Wagner-inspired Works

Solo Exhibition Coincides with the Return of Otto Schenk’s Acclaimed Production of the Ring Cycle on March 25

New York, NY — In the first collaboration between the Metropolitan Opera and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wagner-inspired works by contemporary artist Anselm Kiefer will be shown at Gallery Met beginning February 17. The exhibition titled From the Met to the Met: Anselm Kiefer and Wagner’s "Ring" coincides with the revival of Otto Schenk’s acclaimed production which begins its final run at the opera house on March 25. From the Met to the Met will be on display through May 9, the last day of the Ring, and the last performance of the season.

Nine of the dozen works displayed during the exhibition are on loan from The Metropolitan Museum including "Brünnhilde’s Death," an ink, watercolor, and acrylic on joined paper; "My Father Pledged Me a Sword," a watercolor, gouache, and ballpoint pen on paper; and "Siegfried’s Difficult Way to Brünnhilde," an acrylic and gouache on photograph. Three works are on loan from private collectors.

The Metropolitan Museum also plans to hang several of their other Kiefer holdings at the same time as the Gallery Met exhibition. "We are delighted to cooperate with our sister institution across the park," says Gary Tinterow, chairman of the department of modern art at The Metropolitan Museum. "I hope that this is only the first of many collaborative endeavors."

Gallery Met director Dodie Kazanjian, who organized the exhibition, says that "the theme of redemption is crucial to both Kiefer and Wagner", adding that Kiefer’s works are not meant to illustrate the opera, but rather "to indicate and confront the same themes, characters, and motives that Wagner adapted in the Ring cycle."

Anselm Kiefer, born in Germany in 1945, is internationally known for his work in painting, sculpture, and large scale installations. In 2005, the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, Texas, mounted a major exhibition which traveled to the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2007, Anselm Kiefer created large scaled solo exhibitions in the Grand Palais in Paris and at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. His set design for Richard Strauss’ Elektra, created for the San Carlo Opera in Naples, has been seen throughout Europe. The artist lives and works in France.

Gallery Met is free and open to the public six days a week. The hours are Monday through Friday 6:00 pm through the last intermission, and Saturdays from noon through the last intermission. For more information, visit www.metopera.org/gallerymet.

See the Artwork Titles
of Anselm Kiefer's Works

The Arnold & Marie Schwartz Gallery Met is a showcase for the contemporary works of art that reaffirms the company’s long history of relationships with major visual artists. Gallery Met, directed by Dodie Kazanjian since its inception in 2006, is made possible through a $1 million donation by Marie Schwartz, an Advisory Director on the Metropolitan Opera’s Board. Located in the south side of the lobby of the opera house, Gallery Met last season launched a new outdoor component of its exhibitions: artist-designed banners that hang on the façade of the opera house to coincide with new productions. This new program began with Barnaby Furnas’ evocative Final Flood III, announcing Peter Grimes, followed by Francesco Clemente’s banner for Satyagraha and the banner by George Condo for La Fille du Régiment which closed out the season.

Gallery Met opened in September 2006 with Heroines, an exhibition of works inspired by the 2006-07 season's new productions. The artists represented included Cecily Brown, John Currin, Richard Prince, David Salle, Wangechi Mutu, and others.

Gallery Met’s first solo exhibition, Stage Fright by Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca, kicked off the 2007-2008 season, and was followed by Hansel and Gretel, presenting artists from The New Yorker and the contemporary art scene. The works, based on the Brothers Grimm story, were on display during the run of the new production of Humperdinck's fairy tale opera. In conjunction with the Met premiere of the Philip Glass opera Satyagraha last season, Gallery Met exhibited 18 portraits by Chuck Close of his composer friend in the exhibition Chuck Close Philip Glass 40 Years.

Deepening its commitment to contemporary artists, Gallery Met presented eight portraits by Clemente in an exhibition called The Sopranos, this past summer. Created in collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera, the exhibition featured portraits of the divas who figure prominently in the Met’s current 2008-09 season. A hardcover catalog of Francesco Clemente: The Sopranos is available in bookstores. The most recent showing at Gallery Met was David Altmejd’s "The Eye," an architectural sculpture of shattered mirrors, an exhibition that was presented in conjunction with the Met premiere of the John Adams opera Doctor Atomic in October.

During the 2009-10 season, Gallery Met’s plans include a special exhibition of the work of artist William Kentridge in connection with the premiere of his new production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. This will coincide with a major retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art.

Under the leadership of General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director James Levine, the Met has a series of bold initiatives underway that are designed to broaden its audience and revitalize the company’s repertory. The Met has made a commitment to presenting modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, with highly theatrical productions featuring the greatest opera stars in the world.

The Metropolitan Opera’s 2008-09 season pays tribute to the company’s extraordinary history on the occasion of its 125^th anniversary, while also emphasizing the Met’s renewed commitment to advancing the art form. The season features six new productions, 18 revivals, the final performances of Otto Schenk’s production of Wagner’s Ring cycle conducted by Levine, and two gala celebrations; the galas include the season-opening performance featuring Renée Fleming as well as a 125^th anniversary celebration on March 15. New productions include the company premiere of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic as well as the Met’s first staged production of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust since 1906, Massenet’s Thaïs, Puccini’s La Rondine, Verdi’s Il Trovatore, and Bellini’s La Sonnambula.

The Met’s recently announced 2009-10 season will feature eight new productions, four of which are Met premieres. Opening night will be a new production of Tosca starring Karita Mattila, conducted by Levine and directed by Luc Bondy. The four Met premieres are: Janáček’s From the House of the Dead, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and directed by Patrice Chéreau, both in Met debuts; Verdi’s Attila, conducted by Riccardo Muti in his Met debut; Shostakovich’s The Nose, conducted by Valery Gergiev and directed and designed by William Kentridge in his Met debut; and Rossini’s Armida with Renée Fleming, directed by Mary Zimmerman. Other new productions are Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, conducted by Levine and directed by Bartlett Sher; Carmen with Angela Gheorghiu in the title role, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and directed by Richard Eyre, both in Met debuts; and Thomas’s Hamlet with Natalie Dessay and Simon Keenlyside, conducted by Louis Langrée.

Building on its 77-year-old radio broadcast history – currently heard over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network – the Met now uses advanced media distribution platforms and state-of-the-art technology to attract new audiences and reach millions of opera fans around the world.

The Emmy Award-winning The Met: Live in HD series reached more than 935,000 people in the 2007-08 season, more than the number of people who saw performances in the opera house. These performances began airing on PBS in March 2008, and nine of these HD performances are now available on DVD. The most recent, The Magic Flute, was released by the Met and is available at the newly renovated Met Opera Shop. The other eight are on the EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, and Decca labels. In the 2008-09 season, the HD series expanded to feature 11 live transmissions, starting with the Met’s Opening Night Gala and spanning the entire season. The HD productions are seen this season in over 850 theaters in 31 countries around the world. Five new productions are featured, including the Met premiere of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic. The Opening Night transmission was seen in the Americas only; the remaining ten high-definition productions are shown live worldwide on Saturdays through May 9 with encores scheduled at various times.

Live in HD in Schools, the Met’s new program offering free opera transmissions to New York City schools in partnership with the New York City Department of Education and the Metropolitan Opera Guild, reached more than 7,000 public school students and teachers during the 2007-08 season. This season, Live in HD in Schools expanded to reach schools in 18 cities and communities nationwide.

Continuing its innovative use of electronic media to reach a global audience, the Metropolitan Opera recently introduced Met Player, a new subscription service that makes its extensive video and audio catalog of full-length performances available to the public for the first time online, and in exceptional, state-of-the-art quality. The new service currently offers 140 historic audio recordings, and more than 50 full-length opera videos are available, including over a dozen of the company’s acclaimed The Met: Live in HD transmissions, known for their extraordinary sound and picture quality. New content, including HD productions and archival broadcasts, are added monthly.

Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS XM Radio is a subscription-based audio entertainment service broadcasting both an unprecedented number of live performances each week throughout the Met’s entire season, as well as rare historical performances, newly restored and remastered, spanning the Met’s 77-year broadcast history.

In addition to providing audio recordings through the new Met on Rhapsody on-demand service, the Met also presents free live audio streaming of performances on its website once every week during the opera season with support from RealNetworks®.

The company’s groundbreaking commissioning program in partnership with New York’s Lincoln Center Theater (LCT) provides renowned composers and playwrights with the resources to create and develop new works at the Met and at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. The Met’s partnership with LCT is part of the company’s larger initiative to commission new operas from contemporary composers, present modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, and provide a venue for artists to nurture their work.

The Met has launched several audience development initiatives such as the company’s Open House Dress Rehearsals, which are free and open to the public. This season’s first was for La Damnation de Faust on November 4, and the remaining one is for La Sonnambula on February 27. Just prior to beginning the current season, the Met presented a free performance of the Verdi Requiem on September 18, in tribute to the late Luciano Pavarotti. Other company initiatives include the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met which exhibits contemporary visual art; the new $25 Weekend Tickets program; the immensely successful Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Rush Ticket program; and an annual Holiday Series presentation for families. This season’s special Holiday Presentation was Julie Taymor’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, an abridged, English-language version of the opera which received four special matinee performances and one holiday evening performance as a way for families to celebrate the holiday season.