James Maddalena

The European premiere of the opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars, in a co-production of the San Francisco Opera (where the work premiered), the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and De Nederlandse Opera. The plot focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb (the "Trinity" test) was being prepared.

Director Peter Sellars helms this provocative adaptation of George Frideric Handel's opera "Giulio Cesare," sung in the original Italian by soprano Susan Larson (who plays Cleopatra) and countertenor Jeffrey Gall (in the role of Julius Caesar) but set in a very different locale: a futuristic Middle East. Sellars personally wrote the English subtitles included in this version to match the tone he intended for his vision.

Though performed in the original Italian, Peter Sellars' production of Cosi fan tutte relocates Mozart's comedy of love to the neon-and-chrome glare of a seaside diner, mirroring the turbulent world of late-twentieth-century America.

In this modern-day presentation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's beloved opera "Le Nozze di Figaro," acclaimed American director Peter Sellars moves the action from a castle in Seville to a Trump Tower penthouse on New York City's Fifth Avenue. Sellars's contemporary retelling of a classic musical tale is one of three performances in a Mozart series the others are "Don Giovanni" and "'Così Fan Tutte."

John Adams’s groundbreaking work vividly brings to life US President Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China. Peter Sellars’s Metropolitan Opera production, based on his 1987 world-premiere staging, features choreography by Mark Morris and stars James Maddalena as Nixon, Robert Brubaker as Chairman Mao, Janis Kelly as First Lady Pat Nixon, Russell Braun as Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and Kathleen Kim as Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife. From the pomp of the public displays to the intimacy of the protagonists most private moments, Adams, Sellars and librettist Alice Goodman reveal the real characters behind the headlines in this landmark American opera.

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