Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin is ushering in a new act for the Metropolitan Opera

IN THE FLY SPACE ABOVE THE STAGE AT THE Metropolitan Opera and around and behind it, scenery waits to be called into action. An intricate system of pulleys and lifts allows quick changes. Today’s afternoon rehearsal for Dialogues des Carmélites, for example, will be followed only hours later by a performance of Rigoletto. And in a place of many moving pieces, Yannick Nézet-Séguin fits right in—even though he’s standing at the head of the orchestra in a T-shirt and sneakers while the singers are costumed for 18th century France.

Nézet-Séguin, whose conducting of Francis Poulenc’s Carmélites will put a bow on his first season as music director at the New York City institution, is a man with many batons in the air. He fills parallel roles at the Philadelphia Orchestra and at the Orchestre