By Robert Croan
The Met: Live in HD, our premier opera company’s streaming in movie theaters worldwide of live performances from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, closed its current season May 30 with El último sueño de Frida y Diego.
The Spanish-language opera by Gabriela Lena Frank was a novelty for the Met, and timely, as the 53-year-old California-based composer just three weeks earlier won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize (for her symphonic work Picaflor, which premiered in Philadelphia last year).
Frida y Diego has impressive credentials. Its librettist, Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz, won a Pulitzer in 2003, and the opera has had several regional productions since its world premiere in San Diego in 2022. The Met’s version, at least on screen, was lavish and colorful and expensive-looking. The cast was top of the line from the title characters (Isabel Leonard and Carlos Álvarez) right down to supporting roles that included a standout young tenor, Angel Raii Gomez, as part of a modest trio of villagers.
It’s not entirely successful, however, as musical drama. Cruz has woven the true-life story of these iconic artists into a retelling of the Orpheus legend. On the Mexican Day of the Dead, Kahlo, who died three years before her husband, is coerced to return to Earth to console the living Rivera — with the caveat that she may not touch or embrace him, or else all her mortal pain will return. (She does, of course, embrace him, and the rest is the stuff of legend).
Frank’s music is listenable and singable, her orchestration — superbly realized under conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin — original and ear-catching. But there’s very little drama. Everything is kinetic, there’s hardly a moment of repose, yet the dancing and choral frescoes don’t advance the plot, and the score isn’t quite sufficiently memorable to compensate.
A special asset to this show, however, was the formidable, lusciously vocalized Catrina, goddess of the underworld, as portrayed by soprano Gabriella Reyes, a highly praised Violetta in Palm Beach Opera’s 2025 La traviata. Her role here encompassed dramatic cruelty akin to the Queen of the Night, substituting vicious laugh syllables for Mozart’s glittering staccati. Also notable was the campy role of a spectral Greta Garbo impersonator, enacted with relish by German countertenor Nils Wanderer.
The Met in HD, presented by Fathom Entertainment, will offer eight livestreamed performances in the 2026-27 season, starting Oct. 3 with Mozart’s Così fan tutte – a staging by Phelim McDermott that places the action in a 1950s boardwalk park.
Three new productions are listed: Verdi’s Macbeth (Oct. 17), staged by Louisa Proske features Quinn Kelsey in the title part and opera superstar Lisa Davidsen as the daunting Lady Macbeth, with Nézet-Séguin conducting.
A new production of Puccini’s The Girl of the Golden West (Jan. 23, 2027), will be staged by Richard Jones, with Lithuanian soprano Vida Miknevičiūtė debuting in the title part, staged by Richard Jones with Keri-Lynn Wilson on the podium. The third new production is a Met premiere: Kevin Puts’s 2011 opera Silent Night (March 20), the story of Christmas Eve 1914, when Scottish, French and German soldiers put aside their enmities for a single evening, only to resume the bloodshed of World War 1 the following morning. Dalia Stasevska will conduct a cast led by soprano Elza van der Heever and tenor Ben Bliss.
The remainder of the HD season includes Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Dalila, with the unfamiliar cast of tenor Clay Hilley and Aigul Akhmetshina as the biblical duo (Dec. 5).
Massenet’s Manon stars Fort Lauderdale native Nadine Sierra in the title role, in Laurent Pelly’s staging (April 3).
Brian Jagte takes on the challenging title role of Verdi’s Otello, a Bartlett Sher production (April 24). And the season concludes June 5 with Wagner’s Parsifal, Nézet-Séguin conducting a cast led by Piotr Beczala as Parsifal and Elīna Garanča as the temptress Kundry.
Performances begin at 1 p.m., except for Samson, Manon and Parsifal, which start at noon. Details of local venues and ticket information: www.metopera.org/hd, or www.fathomentertainment.com.