Fresh off his Met debut, Manfred Honeck returns to the Chicago Symphony

When Manfred Honeck returns to Chicago, his appearance will follow a recent milestone: his U.S. opera debut, leading Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Metropolitan Opera.

A regular presence at Orchestra Hall over the last decade, Honeck will conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in concerts Nov. 17-19, with a performance Nov. 18 at Wheaton College. The program consists of the overture to Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and the U.S. premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Diary of a Madman, composed for cellist Gautier Capuçon.

Music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra since the 2008-2009 season, the Austrian-born Honeck, 64, has achieved a long and distinguished podium career. Though he has conducted opera throughout Europe, “Idomeneo,” which ran Sept. 28 to Oct. 20, marked Honeck’s belated Met debut.

Given his opera posts in Zurich, Oslo and Stuttgart, one might wonder what took the Met so long. “Sometimes in life, you have to wait until you can do the right thing,” he said with a smile during a lecture last month at New York City’s Austrian Cultural Center, as he was quoted in a feature published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, his hometown newspaper. It turns out that the Met approached Honeck four years ago, but then his debut was delayed because of scheduling issues and the COVID-19 lockdown.

In any case, his Met engagement received glowing reviews. New York Times critic Zachary Woolfe hailed his debut as “impressive,” calling the production “full-bodied, with rich vitality, but without the racing cat-feet tempos that are fashionable these days.” The Washington Post lauded Honeck’s “brisk and lively reading that spared no detail” and singled out the “crackling energy between the orchestra and the cast.” Opera News labeled the debut as “auspicious,” while Opera Wire wrote that “the ensemble, under the musical direction of Manfred Honeck, nearly outdid itself.”

For his part, Honeck called the Met Opera orchestra “marvelous,” and also singled out the principal singers, chorus and the total experience. The Met staff "took such good care of me,” he said, noting everyone was extremely accommodating. “I was not at any moment lost.”

Honeck hopes to make a return engagement to conduct another opera at the Met. A performance recorded during his run in Idomeneo will be reprised April 22 as part of the Met’s radio broadcast series (heard locally at noon Saturdays over WFMT-FM, 98.7).

In Chicago, Honeck will be following in the wake of another milestone. His recording with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra of Shostakovich’s Fifth received two Grammy Awards in 2018 — for best orchestral performance and best engineered album.