in the engagement proceedings between Baron Ochs and Sophie von Faninal, played by bass Günther Groissböck and soprano Ying Fang. When Octavian and the intended bride fall in love instead, they enact a scheme to foil the engagement, with comedic consequences. Tenor Matthew Polenzani will make a star cameo as the Italian Singer, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin will conduct.

Wagner's Parsifal will return to the stage for six performances May 10–June 5, 2027, with Nézet-Séguin leading an all-star cast: tenor Piotr Beczala as Parsifal, mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča as Kundry, baritone Peter Mattei as Amfortas, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as Klingsor, bass Jongmin Park as Gurnemanz, and bass-baritone Alfred Walker as Titurel. The final stage work by Richard Wagner, Parsifal was labeled a Bühnenweihfestspiel—or "festival play for the consecration of a stage"—by the composer. The highly spiritual six-hour opera follows the "pure fool" Parsifal, who is sent on a quest by the Grail Knight Gurnemanz to recover the Holy Spear (the spear said to have pierced Jesus at the crucifixion) from the sorcerer Klingsor.

The season will also include three concert performances of Mahler's Symphony No. 8, June 10, 11, and 12, 2027, with the Met Orchestra taking to the stage itself in the so-called "Symphony of a Thousand." Angela Meade, Elza van den Heever, Erin Morley, Ekaterina Gubanova, Karen Cargill, Russell Thomas, Will Liverman, and Ryan Speedo Green will serve as the soloists in the large-scale work for orchestra and chorus.

The 2026-27 Met: Live in HD series will include screenings of Cosi fan tutte (October 3, 2026), Macbeth (October 17, 2026), Samson et Dalila (December 5, 2026), La Fanciulla del West (January 23, 2027), Silent Night (March 20, 2027), Manon (April 3, 2027), Otello (April 24, 2027), and Parsifal (June 5, 2027).

Visit MetOpera.org for more information.