You made your Met debut in 1971. What are some of the changes you’ve seen?
Since I came to the Met, we have added a tremendous number of operas to the repertoire that weren’t there before—and not just new or 20th-century operas. Yes, we did Lulu and Moses und Aron and Britten and Janáček, as well as the new operas that were commissioned by the Met, like An American Tragedy or The First Emperor or The Great Gatsby or Ghosts of Versailles. And then there are Mahagonny, Porgy and Bess, The Makropoulos Case, Doctor Atomic, Satyagraha, The Voyage—a huge panorama of relatively new operas. But there are also Verdi operas that the company had never done before, Mozart operas the company had never done, as well as operas that are not done frequently enough to be considered part of this generation’s repertory. For example, it had been a very long time since we played Orfeo ed Euridice before the current production. The repertoire has become much larger.

The season has become longer too.
I can remember in my childhood the Met opened in mid-November and closed toward the middle of April. The activity that we have now, from the beginning of September virtually till June—the company is far busier than it was early on. I also think production style has continued to change. I have always loved the fact that the Met had a very broad range of great productions in an intelligent variety of styles. And I think certainly the quality of the orchestra and chorus has continued to develop in every style over the years. We sang our first operas in Czech, our first operas in Russian. We did a lot of telecasting and recording that hadn’t been done before. We have now had a successful series of MET Orchestra and chamber ensemble concerts at Carnegie Hall for many years.

What was your goal when you first came to the Met?
The goal has always been the same: to do everything we can to make our results better. It has to be said, though, that when I came here, the Met was surely a great company, for god’s sake! The great singers of my youth were an irreplaceably phenomenal group. I miss them. But I think that the proliferation of opera worldwide—by regional companies, by films, by television, by the sheer quantity of companies—has made the theatrical expectation today even higher.

People often talk about how vocal artistry has changed. Why is that?
Many reasons: the composers died. The teachers and coaches died. The jet plane flew everybody everywhere so they no longer felt obliged to stick with their roots. There were two world wars. But I also think it is true that you remain riveted by whichever singers you discover at an impressionable age. I was lucky, because I conducted many of the singers who were my operatic idols when I was a kid, when they were toward the end of their careers. That gave me a bridge into the next generation, and now I’ve been doing it long enough— nearly 40 years—to have worked through yet another generation!

You and Peter Gelb have developed a very interesting program for the 125th Anniversary Gala, where classic productions are recreated using scenic projections.
We wanted to find a new format that would have something fresh about it. We’ve focused on things that were of artistic interest in Met production history and that you can stage in a visually interesting way. I did a gala on my 25th anniversary, I did one for the hundredth anniversary of the Met—I’ve done them for all kinds of occasions. In general, I’m a complete opera guy. I’m the one who believes that we should do the piece as close to the way the composer wrote it as possible. And yet, I love excerpts. A gala evening, for me, is like someone opened a treasure chest. The riches seem endless and incredibly diverse.

Of all the great singers with whom you’ve had extraordinary collaborations, Plácido Domingo is the one you’ve worked with most frequently. You’ll conduct him in the gala and next season in the title role of Simon Boccanegra.
My work has run parallel to Plácido’s, and it’s an indescribable satisfaction to have someone like him to work with all the time. Plácido and I first worked together in San Francisco in 1970 and here at the Met in 1971, and the sheer number of different operas, different productions, film, television, recording, and concert work we’ve done together—it’s astounding. Where else would someone like me, for whom certain musical values are so important, find a tenor who had that kind of commitment to expressive truth and the musical subtleties? As a great artist and as a great friend Plácido is unique. And we have never had a fight, an argument, or a significant disagreement in 40 years. We’ve always worked together in perfect harmony!

You’re conducting six operas next season, including a new production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, a revival of Lulu, and other works you’re very closely connected to. Are you choosing to conduct only operas that you really love?
I love every work I do! It’s more that I’m always trying to do works that I think are particularly useful for developing our artistic quality and that can be well cast and that I haven’t done in a while and I miss. But it’s keeping a balance.

Thirty-seven years after your debut, what about the Met are you most proud of?
I would put it a different way: I would say that I’m very proud of the Met—period. I’m pleased and thrilled with the great performances we’ve done and continue to do, and with the diligent, hard-working, humble and enthusiastic, full-scale commitment that comes from every person who’s involved in putting on opera here. You have to work so hard and you have so many obstacles to overcome, but on balance I think this company does beautiful and heroic work, and surely we are the largest collection of dedicated great operatic artists under one roof in the world. —Matt Dobkin