{"id":352394,"date":"2026-09-21T13:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/352394\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T13:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T13:00:07","slug":"louisa-proskes-met-debut-will-be-macbeth-a-terrifying-tale-for-terrifying-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/352394\/","title":{"rendered":"Louisa Proske\u2019s Met Debut Will Be \u2018Macbeth,\u2019 \u2018A Terrifying Tale for Terrifying Times\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 It\u2019s less than a 40-minute walk uptown to the Metropolitan Opera House from where Heartbeat Opera<\/a> got its humble start in a yoga studio. But for Louisa Proske, it\u2019s been an artistic journey years in the making.<\/p>\n

Proske, who co-founded the scrappy company in 2014, is making her Met debut in the highest-profile assignment imaginable: opening the season directing a new production of Verdi\u2019s \u201cMacbeth\u201d with an all-star cast.<\/p>\n

The job came her way less than a year ago after another director bowed out. Planning for new productions typically starts two or more years in advance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was aware of Louisa\u2019s success at Heartbeat, and she had been on my radar,\u201d Met general manager Peter Gelb said. \u201cIn terms of who was available on relatively short notice, Louisa was an obvious choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Proske recalled her conversation with Gelb, \u201cHe said, \u2018Can you do it very, very fast? The design was due yesterday.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI said it\u2019s a big challenge,\u201d she added. \u201cBut I love impossible challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

Impossible challenges are nothing new for Proske\n <\/p>\n

She had plenty of those at Heartbeat, which developed a reputation for reimagining the classics in eye-opening ways while operating on a shoestring budget.<\/p>\n

Luckily she was able to recruit partners she had already worked with: costume designer Montana Levi Blanco and set designer Jon Bausor \u2014 both with previous Met experience \u2014 and choreographer Jorrell Lawyer-Jefferson. \u201cThat sealed the deal,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

It also helped that Proske was intimately familiar with the Shakespeare play, having written her thesis on it at the University of Cambridge.<\/p>\n

Now for the past few weeks, she has put her knowledge and imagination to work, immersing her cast \u2014 which includes a contingent of dancing witches \u2014 in what she calls \u201ca terrifying tale for terrifying times.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Met newcomer who took charge like a veteran\n <\/p>\n

And if she felt any trepidation about taking on such a huge challenge at a huge house, it wasn\u2019t apparent in rehearsal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this had been my first outing with the Met, I would have guessed that she\u2019d been working here for at least a few years,\u201d said baritone Quinn Kelsey, who portrays Macbeth. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t come in there like a drill sergeant, but when she needs everyone\u2019s attention, she gets it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s obvious she\u2019s excited,\u201d he said, \u201cand wanting to show us all these wonderful ideas she\u2019s come up with for us to portray our characters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelsey heads a cast that includes soprano Lise Davidsen<\/a> as Lady Macbeth, tenor Freddie De Tommaso<\/a> as Macduff, and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green<\/a> as Banquo. Met music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts the orchestra and chorus in the production, which opens Tuesday and runs for 10 performances. The Saturday matinee on Oct. 17 will be broadcast live to movie theaters around the world.<\/p>\n

\u2018Macbeth\u2019 shows a society in collapse\n <\/p>\n

To Proske the opera is about \u201cthe corrupt lust for power, the disintegration of the society, the slide into tyranny, all things that I think Shakespeare wrote very acutely about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it expresses the agony of living in times that you don\u2019t really understand anymore,\u201d she continued. \u201cThat it only takes three steps for all guardrails to be gone, the world descending into total savagery and bloodshed. And I do think this is a very current sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has taken inspiration from Verdi\u2019s remark that the story has three major characters: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth \u2014 and the witches, who in this production act as what Proske called \u201cgreedy voyeurs of the Macbeths\u2019 descent into crime and bloodshed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes they just lurk in the shadows, and you have a sense that they\u2019re there,\u201d she said. \u201cAlmost like insects, or mold, they sort of creep through the walls, more and more invading those spaces as rules are broken and values transgressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bausor\u2019s set suggests a modern war-torn landscape, with a false proscenium like a giant concrete wall with a huge hole blasted through it and rubble piled at the sides. Within the gap, scenes in the castle and on the battlefield play out on the revolving turntable.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Blanco\u2019s costumes evoke Shakespeare\u2019s era, with plush robes, gowns and tunics. \u201cTo me there\u2019s something exciting about these grand clothes from Renaissance England,\u201d Proske said. \u201cHow they speak about power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keeping true to the values of Heartbeat Opera\n <\/p>\n

Despite the bigger budget and the bigger stage, Proske has aimed to bring the same values to the Met that flourish at Heartbeat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe core of Heartbeat was always the desire for exact, inventive, visceral storytelling,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I feel like that was my playground and my deep passion for the first years of being an opera director, and it\u2019s where I cut my teeth and developed a whole vision of what opera can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Proske left the company in 2018 and returned to her native Germany, where she spent four seasons directing at Oper Halle. More recently, she has been freelancing in Europe and the U.S. (Recommend we explain what this is for the noninitiated. Perhaps something like \u201c… at Oper Halle, an opera house in Halle, in the northeastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.\u201d Or we could translate it, thusly: \u201c… at the Opera House of Halle\/Halle Opera House, in the northeastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Her old friends at Heartbeat have watched her rise with pride.<\/p>\n

Jacob Ashworth, the company\u2019s artistic director, said he laughs when some fans ask if he isn\u2019t disappointed by Proske\u2019s move uptown. \u201cThere have been people who say, \u2018But isn\u2019t the Met the enemy?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cOf course we don\u2019t think that at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this business it\u2019s the downtown renegades and radical companies that toss out the ideas that then eventually trickle up to the big companies,\u201d Ashworth said. \u201cSo it\u2019s kind of fun when the actual people also trickle up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The\u00a0Associated Press<\/a>. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n

The Month in Photos: Sept. 2026<\/p>\n

\"Judith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 It\u2019s less than a 40-minute walk uptown to the Metropolitan Opera House from where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[118,72042,157,678,1242,9,24,10,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-352394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-associated-press","tag-collections-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-entertainment-news","tag-fashion","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-news","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}