Christine Baranski! Susan Sarandon! Patricia Clarkson! The Stars Got here Out for the Metropolitan Opera’s Season Opener

It was the traditional story of girl-meets-drone on the Metropolitan Opera’s season opener and gala fundraising dinner final night time, the place visitors, together with Susan Sarandon and Edie Falco, gathered to rejoice the premiere of Grounded, a brand new opera with music by Jeanine Tesori and libretto by George Brant.

“Wagner had Brünnhilde, Puccini had Tosca…and now Jeanine Tesori and George Brant have given us Jess,” stated Peter Gelb, the opera’s common supervisor, referring to the opera’s heroine. Performed with ease and devastating depth by the up-and-coming mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, Jess is a fighter pilot within the Iraq struggle whose surprising being pregnant forces her to turn out to be a drone pilot and confront the emotional and psychological toll of war-via-joystick.

Because the nationwide anthem performed simply earlier than curtain—a gap night time custom for the Met that felt eerily applicable for the night’s efficiency—the viewers settled in for takeoff. With mesmerizing digital projections by Jason Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras, the Michael Mayer-directed manufacturing moved swiftly. After the ultimate curtain, visitors crossed the plaza underneath a whisper of rain to the Promenade of the David H. Koch Theater for the gala dinner.

Recent out of her costume of flight fatigues and into an beautiful black Saint Laurent night coat over a Burberry silver-mesh gown, D’Angelo was radiant if a bit shell-shocked on the post-show gathering. “This feels a bit like armor,” she stated, tugging at her jacket as a line of well-wishers snaked round her desk. “I get to cover slightly bit in my coat.” One plus of contemporary opera that Gelb noticed: there are not any panniers or powdered wigs for the celebs to mud off, making the transition from dressing room to dinner a lot simpler.

Not solely was it the Canadian singer’s huge opening night time, but it surely simply so occurred to be her thirtieth birthday as nicely. Gelb, accompanied by D’Angelo’s costar, the tenor Ben Bliss, led what’s probably probably the most mellifluous spherical of “Completely satisfied Birthday” within the track’s historical past simply earlier than dinner was served amid the corridor’s Elie Nadelman sculptures.

Tesori, after accepting hearty congratulations from the actress Patricia Clarkson, was reflective on this second, practically a decade within the making. “You simply don’t know till ,” she stated, koan-like, of how the work could be acquired by the discerning Met viewers (they beloved it).

The night additionally held a particular household significance for the Tony-winning composer of Enjoyable House and Kimberly Akimbo: her grandfather was additionally a composer who dreamed of getting his work carried out on the Met however died earlier than it was realized. “Who would ever have thought that his granddaughter would fulfill his dream.”

Because the final bubbles of champagne fizzed, completely satisfied partygoers descended the grand staircase out into the night time. The actor Michael Cerveris escorted his Gilded Age co-star, Christine Baranski, in a sweeping, white Oscar de la Renta column robe (with opera-length gloves, in fact) out to the Revson Fountain, the place they fortunately signed autographs for a fan.

The massive questions and heavy themes of the brand new piece—surveillance, limitless wars, veteran psychological well being—didn’t dampen the celebratory spirit of the night, although an air of politics was unavoidable. “With the entire political lies happening on this election cycle,” Gelb stated in his earlier remarks, “maintain coming to the oasis of creative fact often known as the Metropolitan Opera.”