Works & Process - The Metropolitan Opera: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Mason Bates

WORKS & PROCESS PRESENTS
THE METROPOLITAN OPERA
THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY
COMPOSED BY MASON BATES
LIBRETTO BY GENE SCHEER
BASED ON THE BOOK BY MICHAEL CHABON

GUESTS
Peter Gelb, Maria Manetti Shrem General Manager, Metropolitan Opera, Moderator
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, Metropolitan Opera
Mason Bates, Composer
Gene Scheer, Librettist
Bartlett Sher, Director
Sun-Ly Pierce, Mezzo-Soprano
Miles Mykkanen, Tenor
Andrzej Filończyk, Baritone
Katelan Trần Terrell, Piano

Leadership support for this Works & Process program is provided by Eugene and Jean Stark.

Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera

A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is administered worldwide by Universal Music Publishing Classics & Screen U.S./G. Ricordi & Co., New York for Aphra Music.

Yamaha is the official piano of Works & Process.

PROGRAM NOTES
In this exhilarating new adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, set shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, two Jewish cousins invent an anti-fascist superhero and launch their own comic-book series, hoping to recruit America into the fight against Nazism. Incorporating scintillating electronic elements and a variety of musical styles, composer Mason Bates’s eclectic score moves seamlessly among the three worlds of Gene Scheer’s libretto: Nazi-occupied Prague, the bustling streets of New York City, and the technicolor realm of comic-book fantasy. Bartlett Sher’s production provides spectacular visuals to match, with towering sets and proscenium-filling projections designed by 59 Studio. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Opening Night premiere, and baritone Andrzej Filończyk makes his Met debut as the artist Joe Kavalier, who flees Czechoslovakia and arrives at the Brooklyn doorstep of writer Sam Clay, sung by tenor Miles Mykkanen.

Back by popular demand: Four performances of Bartlett Sher’s “knockout staging of Michael Chabon’s hit novel” (Financial Times) have been added in February 2026. Don't miss your chance to experience the exhilarating new opera that has taken New York by storm.

Production a gift of Lynne and Richard Pasculano and the Rosalie J. Coe Weir Endowment Fund

Production sponsored by Rolex

Additional support from the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Endowment Fund, the Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation, Gordon P. Getty, and The Halff Windham Foundation

The Met gratefully acknowledges the support of the Laidlaw Opera Trust

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is part of the Neubauer Family Foundation New Works Initiative