“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”

A Preview of The Metropolitan Opera’s Imaginative, Upcoming Production

By Alix Cohen

Tonight’s glimpse into The Metropolitan Opera’s upcoming production of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay features performance by three vocalists, dress rehearsal images, and a discussion lead by Peter Gelb, Maria Manetti Shrem General Manager, Metropolitan Opera.

“It’s not so often we have the composer and librettist alive,” begins Gelb introducing Mason Bates and Gene Sheer. It was Bates who came across the novel. “Even though it’s a sprawling epic, at heart it’s quite simple,” he tells us. As Sheer had successfully tackled Moby Dick, he seemed the right collaborator.

The composer was drawn to representation of three sound worlds: WWII occupation of Prague, the big band milieu of New York in the 1940s, and symphonic electronics accompanying the comic’s creation. Bates has a particular interest in joining digital and analog. His contemporary speech is peppered with colloquialisms otherwise unheard on the panel.

Québécois Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, is a champion of Bates’ approach. He notes there’s actually a staff member to cue electronics and that “sometimes I’m forced to keep up with the machine.” Nezet-Seguin seems bemused, rather than put off. His vitality is palpable.

Director, Bartlett Sher enthusiastically approached the challenge of “an incredibly big canvas,” promising the 20 minute finish of a turntable depicting the era. “There’s usually a curtain or intermission between scenes, while here location shifts in front of you within two bars,” he notes.

A large screen shows successive images of the cast on sets – including proscenium-filling projections designed by Jenny Melville and Mark Grimmer of 59 Studio. We see, in part, Brooklyn’s George Street Bridge, the Empire Toy Company where Sammy works until the comic becomes successful, an eventual radio show version of the strip with ancillary graphics, an art gallery, a fantasy sequence…

“I traced it/I wish I could draw something like this (Superman)/I draw like I walk/Stumbling from place to place…For just ten cents, every kid in America gets to know what it’s like to be a hero…” sings tenor Miles Mykkanen as Sammy. The artist is splendid, every lyric pristine, character portrayal young and sympathetic.

He’s then joined by Andrzej Filonczyk in his Metropolitan Opera debut, as the more solemn, wary Josef/Joe, an artist. The baritone is as vocally closed as Mykkanen is open. Whether due to technique or accent, he’s almost impossible to understand.

Sammy explains his idea. “It’s not who he (the super hero) is, it’s what he does. The question is why…Batman’s motivation was the murder of his parents…The Escapist will offer freedom from the shackles of oppression…” “A long animation sequence follows,” Sher comments.

Gelb asks Nezet-Seguin whether he feels liberated working with a score different from the contemporary as well as classics. The music director responds “It doesn’t mean being a slave to the work any more than that of Mozart. They made changes up to the last minute. Opera is a living art. Sometimes we cut or interpolate…”

Mezzo-Soprano Sun-Ly Pierce sings the aria “Open Your Eyes”, as Rosa Sachs, Josef’s love interest. (There are two romances.) She’s appealing for funds to bring over refugee children. Pierce’s rich, passionate entreaty is touching. Josef gets involved in the movement. A duet finds them watching the ship approach.

Pianist Katelan Tran Terrell is immensely precise and sensitive.

Gelb zealously sums up the piece as one of “fear, heartbreak, hope, and redemption- much like life today.” The opera promises to be thoroughly original.

Michael Chabon’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, a great read, centers on Jewish cousins Josef Kavalier, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague, and native Brooklynite, Sammy Clay. In 1939, the boys invent The Escapist, an anti-fascist comic book hero who battles tyranny and embodies both their personal struggles for freedom and America’s fight against Nazism.

Joe channels his grief and survivor’s guilt into art, desperate to rescue the family he left behind in Europe. At first fractured- artist, refugee, soldier, he finds his purpose. Sammy, ambitious and closeted, uses comics to explore identity and escape social restraints. His double life parallels that of Superman. The partnership flourishes professionally, but is shadowed by war, repression, and personal loss.

Inspired by real-life of Jewish comic creators like Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster who invented Superman when they too were young and driven, Chabon blends historical fiction, comic book mythology, and emotional depth which resonates today.

Photos Courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera

Works & Process presents The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
The Metropolitan Opera
Composed by Mason Bates; Libretto by Gene Scheer
Based on the book by Michael Chabon

Works in Process at The Guggenheim Museum 1071 Fifth Ave.
Championing performing artists and their creative process at each step from studio to stage, Works & Process produces fully funded residencies and presents events that go behind the scenes, blending artist discussion and performance highlights.
Upcoming Programs: https://www.guggenheim.org/works-process

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay at The Metropolitan Opera
September 21 through October 11, 2025
https://www.metopera.org/
The book is available on Amazon and elsewhere