Metropolitan Opera holds auditions for snake role in Mozart production

25 September 2026, 17:13

Even reptiles get callbacks too...

A boa constrictor named Princess has won a coveted role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera after an audition for its forthcoming production of Mozart’s opera, Così fan tutte.

The yellow-peach “sun-glow” boa will appear at the Metropolitan Opera with performance artist Zoe Ziegfeld, who plays a snake charmer in a new Coney Island-inspired staging of the 1790 comic opera. Ziegfeld, a former carnival performer, told the Toronto Star that she auditioned prospective reptilian cast members by handling them as they would be handled during a performance.

“I need to know that the animal is comfortable with people and with what we are doing,” Ziegfeld said. Princess was selected partly for her larger size and visual impact, although Ziegfeld said her place in the production would initially be on a trial basis.

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Lawrence Brownlee - 'Ah mes amis!' from Donizetti's La fille du régiment

A smaller brown boa constrictor, Nala, has been chosen as Princess’ understudy. The production marks the third time Ziegfeld has performed the snake-charmer role in the Met’s version of Così fan tutte.

Mozart’s opera follows two Italian soldiers who test the loyalty of their fiancées by pretending to leave for war, then returning in disguise to honey trap one another’s partners.

The Metropolitan Opera’s production shifts the action to a brightly coloured 1950s Coney Island carnival, complete with sideshow acts and fairground-inspired scenery. And, of course, snakes.

“The music’s different. The money is different. It’s a pleasure to entertain,” Ziegfeld said. “And with snakes, it’s a delight to know that there are people watching who are in awe and people who are terrified. And those things happen at the Met and at Coney, so I would say they are more alike than different, to be honest.”

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The Met’s reptilian production could also open the eyes of a whole new generation of opera-goers, after New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced 70,000 free Met Opera tickets will be made available for New Yorkers in his ‘Opera For All’ initiative.

Starting in September 2026, 10,000 tickets per month will be made available in a lottery for New York City residents for the full 2026-27 season, so long as they haven’t purchased tickets to the Met Opera since 2019.