Highlights of the 1966-67 Season

The Met’s first season in its new Lincoln Center home featured no fewer than nine new productions, each of them designed to herald a new era in the theatrical presentation of opera at the Met. Most of the world’s A-list singers made appearances during the season, delivering great moments that survive in thrilling live recordings. Three selections here come from the new production of Ponchielli’s masterpiece La Gioconda, which was broadcast on April 15, 1967, with soprano Renata Tebaldi in the title role and joined by Barry Morell as Enzo, Rosalind Elias as Laura, and Cornell MacNeil as Barnaba. Karl Böhm conducted another new production, Wagner’s Lohengrin, starring Christa Ludwig as the sorceress Ortrud and Walter Berry as her embittered husband Telramund, taken here from a broadcast on January 21, 1967. Beloved by Met audiences for decades, soprano Teresa Stratas brought an especially aching poignancy to her portrayal of Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème in a broadcast from February 4, 1967. The ravishing diva Anna Moffo as Violetta Valéry and Robert Merrill as an imposing Giorgio Germont were heard in a new production of Verdi’s La Traviata broadcast of March 25, 1967. Merrill also appeared as Count di Luna in Verdi’s Il Trovatore with Richard Tucker as Manrico and Martina Arroyo as Leonora on a broadcast from February 18, 1967. Thomas Schippers led a broadcast of Richard Strauss’s Elektra on December 10, 1966 with Birgit Nilsson in the title role opposite Regina Resnik as her deranged mother Klytämnestra. In a world premiere setting of a Eugene O’Neill play, Marvin David Levy’s Mourning Becomes Electra focused on the same Greek tragedy that Strauss dramatized. The opera was broadcast on April 1, 1967, with Evelyn Lear, John Reardon, Marie Collier, and Sherrill Milnes, with Zubin Mehta conducting.