New York's Metropolitan Opera will honour the past with several galas but also forge ahead with new productions for its upcoming 125th anniversary season.

The world-renowned company unveiled its 2008-2009 lineup Tuesday, revealing a slate of six new productions and 22 revivals on offer next season.

Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb speaks to reporters at a news conference announcing the Met's 2008-09 season.
(Mary Altaffer/Associated Press)

An anniversary gala in March will celebrate both the Met's birthday and veteran tenor Placido Domingo's 40-year relationship with the company.

Conducted by Met music director James Levine, the gala will feature as-yet-unnamed opera world stars performing before projections of classic sets from the company's past, including the world premiere of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West in 1910, Tyrone Guthrie's 1952 staging of Bizet's Carmen and the 1967 production of Mozart's Die Zauberfloete featuring sets by Marc Chagall.

The season will unofficially kick off Sept. 18 with Levine conducting a free performance of Verdi's Requiem in memory of the late tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who died in September 2007.

A formal opening night follows on Sept. 22, with a gala honouring the Met's homegrown star, New York soprano Renée Fleming. She will sing excerpts from three of her signature roles: Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata, Massenet's Manon and the countess from Strauss's Capriccio.

"It's my home house," Fleming said of the Manhattan-based Met. "It's the place where I've sung the most. And it's where I live.

"Not everybody has the joy of being welcomed where they live."

Fleming will also perform in a new production of Massenet's Thais and a revival of Dvorak's Rusalka during the season. Also being revived are Lucia di Lammermoor, Salome, the Ring Cycle and Tristan und Isolde — which will mark renowned conductor Daniel Barenboim's Met debut.

Other singers set to take the Met stage next season include Roberto Alagna, Angela Gheorghiu, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Rene Pape, Karita Mattila, Juan Diego Florez and Canadian baritone Gerlad Finley.

Aside from Thais, new Met productions will include:

• John Adams' Doctor Atomic.
• Puccini's La Rondine.
• Verdi's Il Trovatore.
• Bellini's La Sonnambula.
• Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust.

Met general director Peter Gelb enlisted Robert Lepage to create a new La Damnation de Faust, with the Canadian theatre director reportedly to blend the Paris Opera's staging with projection and lighting effects similar to those he used when developing the Cirque du Soleil's show Ka in Las Vegas.

Adams and Lepage are just two of the modern artists Gelb has enlisted for future productions, to lend more contemporary feel to the venerable company.

Adams's Nixon in China and a new Lepage reimagining of The Tempest are both slated for the Met stage in the next few years. Lepage is also creating a new Met staging of the Ring Cycle. 

As part of Tuesday's announcement Gelb revealed a further expansion of the opera's successful high-definition simulcasts to movie theatres, from eight operas to 10.

The company will also introduce new artwork on its metal "fire curtain" in front of the stage, with contemporary artist Jeff Koons to design the first work.