Global Opera Collaborations Bring Artistic Innovation and Financial Efficiency

Simon McBurney’s celebrated staging of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” which premiered last month at the Salzburg Easter Festival prior to its upcoming debut at the Metropolitan Opera, faced uncertainty before coming to fruition.

Originally intended as a joint production between the Met and Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, the project was put on hold following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In response, the New York company ended its collaborations with all Russian state-affiliated institutions.

At that juncture, Nikolaus Bachler had recently assumed the artistic directorship of the Salzburg Easter Festival and sought new partners to share productions. One of his goals was to stage McBurney’s “Khovanshchina” in Salzburg, with the Met stepping in as a co-producer. Bachler emphasized the importance of collaboration, stating it was essential to find partners from the outset.

He remarked, “For a festival like ours, it’s unfortunate when a production is mounted only twice and then disappears. That represents both artistic and financial loss.”

In recent seasons, the Metropolitan Opera has increasingly embraced co-productions to not only share expenses but also enhance artistic exchange with other companies. The current season’s final premiere, John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” is a joint effort with San Francisco Opera and Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu. Additionally, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” a Met-commissioned opera by Mason Bates based on Michael Chabon’s novel, will launch the 2025-26 season following its premiere at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Two more new works, “La Sonnambula” and Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence,” will be shared among multiple opera houses across Europe and the United States.