A 63-year-old tenor with the Metropolitan Opera died last night after apparently suffering a heart attack and falling to the stage from a ladder during the first few minutes of the Met premiere of "The Makropulos Case," by Leos Janacek.

The tenor, Richard Versalle, who was singing the role of Vitek, an elderly clerk in a law firm, had just finished reaching up to a high B and then a B flat as he sang about a legal case that was nearly a century old. As he mounted a sliding ladder to place the file for the case back in its drawer, singing the words "Too bad you can only live so long," his voice faltered and he fell 10 feet from the ladder to the floor, landing on his back with his arms outstretched.

As audience members gasped and cried out, the conductor, David Robertson, yelled repeatedly across the footlights, "Richard, are you all right?" Mr. Versalle was apparently unconscious, and the curtains were immediately brought down as people rushed to the tenor's side.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Opera, David Reuben, said Mr. Versalle was taken to St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was declared dead shortly after arrival.