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NEW YORK — “Ssssssshhh! Only one person on stage talks at a time, please!”

We are in the red-plush everything of the Metropolitan Opera House on a weekday morning, insulated from the blare of traffic around Lincoln Centre and Columbus Circle, but maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin is busy. He had been working on a break in the orchestra pit when cast members onstage began discussing over one another, drawing his reaction. It’s not a rare moment of pique from the conductor — it’s the only one, as anyone will tell you.

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In a black t-shirt conducting a full dress rehearsal of the second act of Verdi’s Otello, the Montreal native is just days away from opening the Met Opera season and taking the opera live. On Sept. 21, the house will be packed and buzzing, but Otello will also be broadcast to live screens in Times Square, and there are still tweaks in music, singing and staging to be done.

In the pit even in rehearsal, his style is muscular, expressive. Onstage, tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello in black military dress, gold brocade and boots stands as young soprano Sonya Yoncheva as Desdemona collapses to her knees in a heap of red ball gown and gloves. Nézet-Séguin stops the rehearsal again. “So beautiful,” he says of Yoncheva’s performance. “But if you could just . . . ” There are unintelligible directions between conductor and soprano. Director Bartlett Sher hovers on the edge of the pit.