In break with the past, Met opera is devoting a third of its productions to recent work

NEW YORK — Jake Heggie recalls that after “Dead Man Walking” premiered in San Francisco in 2000, his first opera was quickly taken up by other companies, but there was “not even a whisper of possibility” that the Metropolitan Opera might be interested. When Anthony Davis’ first opera, “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” was staged at New York City Opera in 1986 it was such a hit he says “audiences were around the block waiting to get in.” Yet it was ignored by the larger company right next door at Lincoln Center. And Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, met with Daniel Catan before the Mexican composer’s death in 2011 to discuss staging his “Florencia en el Amazonas,” which had premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 1996. So “Dead Man,” “X” and “Florencia” will play in repertory alongside classics like Puccini’s “La Boheme,” Verdi’s “Nabucco” and “Un Ballo in Maschera” and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser.” And in the spring, three more recent works will be on the schedule: Revivals of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and Kevin Puts’ “The Hours” — both big hits in their premiere seasons — and John Adams’s “El Niño,” an opera-oratorio receiving a full staging. “They are harvesting from this big investment in new work some of the best,” he said, “On the others hand, the fact that the nation’s largest opera company has devoted a third of its season to American opera is also a bold leadership move, an experiment, around the sustainability of an audience around this repertoire.