James Conlon to Conduct LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK at the Met, 11/10-29

Conductor James Conlon leads a rare revival of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the Metropolitan Opera in six performances beginning Monday, November 10, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. The cast for Graham Vick's production includes soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role as Katerina Ismailova, tenor Brandon Jovanovich as Sergei, tenor Raymond Very as Zinovy Ismailov, and baritone Anatoli Kotscherga as Boris Ismailov. Tenor Frank van Aken sings the role of Sergei in the November 21 performance.

The additional performance dates are Thursday, November 13; Monday, November 17; Friday, November 21; and Tuesday, November 25, all at 7:30 p.m.; and Saturday, November 29 at 1 p.m. Tickets, priced from $25 to $445, are available in person at the box office, by phone at (212) 362-6000, or online at www.metoperafamily.org.

Mr. Conlon, who has led more than 260 performances at the Met Opera since making his debut in 1976, conducted the company premiere of Lady Macbeth in 1994. He has championed Shostakovich's 1934 opera as an extension of Recovered Voices, his ongoing multi-year project programming the lesser-known works of composers censored or persecuted by the Nazi regime and similar totalitarian governments. Based on the novel by Nikolai Leskov, Lady Macbeth was at first well-received by both the public and the Soviet government. However, in early 1936, the opera was infamously condemned in a politically tainted editorial titled "Muddle Instead of Music" in Pravda, Russia's then-predominant newspaper. The unsigned editorial is suspected to have been penned by Joseph Stalin, who saw the opera two days before it was published. Lady Macbeth was thereafter banned in the Soviet Union for almost thirty years and precipitated the denouncement of much of Shostakovich's music, particularly his stage works, by the Communist Party during that time.

Commenting on the opera, Mr. Conlon says, "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is the most important Russian opera of the twentieth century, a masterpiece of tragedy and satire. Shostakovich's achievement is staggering. In depicting the environment of stifling boredom and dreary monotony that drives vital young woman of 19th-century Russia to commit first adultery and then murder, he produced a work that served as a metaphor for the hypocrisy and brutality of contemporary Soviet society. As with Verdi's Nabucco and Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, this opera represents a quantum leap in the growth of Russia's greatest 20th-century composer. In one great gesture he created a musical and theatrical vocabulary of his own, using the orchestra with novel mastery and virtuosity. His genius for satire and social commentary was evidenced in The Nose, but in Lady Macbeth he shows the breadth and depth of his perception into human emotions on a new scale. Shostakovich's candid eroticism and his subtly veiled portrayal of the Stalinist police network was an act of outrageous bravery." Read the full article on Lady Macbeth, written by Mr. Conlon for the Met premiere, in Opera News.

James Conlon is one of today's most versatile and respected conductors and has conducted virtually every major American and European symphony orchestra. As Music Director of the LA Opera since 2006, his initiatives have included the company's first Wagner Ring cycle, a city-wide Wagner festival, and a cycle of Britten's operas as part of the city-wide "Britten100/LA: A Celebration" festival, among others.

Mr. Conlon opened LA Opera's 2014-15 season conducting Verdi's La Traviata. In February through April, he leads Figaro Unbound: Culture, Power, and Revolution at Play, a series of three operas that feature the character Figaro from Pierre-Augstin Caron de Beaumarchais's plays. The operas are John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, in its West Coast premiere in a new production, Rossini's The Barber of Seville, and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. He also conducts the free community opera production of Britten's Noye's Fludde as part of LA Opera's Off Grand series.

Guest appearances during the 2014-15 season include the New World Symphony and Toronto Symphony in North America, and abroad, the National Philharmonic of Russia, NDR Sinfonie Orchester, Orchestre de Paris, Orquesta Nacional d'España, and Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI.

In addition to LA Opera, Mr. Conlon has been music director of Ravinia Festival (summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) since 2005 and the Cincinnati May Festival since 1979. He has served as principal conductor of the Paris National Opera (1995-2004); general music director of the city of Cologne, Germany, leading the Gürzenich Orchestra-Cologne Philharmonic and Cologne Opera (1989-2002); and music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (1983-91). He has also appeared at the Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera at Covent Garden in London, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and Teatro del Opera di Roma, among others.

With Recovered Voices, Mr. Conlon has programmed works by composers including Walter Braunfels, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Hans Krása, Ernest Krenek, Erwin Schulhoff, Viktor Ullmann, Kurt Weill, and Alexander Zemlinsky. He has showcased these composers suppressed by the Nazi regime in his Recovered Voices series at LA Opera and Breaking the Silence series at Ravinia Festival. Mr. Conlon received the Crystal Globe Award from the Anti-Defamation League in 2007 at Ravinia Festival for his dedication to this project, and the Zemlinsky Prize in 1999 for his efforts in bringing that composer's music to international attention. His work has also led to the creation of the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voicesat the Colburn School and the OREL Foundation, an invaluable resource for music lovers, students, musicians, and scholars on the history of how these composers and their music were affected by the Third Reich.

In 2002, Mr. Conlon received the Légion d'Honneur from then-President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac.