For quite a while, American opera fans hoping to catch the much-fêted Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian had to cross the pond—or subscribe to lots of streaming services. But over the past few seasons, the Met has been reeling her in for the occasional short run, touting her, in a just description from The New York Times, as “fiercely intelligent and captivating.” Let’s register, in a 23-and-Me state of mind, Asmik’s debt to her soprano mother Irena Milkevičiūtė (who sang the ensemble part of Susanna in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina at the house in 1999) and her ferociously intense Armenian tenor father Gegam Grigorian (who made his debut there as Pierre Bezukhov in the company premiere of Prokofiev’s epic War and Peace), both protégés of the Mariinsky Theater’s all-powerful Valery Gergiev. But ancestry cannot in itself account for her ability to disappear into another person’s voice and skin. “I never had a difficulty to be every single character,” she has said. “For me, it was always the same woman.” And that woman, she specified elsewhere, is always herself—just in different situations (which in the end explains exactly nothing). This season at the Met, Grigorian inhabits Jenůfa, a gripping tale of infanticide and redemption in backwoods Moravia. As a bonus between the premiere and second night, she lights up the Met with the sort of solo evening historically reserved for the company’s most exceptional artists. Arias by Puccini, Dvořák, Verdi, and Richard Strauss are on offer—not with orchestra, not with piano accompaniment, but with duo-piano support from the father-and-son team of Petras and Lukas Geniušas, who for all we know had to prepare arrangements specially for the occasion. —Matthew Gurewitsch

Asmik Grigorian performs the role of Jenůfa in all performances