Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center)
Address 30 Lincoln Center Plaza Location New York City Coordinates
Street–Lincoln Center NYC Bus: M5, M7, M11, M20, M66, M104 Owner Metropolitan Opera Association Type Opera house
The Metropolitan Opera House (also known as The Met) is an opera house located on Broadway at Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the theater was designed by Wallace K. Harrison. It opened in 1966, replacing the original 1883 Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th Street. With a seating capacity of approximately 3,800, the house is the largest repertory opera house in the world. Home to the Metropolitan Opera Company, the facility also hosts the American Ballet Theatre in the summer months.
As chief architect again for the development of Lincoln Center, Harrison was chosen to design the new opera house, to be built as the centerpiece of the new performing arts complex- a twenty-five acre, eighteen block site on the Upper West Side, chosen by Robert Moses as a major urban renewal.and slum clearance project. After a long process of redesigns, revisions and opposing interests (provided by the Met wanting a more
traditional design for its home, and the conflicting wishes of the architects
of the other Lincoln Center venues), construction of Harrison’s forty-third design of the Metropolitan Opera House began in the winter of 1963, the last of the three major Lincoln Center venues to be completed. Construction delays due to the finishing of the neighboring New York State Theatre (in time with the opening of the 1964 World’s Fair), resulted in the massive excavation site being nicknamed “Lake Bing” after then-Met General Manager Rudolf Bing.
Performances and uses The Met is one of the most technologically advanced stages in the world. Its vast array of hydraulic elevators, motorized stages and rigging systems have made possible the massive staging requirements of grand opera in repertory and have made possible complex productions such as Franco Zeffirelli’s 1981 production of La bohème, as well as productions of mammoth operas, including Prokofiev’s War and Peace, Verdi’s Aida and Wagner’s four-part, 16-hour Der Ring des Nibelungen. The Met stage has also been home to several world premieres of operas, including John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, Phillip Glass’s The Voyage and the US premiere of Nico Muhly’s Two Boys in 2013.
When the Metropolitan Opera is on hiatus, the Opera House is home to the annual Spring season of American Ballet Theatre (ABT). It regularly hosts touring opera and ballet companies including the Kirov, Bolshoi, and the La Scala companies. In addition, the Met has presented recitals by Vladimir Horowitz, Renée Fleming, Kathleen Battle and others. Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach was staged independently at the Met in 1976. Concerts by Barbra Streisand, The Who, Paul McCartney and others have been massively successful as well. Several notable non-operatic performances occurred in 1986. On July 8, a gala fund raiser performance to benefit ABT and Paris Opera Ballet saw the first joint performance in over ten years of ABT artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov and Paris Opera Ballet Director Rudolf Nureyev. On August 9 and 10, comedian Robin Williams recorded performances that were shown on HBO and released on compact disc under the title Robin Williams Live at the Met. On October 19, 1986, the Opera House hosted Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic during their North American tour.
The opera house has been featured in a number of movies and television programs, including the climax of Norman Jewison’s 1987 film Moonstruck. In addition to regular Metropolitan Opera radio and television broadcasts, several other television programs have been produced at the Metropolitan Opera House including Danny Kaye’s Look-In at the Metropolitan Opera (CBS, 1975) and Sills and Burnett at the Met (CBS, 1976). In 1999 and 2001, the Opera House was the venue for the MTV Video Music Awards.
As of May 2017, its 50th anniversary, the Metropolitan Opera House had hosted over 11,000 performances and 164 separate operas (67 of them added after the Met moved to the current building), with 251 productions having been created there. James Levine had conducted 2,583 of the Opera House’s 11,000 performances; Charles Anthony had sung there 2,296 times; and The Three Tenors had performed there a combined 1,298 times. Additionally, the Met had broadcast 1,931 performances on live radio, 198 on television, and 109 for movie theaters.
Web Site: Metropolitan Opera | Home
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