The Metropolitan Opera has announced that Yannick Nézet-Séguin's contract as Music Director has been extended through the 2029-30 season. Nézet-Séguin will continue to conduct four to five operas each season for the next six years, culminating with a new production of Wagner's Ring Cycle, which will be rolled out beginning in the 2027-28 season, and conclude with the full cycle in the spring of 2030.

Yuval Sharon, currently the Artistic Director of Detroit Opera, will direct the new Ring, after first making his Met debut in the 2025-26 season with a new production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, which Nézet-Séguin will also conduct. Tristan und Isolde, which Leonard Bernstein called "the central work of all music history;" and the Ring Cycle, four operas telling the story of the Norse hero Siegfried and the end of the age of gods; are two enormous undertakings for any opera company, with the leading soprano roles of both considered among the most challenging roles in the repertoire. Soprano Lise Davidsen, rapidly becoming one of the biggest stars on the Met roster, will tackle both Isolde and Brunnhilde in the upcoming productions.

Said Sharon in a statement: “Wagner’s works are opera’s equivalent to Homer or Shakespeare: Each opera is its own complex cosmos, with endless potential for reinterpretation. To explore these works and create productions of Tristan and the Ring specifically for the Met with Yannick is the honor of a lifetime and an imaginative process I am thrilled to undertake."

Also announced are a slate of new operas set for Nézet-Séguin to conduct in the coming seasons, including the Met premieres of El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego by Gabriela Lena Frank, Lincoln in the Bardo by Missy Mazzoli, The Highlands by Carlos Simon, The Wedding Banquet by Huang Ruo, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which, directed by Bartlett Sher, will have its world premiere this fall. A new production of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, directed by Robert Carsen, is also on the docket.