Met To Add Seven New Productions For 2007-8

The Metropolitan Opera will present seven new productions next season, the most since it moved into Lincoln Center in 1966, and intensify its campaign to make opera hot — or at least mildly picante in a media-saturated world.

In an interview on Monday about his future plans, the Mets general manager, Peter Gelb, said he was pressing forward with his strategy of bringing in co-productions of new stagings from other houses, effectively adopting the out-of-town tryout system of Broadway. That way the productions can appear more polished and dramatically effective in the big house off 65th Street.

An opera companys pride often lies in presenting a production for the first time, he said, but for him, the pride is in a great performance.

So a production of Glucks Iphigénie en Tauride is to play at the Met next season after a run at the Seattle Opera. Philip Glasss Satyagraha is receiving its start in workshops by the English National Opera. And Donizettis Fille du Régiment comes courtesy of the Royal Opera House in London.

The other new productions include Donizettis Lucia di Lammermoor, which will open the season, with the soprano Natalie Dessay; Verdis Macbeth; Benjamin Brittens Peter Grimes; and an English-language version of Humperdincks Hansel and Gretel, a Welsh National Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera production reconceived by the Met for special holiday performances.

Mr. Gelb, who is in his first season as general manager, has staked the Mets future on deepening the theatrical presence on the stage, exemplified by his hiring of the film and theater director Anthony Minghella to direct this seasons opener, Madama Butterfly, which sold out and will return next season. While most of next seasons plans were already in place before his arrival, Mr. Gelb has made his mark by bringing in directors with mainly nonoperatic experience.

They include Mary Zimmerman for Lucia, Richard Jones for Hansel and John Doyle (who won a Tony Award for Sweeney Todd) for Grimes. The leaders of Londons theater troupe Improbable will direct Satyagraha.

The new productions brought in by Mr. Gelb are Lucia, Hansel and Gretel and Satyagraha. Mr. Gelb acknowledged that new productions are expensive but said that ticket sales and increased donations brought in by their buzz would make up the cost, and then some. He said ticket revenue this year already equals last years total.

Mr. Gelb also said the Met would expand its increasingly popular live broadcasts in movie theaters, which started this season, to at least eight from six, and beam them into a handful of New York schools. He said he would raise the number of open houses to three from one and repeat the opening-night simulcast in Times Square and Lincoln Center Plaza.

Tan Duns sprawling new work, The First Emperor, which ran to mixed reviews but full houses this winter, will return at the end of the 2007-8 season for three performances. Mr. Gelb said he had asked Mr. Tan to make cuts to improve the dramatic flow. He didnt have the benefit of a rewrite, Mr. Gelb said.

One reason for bringing the work back, he said, was to have it ready for a tour to China tied to the 2008 Olympics. The tour is not a sure thing, but Mr. Gelb said Chinese government officials had expressed strong interest, even promising financial support. The Met would like to go, he said.

In revivals Karita Mattila will sing Puccinis Manon Lescaut for the first time at the house. Valery Gergiev will conduct two Prokofiev works, The Gambler and War and Peace. Renée Fleming will return in La Traviata, which she once turned down at the Met earlier in her career because she felt she was not ready. She will also sing Desdemona in Verdis Otello. Mr. Gelb said Robert Wilson would direct Bellinis Norma for Ms. Fleming in 2011.

Diana Damrau will sing Pamina in Der Zauberflöte, then step around to the other side of the plate to sing the Queen of the Night in later performances. Mr. Gelb said that unusual bit of casting had come about because Ms. Damrau had asked to be excused from the final Pamina performances in order to be available for concerts with Riccardo Muti. But the concerts fell through. Since a substitute had already been found, and the role of the Queen (a Damrau specialty) remained open, it went to her.

Mr. Gelb said he was hoping to cast Audra McDonald, the Broadway singer, to perform the role of Kitty, J. Robert Oppenheimers wife, in John Adamss Doctor Atomic, for the 2008-9 season. Were wooing her, Mr. Gelb said. Ms. McDonald sang an excerpt with the New York Philharmonic two seasons ago.

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