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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Puts: The Hours (Live)
Renée Fleming, Kelli O'Hara, Joyce DiDonato, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Opera - Released by Warner Classics on 26 Apr 2024
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Opera Arias (Kathleen Battle Edition, Vol. 2)
Kathleen Battle, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Universal Music Australia Pty. Ltd. on 1 Jan 1997
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 2002
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Verdi: La Traviata
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 1992
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bizet: Carmen
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Apr 1973
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Best of Rossini
Erich Leinsdorf, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Classical - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 2015
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Strauss: Salome
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, Set Svanholm, Ljuba Welitsch
Opera - Released by The Art Of Singing on 5 Sep 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, WWV 96 – Die Walküre, WWV 86B – Lohengrin, WWV 75 – Tannhäuser, WWV 70
Opera - Released by Myto Historical on 1 Feb 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Tannhäuser, WWV 70 (Live)
Helen Traubel, Lauritz Melchior, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, George Szell
Opera - Released by Archipel on 5 Jan 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner : Orchestral Music
James Levine, Berliner Philharmoniker, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Symphonic Music - Released by Deutsche Grammophon on 18 Dec 1997
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Overtures and Preludes
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 1993
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Orchestral Music
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 18 Dec 1997
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
A Concert for Ukraine
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 21 Jul 2022
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Bryn Terfel - Opera Arias
Bryn Terfel, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Sep 1995
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Verdi: Rigoletto
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 1998
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Parsifal
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 25 Jun 1992
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Donizetti: The Elixir of Love
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 1990
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Idomeneo, re di Creta K.366
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Renée Fleming - I Want Magic! - American Opera Arias
Renée Fleming, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Jan 1998
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo