The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay Opera

The Metropolitan Opera raised its curtain on September 21, 2025, with the world-premiere production of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a story ripped straight from the four-color pages of the Golden Age and reimagined for the grand stage. Directed by Bartlett Sher and powered by the dynamic baton of Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, this operatic origin story assembles a cast as bold as any superhero team-up: baritone Andrzej Filończyk makes his Met debut as Josef Kavalier, the escapist-artist with a Houdini streak, while tenor Miles Mykkanen embodies Sam Clay, the Brooklyn wordsmith who helps give birth to a new champion of justice.

Based on Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, the opera unfolds like a multi-issue saga. Set on the eve of World War II, two Jewish cousins join forces to create The Escapist, a superhero forged to battle fascism both on the page and in the world beyond. Composer Mason Bates provides the sonic superpowers, crafting a score that shifts with comic-book agility: from the shadows of Nazi-occupied Prague to the bustling panels of New York City, and finally into the vivid technicolor dreamscape of pulp fantasy. Gene Scheer’s libretto serves as the narrative framework, a kind of operatic “issue one,” where every aria feels like a full-page splash.

The stage design itself becomes a kind of living comic strip—Bartlett Sher’s production unleashes towering set pieces and widescreen projections designed by Jenny Melville and Mark Grimmer of 59 Studio, creating a Met-sized multiverse of history, myth, and imagination.

For readers of the original novel, the story’s DNA remains clear: Joe Kavalier, the artist-magician who slips out of Nazi Prague like a costumed hero making a daring escape, arrives on the Brooklyn doorstep of cousin Sammy Clay. Together, their creation of The Escapist mirrors the birth of Superman, Batman, and Captain America, tapping into the raw energy of comics’ Golden Age. Chabon’s tale and now the opera pay homage to the architects of modern mythology: Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Will Eisner, and their peers, whose struggles and triumphs echo in Kavalier and Clay’s rise.

Like the greatest comic epics, the opera layers fantasy with reality, myth with history. From Dalí’s surreal cameos to the specter of Fredric Wertham’s crusade against comics, the story charts the arc of a medium and a people seeking to fight tyranny with imagination. Just as the Kefauver hearings closed one era of comics, the opera now opens a new chapter—where aria, projection, and orchestration replace word balloon, ink, and panel. Still, the central theme remains the same: that stories, whether sung or drawn, can be the mightiest superpower of all.