Gianandrea Noseda

Metropolitan Opera House; Mon 17–Jan 2

Milan-born maestro Gianandrea Noseda is on a hot streak. In October, the new music director of Turin’s Teatro Regio opened the season with performances of Verdi’s Falstaff that set the famously reserved city aflutter. Noseda’s most celebrated exploit so far has come as chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic. In June 2005, a Noseda-led cycle of Beethoven symphonies offered for free download on the BBC’s website enticed some 1.4 million takers, prompting the Beeb’s publicists and classical boosters to crow that Beethoven had bested the Live 8 version of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” While the deck was heavily stacked in father Ludwig’s favor—the McCartney-Bono track was, after all, a paid download—Noseda’s numbers and the “shock and thrill” he generated in Beethoven (according to The Guardian) remain remarkable achievements.

Following his seething 2006 Metropolitan Opera performances of Verdi’s La forza del destino, Noseda returns to the company to lead two great scores: Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera and, for three end-of-run shows, Prokofiev’s War and Peace, with which the conductor made his Met debut in 2002. Ballo stars Salvatore Licitra (Noseda’s Alvaro in Forza), Michèle Crider (a superb Amelia for Robert Bass and the Collegiate Chorale in 2004) and Dmitri Hvorostovsky—the most luscious of barihunks. Prokofiev’s 1952 opera has some 65 solo parts; one undertaking of note will see elder statesman Samuel Ramey as the one-eyed General Kutuzov, who devastated Napoléon’s army with his scorched-earth policy. Expect serious firepower with Noseda on the podium.

—Marion Lignana Rosenberg