The Metropolitan Opera has announced its 2024–25 season, including the Met premiere of John Adams's latest opera, Antony and Cleopatra (2022), on May 12, 2025. The adaptation of Shakespeare’s drama stars soprano Julia Bullock, following her company debut in Adams’s El Niño this April, as Cleopatra, opposite bass-baritone Gerald Finley’s Antony, with tenor Paul Appleby as Caesar and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong as Octavia, Caesar’s sister. The cast also includes mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven as Charmian, in her Met debut; tenor Brenton Ryan as Eros; and bass-baritone Alfred Walker as Enobarbus. Adams himself takes the podium to conduct a new staging by director Elkhanah Pulitzer, who transports the story from ancient Rome to the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s. Antony and Cleoptra performances run through June 7.

“At the Met, we’re committed to opera’s evolution as an art form, honoring the classics with revivals and new productions while presenting new works that relate to the times in which we live,” said Met General Manager Peter Gelb. “We owe it to our audiences, both old and new.”

John Adams's El Niño gets its company premiere this April 23–May 17. The opera-oratorio incorporates sacred and secular texts, compiled by Adams and his longtime collaborator Peter Sellars, in English, Spanish, and Latin, from biblical times to the present day, in an extraordinarily dramatic retelling of the Nativity. In addition to Bullock's company debut, the performances mark the company debuts of conductor Marin Alsop and bass-baritone Davóne Tines. Mezzo-sopranos J’Nai Bridges and Daniela Mack take turns completing the principal trio. The fully-staged new production also marks the Met debut of Lileana Blain-Cruz, resident director at Lincoln Center Theater. The premiere recording of El Niño was released on Nonesuch in 2001. Julia Bullock performs Memorial de Tlateloco, from the piece, on her debut solo album, Walking in the Dark, which recently won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.