What Should I See?
Check out our broadly defined, admittedly unscientific guide to help you toward your best possible Met experience.
Vocal Fireworks
In opera, the drama can emerge from the storyline, from the costumes and sets, or from the orchestral writing. But more often than not, it is conveyed through extraordinary, carefully composed, knock-your-socks-off vocalism.
Ariadne auf Naxos
Armida
Le Comte Ory
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Lucia di Lammermoor
The Magic Flute
Don Pasquale
Rigoletto
La Traviata
Il Trovatore
Orfeo ed Euridice
Così fan tutte
Powerful Women
For centuries, opera provided a voice for women that was denied them offstage: these operas keep the spotlight firmly on the strong, desperate, dangerous, and enthralling women who break all the rules.
Armida
Capriccio
Carmen
La Fanciulla del West
Tosca
Die Walküre
Anti-Heroes
Opera gets into the murky minds and twisted psyches of outsiders, iconoclasts, and desperados like no other art form can.
Boris Godunov
Carmen
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
La Fanciulla del West
The Queen of Spades
Rigoletto
Wozzeck
Epic New Productions
Opera tackles the biggest subjects— and the Met tackles the biggest operas— with a vast stage and sophisticated technology that can make even the most jaded theater-goers gasp.
Boris Godunov
Don Carlo
Das Rheingold
Die Walküre
Mythic Stories
Each opera creates its own reality, and the combined power of music and theater can carry us to lost worlds, magical worlds, or worlds that never were.
Ariadne auf Naxos
Armida
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Iphigénie en Tauride
The Magic Flute
Orfeo ed Euridice
Pelléas et Mélisande
Das Rheingold
Die Walküre
Comedy
We’re not kidding: with a savvy staging and a talented cast, a comic opera can be truly funny.
Ariadne auf Naxos
Le Comte Ory
Così fan tutte
Don Pasquale
The Magic Flute
Page to Stage
Some of the greatest masterpieces of literature find new lives in opera—and sometimes these operatic adaptations even surpass their original incarnations.
Boris Godunov
Carmen
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Don Carlo
The Queen of Spades
Roméo et Juliette
La Traviata
Wozzeck
Power Play
No other medium can come close to opera’s power to depict politics and the struggle to survive, as individuals strive to assert themselves in the world.
Boris Godunov
Don Carlo
Nixon in China
Das Rheingold
Simon Boccanegra
Die Walküre
Romances
Better than almost any art form, opera fully conveys the highs, lows, and mysteries of passionate love.
Armida
La Bohème
Capriccio
Carmen
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Don Carlo
La Fanciulla del West
Lucia di Lammermoor
Orfeo ed Euridice
Pelléas et Mélisande
Roméo et Juliette
Tosca
La Traviata
Il Trovatore
Mind Games
Opera’s genre-bending characteristics and dramatic qualities make it supremely equipped to explore those moments when the delicate shell of sanity breaks down.
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
The Queen of Spades
Wozzeck