NY Times swoons over Gelbs
NewsToday’s paper drools over how ‘power couple’ Peter Gelb and Keri-Lynn Wilson spend their Sundays.
The Met’s director of communications, Dan Wakin (pictured), was formerly deputy editor of the Times culture department.
All he has to do is pick up a phone to old chums.
On his watch, the collusion between America’s biggest performing arts house and the newspaper that is supposed to hold it to some kind of public scrutiny has become shameful, even sickening.
Read the feature here, and puke.
I read this article this morning, and am still having a problem keeping my breakfast down.
If you are still occasionally able to find articles in that newspaper which do not cause a similar effect, that’s only due to your extraordinary tolerance.
But we have to pay to unlock the
Grey Whore…..can’t you give us some more detail so she doesn’t get to profit…
Please don’t even click the link. That will give them the all-important click numbers and they might be encouraged to write more.
Nosema: To sneak behind a paywall, copy the article URL, go to http://archive.ph , paste in URL, hit save. You’ll very occasionally need to be patient—a queue no. may initially appear and the screen fill with a lurid green—but it’s always worked for me.
It works. I’ve just read it on that service.
Lucky you.
It’s nice to hear how the Gelbs spend their Sundays. I would really like to hear about how Mr. Gelb spends the rest of the week and how much time he spends fundraising. Someone in Cleveland really knows how to do that……………..
Cute piece. What’s the prob?
I hear Amazon is done with newspapers and magazines, even digital subscriptions. I wonder why.
If you are still in doubt and still don’t understand why classical music is becoming extinct, and deserves to be extinct, read this nyt article and your doubts will be wiped out.
“Classical music is becoming extinct” is a favorite line of people who make money by writing about classical music, for a good reason. By doing so they elevate themselves into people who are ostensibly in a good position to “save” classical music, by purportedly leveraging the awesome power of mass media that hires them. Institutions that believe this lie will help perpetuate the existence of paid reviewers. In reality what they are doing is nothing more than projecting their looming demise onto the subject they write about. There will always be “new” older people who have the time and resources to be attracted to and appreciate the classics. But in the age of social media and streaming services there are no use for paid opinion dispensers.
Thank you.
Dissolve the classical music department and spare us the cringe, please. I’m afraid it’s only going to get worse.
All major concert-presenting organizations should do a serious poll on the effect of classical music journalism on their attendance numbers. At the very least these organizations should get a very good sense of how important (unimportant) the coverage is to their audience.
When it’s clear these critics’ writing serve almost no publicity value in this age, they don’t deserve any free tickets from classical music institutions. If critics want to review a concert, they should pay. We wouldn’t trust a paid review for a free product anywhere else, so why should we make an exception for music critics?
You’re claiming NYT music critics get comp tickets. Any proof?
I’m not aware of anyone paying for their press seats. Go search for the term [“press seats” AND “classical music”] (exactly what is in the brackets but without brackets) in Google and you’ll see they are free.
In agreement. The NYT classical music desk, in its current form, must be the laughingstock of the world of serious music. These embarrassments just in the last few weeks: the Gheorghiu-hype write up that imploded immediately after; the YN-S celebratory profile on his decidedly bad taste in attire, on Gelb’s own Met dime, mind you; and now this other shallow waste of print real estate. But serious music criticism? One now goes elsewhere for that.
What does that mean? Are serious classical music people in Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Milan, etc. spending their time getting together and laughing over the N.Y. Times? . . . Really?
For all the disgust that this article undoubtedly triggers in most decent readers, it will never come close to what intelligent classical music followers feel over the drooling and swooning of Hedy Weiss (above all) and most of the Chicago press corps over the Italian Stallion (with the exception of the honest and therefore heroic CCR).
Another note: when Z Woolfe was editor, these sort of articles did not appear on the NYT. The paper has fallen lower since then.
“Another note: when Z Woolfe was editor, these sort of articles did not appear on the NYT.“
Except that it was Z Woolfe who wrote the Gheorghiu piece that imploded along with her.
This is a column from the Metropolitan section, so it doesn’t seem to have come from the classical desk.
They are desperate. Any publicity is good publicity for them now …
Yes, I feel that that’s the bottom line also: ANY publicity.
….wonder how the MET orchestra members who were unpaid for most of the pandemic feel reading this article….a sauna and a pool….such suffering!
Whether you think Gelb is doing a good job or not and whatever you think of the NYTimes, the level of vitriol is unwarranted. The Times profiles NewYorkers this way every Sunday and has done it for years. It has nothing to do with music criticism and everything to do with the lives of prominent and/or interesting people, and who would deny that the Gelbs are interesting NewYorkers?
Hear hear.
It makes Hello magazine read like Tolstoy.
An extreme over-reaction as if the Gelb’s were the moral equivalent of Trump, Putin or Gergiev
In some ways they’re lower.
Regarding the fairer half of this ‘power couple,’ Wilson’s conducting falls to mixed reviews. She has a good ear, but her tempos run fast and rehearsals consist of repetition without instruction. Nice person, though.
So then, enjoying a sauna and a steam room in their apartment, — and don’t forget that cold shower! — while to the musicians during COVID: let them eat cake. The idea that they would flaunt this….and the way that the Arts desk at the NY Times constantly portrays classical music in America as a white/male/racist/elitist/colonialist enterprise, unless of course they’re discussing the Philadelphia Orchestra or the Met.
It might have been worse had they’d told the truth.
The Met faces a financial crisis and the NY Times features a puff piece about the general manager who writes letters to his wife using emojis. To add social relevance, they mention his wife is Ukrainian three times and he drinks iced vodka. Is that symbolic of his relationship with Russian artists?
piangero la sorte mia
The NYTimes has run similar features on Alan Gilbert (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/nyregion/18routine.html) and Fabio Luisi (https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/nyregion/on-sundays-fabio-luisi-makes-time-for-family.html), so what’s the problem here? In each case, including this one, I thought it was fascinating, even charming on occasion. Why the negative attitude?
The difference is that most (New Yorkers) had a favorable impression of Fabio Luisi and Alan Gilbert.
Especially of Luisi who was, IMO, excellent at the Met. He is sorely missed by me at least.
In the current issue of Gramohone, Luisi essentially says he’s done with conducting opera. He thinks there is a bad trend afoot of mismatching talent to roles, apparently, and he also decries an emphasis on “the visual over the musical.”
One of the best. He got screwed by Gelb.
They’re both mediocrities.
“…the collusion between America’s biggest performing arts house and the newspaper that is supposed to hold it to some kind of public scrutiny…”
For cultural/social and political reasons, I think both of those entities are getting rather long in the tooth.
Changing tastes, changing preferences, changing economics and changing ideology are chomping down on modern society.
An infomercial, bought and paid for. Gelb still looks like Uncle Fester and has continued his years of incompetence. We have wondered for a long time if his children are immaculate conception via test tube. His wife accomplished, he not so much. One wonders if he has the goods on the Met Opera Board members, as his subscriber rolls are down, his ticket sales remain low and he continues to throw trash productions on the stage.
ahem….congrats to someone’s well conncected press agent