Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

New York's Metropolitan Opera Orchestra dates back as an established ensemble almost to the <a href="spotify:artist:14AbeD1op5phNiIVzzRVWr">Metropolitan Opera</a>'s founding in the 1880s. The orchestra has been led by legendary conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries, including <a href="spotify:artist:4xpgBZSojKNEQqQHXrwSXA">Arturo Toscanini</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2CFaOiHKik5FgNGzZJ08sx">George Szell</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:4qFQgEF1rg6a9WvJM0MQIa">James Levine</a>.

New York upper-crust families launched an effort to establish a world-class opera company in 1880, and the <a href="spotify:artist:14AbeD1op5phNiIVzzRVWr">Metropolitan Opera</a> was launched with the 1883-1884 season. August Vianesia was the music director but was soon replaced in 1886 by <a href="spotify:artist:0tGPaYMQnqanSxBt0qFF6e">Anton Seidl</a>, a protégé of <a href="spotify:artist:1C1x4MVkql8AiABuTw6DgE">Wagner</a> who molded the orchestra into a first-class group along German lines before departing in 1897. Other important early conductors included <a href="spotify:artist:6WFxCvYEni46YcPGL4ScL7">Alfred Hertz</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2ANtgfhQkKpsW6EYSDqldz">Gustav Mahler</a> (1908-1910), and <a href="spotify:artist:4xpgBZSojKNEQqQHXrwSXA">Toscanini</a>, 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 <a href="spotify:artist:14AbeD1op5phNiIVzzRVWr">Metropolitan Opera</a> was led by European-born conductors who were also prominent in the field of orchestral music, including <a href="spotify:artist:2CFaOiHKik5FgNGzZJ08sx">Szell</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1p4YAX8Nh6LiW3uPd49oAR">Bruno Walter</a> (1941-1951), <a href="spotify:artist:4nsMLwMcViXAqwTLJ71y8i">Fritz Reiner</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:4WAWF88jefCusmHVGL0qem">Erich Leinsdorf</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:0KEL9I60FHUhaPzRxuCHRT">Dmitri Mitropoulos</a>. 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 <a href="spotify:artist:14AbeD1op5phNiIVzzRVWr">Met</a>'s mission. Doubtless, the most significant of the orchestra's more recent conductors has been <a href="spotify:artist:4qFQgEF1rg6a9WvJM0MQIa">James Levine</a>, whose career ended under a cloud but who shaped bold interpretations, many of them in part orchestrally based, for decades. <a href="spotify:artist:4qFQgEF1rg6a9WvJM0MQIa">Levine</a> was succeeded by <a href="spotify:artist:3UZDU4aoV3JR95COUOrLyG">Fabio Luisi</a> and by <a href="spotify:artist:5ZGyCOrODWwaVtLSDjayl5">Yannick Nézet-Séguin</a>, 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, Rovi