In a lounge beneath the Metropolitan Opera, the towering Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen is the picture of calm. “My husband jokes I am like a pressure cooker,” she says with a laugh, sitting pin-straight on a sofa. (Standing, she’s an astonishing six-foot-two.) “I tend to save up emotions, positive or negative. But it can explode!”

The Met has looked to a foreign government, to new strategies, even to outer space, in its scramble to find money to sustain the country’s largest performing arts organization.

Michael Spyres, an Ozarks native and international opera star, will sing the role of Tristan in the Metropolitan Opera's live cinema production of Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" on March 21, 2026.

Opera director Yuval Sharon has said that Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” is the hardest work in the traditional repertoire to stage.