NEW YORK – Even before the first musical note there were a couple of standing ovations: one when the choir entered and another when concertmaster Benjamin Bowman entered to tune the orchestra.
Approximately 90 minutes later, when director Yannick Nézet-Séguin relaxed his arms, the 3,600 people who occupied the seats of the Metropolitan Opera House responded with 8 1/2 minutes of thunderous applause, bringing broad smiles and tear tracks to the more than 200 artists on stage.
For the first time in 550 days, an audience was inside the auditorium of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday night to attend a moving performance of the Verdi’s requiem. The night was in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but in fact it marked much more.
The company was performing at its home for the first time after hundreds of thousands of people died from the coronavirus pandemic, including violist Vincent Lionti of the Met, assistant conductor Joel Revzen and backup singer Antoine Hodge.
It also marked the first performance at the house since the death of director James Levine, the Met’s towering figure of the last half century. He died in March at the age of 77, just over three years after he was fired for sexual irregularities. Verdi was a specialty, and the last of his 2,552 performances at the Met was the previous Verdi’s requiem of the company in December 2017.
Levine’s successor as music director was on the podium. Nézet-Séguin, 46, led a performance of much more impact and subtlety than Levine’s final efforts, when his direction was hampered by Parkinson’s disease.
After a year of labor struggle culminating in new contracts, the Met’s 90’s Orchestra and 120’s Choir, led by choirmaster Donald Palumbo, showed off the world-class status they achieved under Levine and enjoyed enthusiastic applause from an audience hungry for live music.
The pandemic caused the Met to cancel more than 275 performances, including its entire 2020-21 season, in addition to an international tour. The gap was the longest since the company started in 1883.
In the first performance at the house since “So do all of them”By Mozart on March 11, 2020, the four soloists were excellent: soprano Ailyn Pérez, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, tenor Matthew Polenzani, and bass baritone Eric Owens.
Some in the audience congratulated longtime friends and strangers for surviving 18 months. There were no speeches from the stage. This was the second step in the Met’s return after a pair of Mahler Seconds performed outdoors last weekend at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park.
Considering the pandemic, the audience seemed to be 100% wearing masks. Proof of vaccination was required to enter, resulting in long lines.
The first two rows of the orchestra were covered, increasing the separation between the performances and the audience.
The shows were digital only – the Met said the print versions will be restored when the season begins.
Gregory Zuber’s hype boomed during “Dies Irae (Day of Anger).” Pérez and Polenzani sang ethereally. Nézet-Séguin drove wide.
Still ahead is the season’s formal opening night on September 27, when Nézet-Séguin conducts Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the first work by a black composer in the Met’s 138-year history and another milestone in New York City’s return to normalcy.
The Met’s opening night is a marker for the start of New York’s social season, a series of white-tie and black-tie get-togethers that was largely omitted in 2020-21.
A series of Broadway shows will begin opening next week. The New York Philharmonic begins on September 17 at Alice Tully Hall, while David Geffen Hall undergoes a reconstruction that is expected to last another year. Carnegie Hall begins a limited fall season on October 6 followed by a fuller spring.
In a night to remember those who perished, the Met made life in the city seem much more normal.
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