Jeanine Tesori will become the first woman composer to open the season for the Metropolitan Opera in its 141-year history.

Her revised opera, Grounded, will premiere at New York’s Met on Monday night, following its initial run at Washington’s Kennedy Center. This landmark event spotlights the growing recognition of female composers in an industry where men have long dominated.

Grounded stars mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo and is based on George Brant’s play about a fighter pilot grounded by , who then becomes a drone operator.

Tesori and director Michael Mayer made substantial edits after the opera’s Kennedy Center debut, cutting 35 minutes from the performance and streamlining the plot to enhance the audience’s experience.

“It didn’t need a transplant of a liver, but what it needed was maybe just a different approach,” Mayer recalled.

“Some rhinoplasty,” Tesori interjected. “A tracheotomy at one point.”

This is Tesori’s fourth , and she’s already known for her celebrated work in Broadway musicals like Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo, both for which she won . Mayer won a Tony for directing Spring Awakening in 2007, which famously catapulted Glee’s Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff into the spotlight.

While Tesori is accustomed to having extensive rehearsal time for musicals, working in opera presented new challenges. Opera productions, unlike theater, have much tighter schedules for stage rehearsals and revisions.

The Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, praised Tesori for her willingness to cut significant portions of the score, a move rarely embraced by . “It was fascinating to see the composer herself driving these cuts to better serve the storyline,” he said.

Tesori follows in the footsteps of other female composers whose works have been performed at the Met, including Ethel M. Smyth, whose Der Wald premiered in 1903, and Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin in 2016.

“If we are claiming that opera needs to appeal to everyone and needs to be related and connected to the life experiences of everyone in the audience, we do have to present on the stage the vision of everyone,” Nézet-Séguin said.

“I’m convinced it’s a very different perspective, and even the music sounds different because it’s a woman composing it.”

The production of Grounded also embraces modern , with a set dominated by LED tiles and digital displays designed by Mimi Lien.

“I was interested in the kind of combination between image and space or between actual physical, tangible structure and virtual imagery and how to combine those,” Lien said, “colored with the overall context of drone warfare and surveillance and the kind of preponderance of imagery into our daily lives.”

Additional operas by women are scheduled for 2026, continuing the Met’s commitment to expanding its repertoire. Future visitors can expect to experience Saariaho’s Innocence, Gabriela Lena Frank’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego and Missy Mazzoli’s Lincoln in the Bardo.

The eight scheduled performances of Grounded run through October 19, with the final show broadcast live to movie theaters worldwide.

This article includes reporting from the Associated Press.