Classical music | Preview

Opera’s heroines rarely have the luxury of an uneventful afternoon. They scheme, plead, sacrifice themselves and sometimes die before the curtain falls. On November 18, soprano Asmik Grigorian will bring a collection of their music to the Metropolitan Opera stage without the machinery of a full production.

Her recital, with pianists Petras and Lukas Geniušas, draws on Dvořák, Puccini, Verdi and Richard Strauss. The announced selections include music from Rusalka, Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, Turandot, Salome, Don Carlos, Macbeth and Otello. That is less a parade of greatest hits than an assortment of women caught between desire and the demands placed upon them.

In a theater built for huge orchestras and elaborate scenic worlds, a recital can seem almost a provocation. An aria removed from its opera loses the circumstances that make it urgent. Yet it may gain something else: a chance to hear how different composers imagine a voice under pressure, and how one singer moves between their competing ideas of character.

The contrast is particularly pointed in Grigorian’s case. She is also appearing this season in the title role of Janáček’s Jenůfa, whose heroine inhabits a very different musical landscape from Puccini’s. Janáček’s vocal writing often sounds close to the inflections of speech, though the feeling beneath it can be devastating. The recital offers another way to hear an artist whose dramatic life extends far beyond any single part.

The Met does not routinely give over its main stage to solo recitals. The company places Grigorian in a small lineage of singers granted the space, and the evening should reveal something about the difference between inhabiting a role and carrying an entire program on one’s own authority.

Performance: November 18, 7:30 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House. Met 2026–27 season details.

The Metropolitan Opera House. Photograph: Yair Haklai / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.