Ryan Speedo Green

Bass René Pape, the world’s reigning Boris, reprises his overwhelming portrayal of the tortured tsar caught between grasping ambition and crippling paranoia. Conductor Sebastian Weigle leads Mussorgsky’s masterwork, a pillar of the Russian repertoire, in its original 1869 version, which runs two-and-a-quarter hours with no intermission. Stephen Wadsworth’s affecting production poignantly captures the hope and suffering of the Russian people as well as the tsar himself.

Performance of Puccini's opera performed/streamed from Vienna on the 22nd February 2019

Six-time Grammy Award–winning composer Terence Blanchard brings his first opera to the Met after his Fire Shut Up in My Bones triumphantly premiered with the company to universal acclaim in 2021. Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green is the young boxer Emile Griffith, who rises from obscurity to become a world champion, and bass-baritone Eric Owens portrays Griffith’s older self, haunted by the ghosts of his past. Soprano Latonia Moore is Emelda Griffith, the boxer’s estranged mother, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe is the bar owner Kathy Hagan. Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium for Blanchard’s second Met premiere, also reuniting the director-and-choreographer team of James Robinson and Camille A. Brown.