It’s August again, and that means that while the rest of New York tries to escape the heat, the MET is already sizzling with activity, where the chorus, the technical department and the production staff are already busy at work, gearing up for a new season.

The chorus began rehearsing July 30th, with music rehearsals led by the Met’s new Chorus Master, Donald Palumbo.

Donald Palumbo, conducting the chorus

In just their first month of music rehearsals, they will cover an incredible range of repertoire, including War and Peace, Macbeth, Ernani, Otello, Aida, Madama Butterfly, Figaro, Magic Flute, Satyagraha, Romeo and Juliette, Manon Lescaut, Iphigenie, Norma and La Traviata! In addition to these rehearsals, during the week of August 13, they also began preliminary staging rehearsals for Macbeth, under the direction of Adrian Noble, who is making his MET debut. These staging rehearsals were held each day that week in the big rehearsal stage, located three levels under the main stage.

Adrian Noble directing the MET chorus

The first three days of Macbeth chorus staging rehearsals were devoted to the two big witches’ scenes, and the next two days, we sketched in the banquet scene, where the ghost of Banquo appears to Macbeth. The chorus will subsequently also have staging rehearsals this month for Lucia, as well as for the revival of War and Peace.

Beginning August 6th, technical rehearsals began onstage for our new productions. These technical rehearsals enable the stage crew to set up the scenery on the main stage, scene by scene, and then the director and designers have the opportunity to evaluate each scene in collaboration with the MET’s technical director, Joe Clark. They are then able to make modifications when necessary, and most importantly, they use this time to do preliminary lighting rehearsals. Each week is devoted to a different opera; we started with Macbeth that week, which looks like it’s going to be quite a fascinating new production.

Adrian Noble, during the technical rehearsal

The scenery and costumes are designed by Mark Thompson, who returns to the MET after an absence of many years since he designed Pique Dame here in 1995 . The lighting designer is Jean Kalman, who is also returning to the MET where he designed the lighting for Eugene Onegin in 1997, and the lighting for Don Giovanni in 2003-04.

Technical rehearsals for Hansel and Gretel started the next week, and then after that comes Peter Grimes, followed by Lucia, which means that the work on stage is already non-stop, even though we are many weeks away from opening night!

Joe Clark (right) with stagehands on the Hansel set.