NEW YORK – Yannick Nézet-Séguin will succeed James Levine as music director of the Metropolitan Opera, but will not take over until the 2020-21 season.
Nézet-Séguin will become music director designate in 2017-18 and start to collaborate on planning the company’s schedule, often done five years in advance or more.
He will conduct two operas per season as music director designate and five operas per season once he assumes the role.
The 41-year-old Canadian, considered the favourite to replace Levine, has been music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra since the 2012-13 season and of Montreal’s Orchestre Metropolitain since 2000.
WATCH BELOW: Yannick Nézet-Séguin shares the big news.
He has been chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic since 2008-09 and intends to give up that role at the end of the 2017-18 season.
“Yannick was the clear choice of the company,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said in a statement.
“He is the right artist at the right time to lead us forward.”
Nézet-Séguin made his Met debut in the 2009-10 season conducting a new production of Bizet’s “Carmen.”
He will become the third person with the music director title at the Met following Rafael Kubelik in 1973-74 and Levine.
“Becoming the music director of the Metropolitan Opera is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for me,” Nézet-Séguin said in a statement.
“I am truly honoured and humbled by the opportunity to succeed the legendary James Levine and to work with the extraordinary orchestra, chorus, and staff of what I believe is the greatest opera company in the world.”
“I will make it my mission to passionately preserve the highest artistic standards while imagining a new, bright future for our art form.”
Levine, who turns 73 on June 23, was music director or artistic director of the company from the 1976-77 season until the company announced in April he was stepping down because of Parkinson’s disease.
He is now music director emeritus.
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