Saudi Arabia has dangled some $200 million to lure the Metropolitan Opera out of Lincoln Center and into the Royal Diriyah Opera House. The venerated company will perform Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Puccini’s La Bohème, and other classics at the kingdom’s $1.4 billion facility when it opens in 2028.
The company will perform for three weeks each winter for five years in exchange for a financial lifeline, tentatively agreed to be distributed over the next eight years, The New York Times reported. Saudi musicians, composers, and set designers will go to New York to learn from The Met as part of the deal, and an original opera — set in the ancient city of AlUla by British composer Jonathan Dove — is in the offing as well.