Wall Street Journal: ‘Has Peter Gelb run out of ideas?’
mainTerry Teachout writes: Is it time for the Metropolitan Opera to look elsewhere for fresh thinking? Or is the company simply too cost-diseased to thrive in a market where consumer demand for big-ticket opera, the only product that the Met can successfully produce, appears to be inching inexorably downward? I have a sinking feeling that we’re going to find out…soon.
Full article here.
He’s waiting for the invite from Bayreuth to conduct the Parsifal.
🙂
Nobody can make this business model work…. a huge money-pit…
His ideas were always going to propel the Met downwards. His often quirky expensive new productions were meant to appeal to those who had rarely if ever attended the Met. Didn’t work! The cinema relays were supposed to widen the opera audience, but by showing them in the greater NYC area at a fraction of the price of a ticket inside the House he shot himself in the foot. Didn’t work! He failed to realise that the young audience he has been trying to woo have to work harder since the recession and have so many other cheaper leisure opportunities they can’t afford a night out at the Met. Didn’t work! And his utter wasteful profligacy in raising costs by 50% at the time of the worst recession in living memory was the mark of a rank amateur in running an organisation as complex as the Met. Should never have been allowed to happen.
The Search Committee Chairwoman’s stupid admission at a recent Conference that he was effectively chosen because he was “hip” summed it all up succinctly. No experience – but “hip”! What on earth did a small group of mega-rich ladies-who-lunch know about being “hip”?
Yep.
Hip replacements?
Who would be your hip replacement at the Met?