Daniele Rustioni to become Metropolitan Opera’s principal guest conductor

NEW YORK (AP) — Daniele Rustioni will become just the third principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in its nearly century-and-a-half history, leading at least two productions each season starting in 2025-26 as a No. 2 to music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Rustioni agreed to a three-year term, the company announced Wednesday. He is to helm revivals of “Don Giovanni” and “Andrea Chénier” next season, Puccini’s “La Bohème” and “Tosca” in 2026-27 and a new production of Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra,” possibly in 2027-28.

“This all started because of the chemistry between the orchestra and me and the chorus and me,” Rustioni said. “It may be the best opera orchestra on the planet in terms of energy and joy of playing and commitment.”

Nézet-Séguin has conducted four-to-five productions per season and will combine Rustioni for about 40% of a Met schedule that currently includes 18 productions per season, down from 28 in 2007-08.

The music director role has changed since James Levine led about 10 productions a season in the mid-1980s. Nézet-Séguin has been Met music director since 2018-19 and also has held the roles with the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2012-13 and of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2010.

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“Music directors today typically don’t spend as much time as they did in past decades because music directors typically are very busy fulfilling more than one fulltime job,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said. “In the case of Yannick, he has three, plus being very much in-demand as a guest conductor of the leading orchestras like Berlin and Vienna. To know we have somebody who’s at the very highest level of the world, which I think Daniele is, to be available on a consistent basis is something that will provide artistic surety to the Met.”

A 41-year-old Italian, Rustioni made his Met debut leading a revival of Verdi’s “Aida” in 2017 and conducted new productions in a pair of New Year’s Eve galas, Verdi’s “Rigoletto” in 2021 and Bizet’s “Carmen” last December. He took over a 2021 revival of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” on short notice when Nézet-Séguin withdrew for a sabbatical and Rustioni also led Verdi’s “Falstaff” in 2023.

“I dared to try tempos in this repertoire that they know very well,” Rustioni said of the orchestra. “I offered and tried to convince them in some places to try to find more intimacy and to offer the music with a little bit more breathing here and there, maybe in a different space than they are used to,”

Valery Gergiev was the Met’s principal guest conductor from 1997-98 through 2008-09, leading Russian works for about half of his performances. Fabio Luisi assumed the role in April 2010 and was elevated to principal conductor in September 2011 when Levine had spinal surgery. The role has been unfilled since Luisi left at the end of the 2016-17 season.

Rustioni lives in London with his wife, violinist Francesca Dego, and 7-month-old daughter Sophia Charlotte. He has been music director of the Lyon Opera since 2017-18, a term that concludes this season. He was music director of the Ulster Orchestra in Northern Ireland from 2019-20 through the 2023-24 season and was the first principal guest conductor of Munich’s Bavarian State Opera from 2021-23.

Rustioni made his London Symphony Orchestra debut this month in a program that included his wife and has upcoming debuts with the New York Philharmonic (Jan. 8), Detroit Symphony Orchestra (Jan. 16) and San Diego Symphony (Jan. 24).