Peter Gelb and the Met’s Corona year

A new drawing by the New York artist Emmanuelle Ayrton brilliantly captures the unitended confluence between Coronavirus, which shut down the Metropolitan Opera, and its general manager Peter Gelb, who is using the shutdown to starve his musicians into submission.

Emmanuelle is quick to pick up on the musical vibe in New York.

In other submissions, we have this message from the Met Opera musicians:

As 2020 comes to a close, we want to wish you a happy holiday season and a wonderful year ahead.

Thanks to your support we will be disbursing close to $325,000 to help our members who have been out of work since April.

As we begin the new year, we will continue to fundraise. The 2020-21 season was cancelled, so we are heading into our 10th month without a paycheck.

Unpaid since April 2020, over a third of our members have been forced to leave the New York City area. Nonetheless, we remain committed to engaging with our audiences, giving back to our community, and supporting each other.

Image (c) Emmanuelle Ayrton