“The basic presence of the orchestral sound is not exactly what I imagine it can be,” Mr. Nézet-Séguin said, in his most detailed public comments yet about his intentions for the Met’s orchestra. “I think it’s a little too dry and lifeless in piano, and I think that in forte it’s just maybe unbalanced internally.”

For the company’s recent new production of “La Traviata,” he said, he worked with the ensemble on “a much richer sound, resonant, pizzicato, bass-oriented. Cellos and basses: I’m a lot about what they need to do. Not because they’re not good, but because for years they’ve been asked to be as short and light as possible.”

“That was the conception of sound of my predecessor,” he added. “I just have a totally different idea, and we miss very often the fundamental of the harmony. Whenever it’s a little bit longer and richer and with more vibrato, it changes completely the aural spectrum.”

A wholly different kind of aural spectrum — and a spectacle that was queer even by opera standards — was on display in October, when Mr. Nézet-Séguin was featured on the Canadian national television show “En Direct de l’Univers,” a kind of “This Is Your Life” told through the people and music you love. His nieces and nephews were on, as were his parents and trainer. Rufus Wainwright sang a few songs.

But the climax was a duet: the Jacques Brel number “Quand On N’a Que L’Amour” (“When Love Is All You Have”), with Mr. Tourville joined remotely by none other than Celine Dion. Mr. Nézet-Séguin cried — mostly, he said, “because I was watching Pierre sing a duet with his idol.”

The couple is not married, but for a gay union, there could hardly have been a more sacred ceremony. “It made an impact,” Mr. Nézet-Séguin said. “We did not realize that, and yet it made an impact. Hey, two guys sang their love, with Celine blessing it.”