Newly commissioned works that bring together diverse mediums, influences, and traditions highlight this year’s MetLiveArts programming.
2021–2022 Artist in Residence: Bijayini Satpathy
Hailed by the New Yorker as "a performer of exquisite grace and technique," Bijayini Satpathy is this year's MetLiveArts Artist in Residence. After 25 years as a principal dancer with the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble of Bangalore, Satpathy has created works that challenge the traditions of classical Indian dance.
In preparation for performances this spring, Bijayini and collaborating artists are experimenting in the galleries of The Met throughout the month of January.
Heartbeat Opera's Fidelio
Thursday, February 10, 2022, 7 pm
Saturday, February 12, 2022, 7 pm
Sunday, February 13, 2022, 2 pm
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Music by Ludwig van Beethoven
Original libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner and Georg Friedrich Treitschke
Adapted and directed by Ethan Heard
Music arranged and directed by Daniel Schlosberg
New English dialogue by Marcus Scott and Ethan Heard
A Black activist is wrongfully incarcerated. His wife disguises herself to infiltrate the prison and free him. But when injustice reigns, one woman's grit may not be enough to save her love. Featuring the voices of imprisoned people, this daring adaptation created with Heartbeat Opera places Beethoven's masterpiece in the time of Black Lives Matter.
Tickets start at $25 (includes Museum admission).
Honor, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra
Starring Lili Taylor
Saturday, February 19, 2022, 7 pm
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Directed by Geoff Sobelle
This subversive work by conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra masquerades as an artist talk about one of The Met’s most important 16th-century tapestries. Featuring celebrated actor Lili Taylor in the role of the Artist, Honor weaves together Bocanegra’s personal narrative and her obsession with the colossal tapestry, revealing a multitude of different characters and stories as rich and complex as the work of art itself.
Tickets start at $25 (includes Museum admission).
Sight and Sound: The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein
Stravinsky, Picasso, and Cubism
Sunday, February 20, 2022, 2 pm
Blair McMillen, piano
Igor Stravinsky's groundbreaking works of the 1920s deconstructed music as it had been known. In this he was heavily influenced by the work of another firebrand: his friend Pablo Picasso. One of the composer's masterpieces from this period is his Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1923–24), which Stravinsky loved to perform himself.
Dvořák, MacDowell, and Delacroix: The New World
Sunday, April 10, 2022, 2 pm
Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” (Mvt. 2); Ferruccio Busoni’s Indian Fantasy, Op. 44 for Piano and Orchestra; and Eugène Delacroix, The Natchez
The Met continues its ongoing series exploring the parallels between orchestral music and the visual arts. Conductor and music historian Leon Botstein draws connections between Eugène Delacroix’s painting of a Natchez family forced to flee after the massacre of their tribe and composer Ferruccio Busoni’s Indian Fantasy (1913–14), which is based on Indigenous melodies and rhythms, and the second movement of Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony (1893), which was inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's much-critiqued poem “The Song of Hiawatha.” The program will be followed by a Q&A.
Tickets start at $30, $75 for the series (includes Museum admission).
Montclair State University at The Met
Saturday, March 19, 2022, 7 pm
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Join Montclair State’s Cali School of Music for a fast-paced concert that surveys diverse genres and exhilarating compositions. This performance showcases MSU’s premier performance ensembles: the Wind Symphony, under the direction of the esteemed Thomas McCauley; the University Singers, conducted by Heather J. Buchanan; and the Jazz Ensemble, led by Oscar Perez.
Tickets start at $25 (includes Museum admission).
Matthew Evan Taylor: Life Returns
Metropolis Ensemble with RAJAS
Thursday, March 24, 2022, 7 pm
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Composer and saxophonist Matthew Evan Taylor’s Life Returns is an evening-length composition that draws on African American, South Indian, and European musical practices. Commissioned by MetLiveArts and the Grammy-nominated Metropolis Ensemble in collaboration with mridangam artist Rajna Swaminathan’s RAJAS ensemble, Life Returns melds freely improvised and through-composed music to celebrate resilience in the face of despair and the triumph of light and color over darkness.
Tickets start at $25 (includes Museum admission).
Gateways Music Festival: Gateways Brass Collective
Friday, April 22, 2022, 5:30 pm
The Met Fifth Avenue
Gateways Music Festival connects and supports professional classical musicians of African descent. It aims to enlighten and inspire communities—especially those underrepresented in classical music—through the power of performance.
As part of Gateways’ “Around the Town” series, the Gateways Brass Ensemble will perform in various locations around the Museum.
Angélique Kidjo at The Met
Monday, April 25, 2022, 7 pm
Tuesday, April 26, 2022, 7 pm
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
The Met welcomes Angélique Kidjo, one of the most singular and extraordinary voices in international music.
For this performance, Kidjo invites us to join her on a musical odyssey from Africa, a fount of incomparably rich inspiration, to New York, the unique global crossroads and catalyst for her continually expanding innovative repertoire.
Kidjo's performance anticipates the reinstallation of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing—home to the galleries, currently under construction, that celebrate the genius of sub-Saharan creative expression—and underscores the aesthetic qualities, authorship, places of origin, array of cultures, and dynamic performance contexts of the art to be displayed.
When completed, this re-envisioned global crossroads of the Metropolitan will feature high points of human achievement in three suites of galleries devoted to sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands, and ancient North, Central, and South America.
These performances will take place in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium.
Clarion Society: Josquin des Prez Marathon
Wednesday, June 8, 2022, 3 pm
Gallery 2, The Fuentidueña Chapel, The Met Cloisters
Marking the 500th anniversary of the death of the renowned Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez, The Clarion Choir & Orchestra take over the galleries of The Met Cloisters for five hours of superb performances. From dazzling early works to more mature expressions, hear des Prez’s masterful sacred and secular music as it resonates throughout one of New York’s most enchanting spaces.
Tickets start at $65 (The Museum is closed until the concert).
For tickets visit metmuseum.org/performances, call 212-570-3949, or stop by any desk in the Great Hall at The Met Fifth Avenue.
Your ticket includes Museum admission on the day of the event.
For all MetLiveArts performances:
All performance attendees age 5 and older must show proof of full vaccination (two doses of an accepted vaccine, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine).
All performance attendees age 18 and older must also show a valid personal ID.
Face coverings are required for all Museum visitors age 2 and older, even if you are vaccinated.
MetLiveArts performances require proof of full vaccination (at least 14 days after the second dose of a two-dose series vaccine, or at least 14 days after a single-dose vaccine). Children 6 and under are not permitted to attend MetLiveArts performances, regardless of their vaccination status.
The Met may require additional safety measures for these performances and will communicate such measures to confirmed guests in advance.
2021–2022 Artist in Residence: Bijayini Satpathy's open rehearsals are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts.
Beethoven's Fidelio is made possible by the Adrienne Arsht Fund for Resilience through Art, the Frank and Lydia Bergen Foundation, The Howard & Sarah D. Solomon Foundation, Lulu C. and Anthony W. Wang, and Betsy and Edward Cohen / Areté Foundation.
Honor, an Artist Lecture is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts, with additional funding from the General Delegation of the Government of Flanders to the USA.
Life Returns is made possible by the Adrienne Arsht Fund for Resilience through Art and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Gateways Music Festival: Gateways Brass Collective is made possible by the Howard & Sarah D. Solomon Foundation, with additional funding from the Adrienne Arsht Fund for Resilience through Art.
Angélique Kidjo at The Met is made possible by the Adrienne Arsht Fund for Resilience through Art. Additional funding is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts.
Clarion Society: Josquin des Prez Marathon is made possible by the Howard & Sarah D. Solomon Foundation, Emilie and Michael Corey, and the General Delegation of the Government of Flanders to the USA.
Piano by Steinway & Sons.
For MetLiveArts program funders, visit metmuseum.org/metliveartssupport.
