Baritone Will Liverman and the Met Opera’s music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will perform live before the tennis match on September 10, 2023
This event will mark the first time GRAMMY Award-winning opera baritone Will Liverman, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra will perform at the US Open.
Alongside the Met Opera’s music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on piano, the musicians will play an arrangement of “America the Beautiful/Lift Every Voice and Sing,” on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court prior to the 2023 US Open men’s singles championship on September 10, 2023.
Arranged by John Sheppard and Tetsuro Hoshii for voice, piano, and brass, the work’s premiere will also feature the Met orchestra trumpeter Billy Hunter, French horn players Brad Gemeinhardt and Anne Scharer, plus trombonists Sasha Romero and Weston Sprott.
Liverman opened the Met’s 2021/22 season playing the lead role in Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones — the first opera by a Black composer in the company’s history, and winner of the 2023 GRAMMY for Best Opera Recording.
In November, he will perform the title role of Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. Liverman’s own opera, The Factotum, premiered at the Lyric Opera of Chicago earlier this year.
GRAMMY Award-winning conductor Nézet-Séguin joined the Met Opera as music director in the 2018/19 season, from which he has conducted over 170 performances. He holds the same role with the Philadelphia Orchestra. His upcoming projects include leading the Met Opera’s opening night premiere of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking.
“To have the Metropolitan Opera, one of the country’s largest and leading cultural institutions, center stage on tennis’s grandest stage is momentous for the USTA (U.S. Tennis Association),” said USTA board chair and president Brian Hainline in a press release. “Just as this match showcases the greatest tennis athletes, Will, Yannick and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra represent the very best of opera and classical music.”
The performance will air live on ESPN’s coverage of the conclusion of the US Open. Tickets to the event can be found here.
