The Metropolitan Opera is a vibrant home for the most creative and talented singers, conductors, composers, musicians, stage directors, designers, visual artists, choreographers, and dancers from around the world. Each season, the Met stages close to 200 opera performances at its home in the heart of Lincoln Center in New York. More than 750,000 people attend the performances in the opera house, and millions more experience the Met through new media distribution initiatives—including the award-winning Live in HD series of cinema transmissions and the online subscription streaming service Met Opera on Demand—and state-of-the-art technology. Since its founding in 1883, the company has always engaged the world’s most important singers—from stars of the turn of the 20th century like Kirsten Flagstad, Enrico Caruso, and Ezio Pinza to the Golden Age talents of Renata Tebaldi, Leontyne Price, and Luciano Pavarotti to today’s leading international artists—and it continues to discover and train rising voices through its Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition and Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. In 2006, Peter Gelb became the Met’s Maria Manetti Shrem General Manager—the 16th general manager in company history. Under his leadership, the Met has elevated its theatrical standards by significantly increasing the number of new productions, staged by the most imaginative directors working in theater and opera, and has launched a series of initiatives to broaden its reach internationally. Starting with the 2018–19 season, Yannick Nézet-Séguin took the musical helm of the company as the Met’s Jeannette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, and during the 2025–26 season, Daniele Rustioni began his tenure as the company’s Principal Guest Conductor.