Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
New York's Metropolitan Opera Orchestra dates back as an established ensemble almost to the Metropolitan Opera's founding in the 1880s. The orchestra has been led by legendary conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Arturo Toscanini, George Szell, and James Levine.
New York upper-crust families launched an effort to establish a world-class opera company in 1880, and the Metropolitan Opera was launched with the 1883-1884 season. August Vianesia was the music director but was soon replaced in 1886 by Anton Seidl, a protégé of Wagner who molded the orchestra into a first-class group along German lines before departing in 1897. Other important early conductors included Alfred Hertz, Gustav Mahler (1908-1910), and Toscanini, who headed the orchestra from 1908 to 1915. Orchestra members by the 1930s earned starting salaries of some $10,000, less than the superstar singers the company engaged but more than what most other orchestras paid, and ever since then, a seat in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra has been a plum assignment for orchestral musicians.
Through the middle of the 20th century and beyond, the Metropolitan Opera was led by European-born conductors who were also prominent in the field of orchestral music, including Szell, Bruno Walter (1941-1951), Fritz Reiner, Erich Leinsdorf, and Dmitri Mitropoulos. The company pioneered operatic broadcasts on radio (from 1930) and television (from 1940), which arguably increased the prominence of the orchestra since audiences experienced no visual component; broadcasts, now including those via the Internet, have remained important to the Met's mission. Doubtless, the most significant of the orchestra's more recent conductors has been James Levine, whose career ended under a cloud but who shaped bold interpretations, many of them in part orchestrally based, for decades. Levine was succeeded by Fabio Luisi and by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director since 2018. The orchestra has issued several recordings independent of operatic productions, including one of Wagner's orchestral music and, in 2022, A Concert for Ukraine.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Live in Tokyo 1988 (Kathleen Battle Edition, Vol. 6)
Kathleen Battle, Plácido Domingo, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Universal Music Australia Pty. Ltd. on 1 Jan 1989
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Parsifal, WWV 111
Opera - Released by Walhall Eternity Series on 1 Mar 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Verdi: La traviata (Live)
Classical - Released by Walhall Eternity Series on 1 Aug 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Verdi: Aida (Live)
Opera - Released by Andromeda on 11 Dec 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Richard Wagner: Siegfried
Lauritz Melchior, Friedrich Schorr, Kirsten Flagstad, Arthur Bodanzky, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Classical - Released by ArnebAudio on 11 Oct 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor (Live)
Classical - Released by Walhall Eternity Series on 6 Feb 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Tannhauser (Recorded 1960)
Opera - Released by Walhall Eternity Series on 1 Jul 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Verdi: Macbeth (Recorded Live 1959)
Classical - Released by Walhall Eternity Series on 1 Aug 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Best Opera Singers, Vol. X
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Chorus, Richard Tauber
Opera - Released by SB Clasic on 22 Nov 2002
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Best Opera Singers, Vol. I
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Beniamino Gigli
Opera - Released by SB Clasic on 22 Nov 2002
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Donizetti: L'elisir d'amore - Highlights
James Levine, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Chorus, Kathleen Battle, Luciano Pavarotti
Classical - Released by Universal Music Australia Pty. Ltd. on 19 Nov 1990
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Samuel Barber: Vanessa (1958), Vol. 2
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Eleanor Steber
Opera - Released by Classical Moments on 1 Jan 1958
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lully, Gretry, Berlioz, Gounod, Thomas, Massenet, Offenbach & Bizet
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Martial Singher
Classical - Released by Altair on 20 Sep 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo