Set Designer

Two-time Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded, commissioned by the Met and based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, wrestles with the ethical quandaries and psychological toll of 21st-century warfare. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, one of opera’s most compelling young stars, portrays Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. As she struggles to adjust to this new way of doing battle, she fights to maintain her sanity, and her soul, as she is called to rain down death by remote control. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin oversees the Met premiere of Tesori’s kaleidoscopic score and a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as the Wyoming rancher who becomes Jess’s husband. Michael Mayer’s high-tech staging, using a vast array of LED screens, presents a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above.

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Grounded

Saratoga Market Center

Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded premieres at the Metropolitan Opera, wrestling with often-overlooked issues created by 21st-century warmaking: the ethical conflicts created by the use of modern military technology and the psychological and emotional toll supposedly safe remote technology takes on our servicepersons. Canadian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo stars as the hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. American tenor Ben Bliss costars as the Wyoming rancher Eric in a production by Michael Mayer that brings this story to life in a high-tech staging which presents a variety of perspectives on the action. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to conduct Tesori’s kaleidoscopic opera, which will be transmitted live from the Met stage to cinemas on October 19.

Shalin Liu Performance Center

In its Metropolitan Opera premiere, Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded wrestles with often-overlooked issues created by 21st-century warmaking: the ethical conflicts posed by the use of modern military technology, and the psychological and emotional toll that supposedly safe remote technology takes on our servicepersons. Canadian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo stars as the hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. American tenor Ben Bliss co-stars as the Wyoming rancher Eric in a production by Michael Mayer, which brings this story to life in a high-tech staging presenting a variety of perspectives on the action. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to conduct Tesori’s kaleidoscopic opera.

Brooklyn Academy of Music

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

David struggles to reconcile spiritual humility with ambition. His desire for more wreaks havoc on his family, friendships and, perhaps, his own faith. His journey from preacher to Governor, like the lives of those closest to him, is shaped by the current affairs of the 1980s.

The Righteous

Santa Fe Opera

The Comet / Poppea brings together seemingly disparate worlds connected by stories of cultural transformation. The work juxtaposes Claudio Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), an Italian opera from 1643 unfolding among the social divisions of ancient Rome; and the world premiere of The Comet, based on the 1924 science-fiction short story by sociologist and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois. Set in 1920s New York City, “The Comet” depicts a Black man and white woman as the only survivors after a comet hits Earth.

The Comet / Poppea

Museum of Contemporary Art

Sonya and her uncle Vanya have devoted their lives to managing the family farm in isolation, but when her celebrated, ailing father and his charismatic wife move in, their lives are upended. In the heat of the summer, the wrong people fall in love, desires and resentments erupt, and the family is forced to reckon with the ghosts of their unlived lives.

Uncle Vanya

Lincoln Center Theatre

She was his queen. He was her downfall.  San Francisco Opera's 100th Season begins with John Adams' thrilling new opera, commissioned for the Company's centennial and conducted by Music Director Eun Sun Kim.

Antony and Cleopatra

Segerstrom Center for the Arts

The most recent opera by preeminent American composer John Adams—a glorious adaptation of Shakespeare’s immortal drama—has its Met premiere. Following her debut in the company premiere of Adams’s El Niño in 2024, soprano Julia Bullock stars as the irresistible Cleopatra, one of theater’s most complex and captivating characters, opposite bass-baritone Gerald Finley as the conflicted Antony. Adams himself takes the podium to conduct his lyrical and richly orchestrated score, leading a new staging by groundbreaking director Elkhanah Pulitzer that transports the story of troubled romance and political strife from ancient Rome to the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s. Tenor Paul Appleby is Caesar, who goes to war with Antony, and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong is Caesar’s sister and Antony’s forsaken wife Octavia.

Mimi Lien

Set Designer

Events

Upcoming events

May 12 - Jun 7, 2025

Antony and Cleopatra · The Metropolitan Opera

Past events

Oct 19, 2024

Grounded · Opera Sarataga

Oct 19, 2024

Grounded · Rockport Music

About

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