Opera News to shut down
NewsThe Metropolitan Opera Guild has decided after prolonged losses to shut down its monthly magazine Opera News and dismiss 20 staff.
A section of the magazine will survive as a pullout in Opera magazine, published in London.
Opera News has enjoyed an occasionally scratchy relationship with the Met under Peter Gelb. Its disappearance marks another downgrade in the diva publicity cult.
The Guild’s disappearance marks the tragic loss of arts education programs for thousands of students and adults in NYC.
Isn’t that program staying?
The Met said it will continue its programme of student matinee performances; gone will be stuff like the annual luncheon and the Opera News Awards.
The Guild also provided in-school programs to schools in NY and NJ that could not afford to keep an arts teacher on staff. It also offered courses and lectures for adults as well as other programs like family workshops and a senior choir. The Met has no plan to continue these programs.
I was going to say you had 4 RIPs in a row. Actually it’s 5. How sad. This was once a good magazine, independent of icky Met management.
About time. For we don’t know how long now that publication had become nothing but a frivolous affair, more akin to promoting a Miss Universe or Barbie version of things than with genuine substance. The image chosen for this story is a case in point. Besides, what is there left to report on, now that young important voices have long departed, stage left?
I used to save every issue of Opera News. Not only that, but I’ve collected issues going back to 1940 and valued them for intelligent content and information.
Starting in 2015 every new issue has wound up in the recycle bin. It became a glossy, plastic, surfacy, glamor “opera lifestyle” mag. The great editors of the past, Mary Ellis Peltz, Frank Merkling, etc. would be spinning in their graves over what the magazine became.
Albert Innaurato’s 2-part “Temple of Doom” profile of Teatro alla Scala (Opera News, July and August 1999) remains the most insightful and hilarious profile of an opera company ever written.
Terrible news
Who is the “diva”?
This news is completely unsurprising.
One Netrebko a day keeps the doctor away, Mr Lebrecht?
Oohhh no: increases the click biting on SD !
Even though the Guild is independent from the Met, I’m anticipating the “it’s all Gelb’s fault” posts in 3, 2 1 . . . . .
Sorry, it was…if you were there (the Met), you’d well understand. The Guild has not been that independent since Gelb took over.
I was/am there – and your constant and unfounded hatred of Gelb is literally insane. I’m surprised you’re not accusing him of personally incubating Covid just so that he can succeed in destroying the Met. Oh, I think he also started that pesky war in Ukraine because he wanted to get rid of Netrebko, right? Go back to playing your video games in your mom’s basement, troll.
After Gelb assumed the reins of the Met, one of this earliest initiatives was to end the Guild’s independence and put it under the Met umbrella. It is not independent so your premise is incorrect.
And your source for this knowledge is what?
Sad, but hardly surprising. So many magazines have gone by the wayside. I let my subscriptions to BBC Music, Gramophone lapse years ago – and I don’t really miss them. With everything online, who needs print?
To be clear, it’s not just Opera News that’s closing down, but the Guild.
The next question is, how long will Opera (the UK magazine) itself survive? Is it supported by an endowment from its aristocratic founder, or must it make its way in the marketplace? The idea of a serious magazine devoted to opera (and Opera has definitely been that) is predicated on a readership more than casually interested in opera, yet outside the profession itself. How many of those readers are left?
It’s been a rag since 1990. Glad to see it go.
The Guild isn’t truly independent of the Met…they have been a major supporter of the Met for a very long time…the Met has needed them on a national as well as local level. But yes, I believe much of the blame for this can be put upon Peter Gelb. And, obviously, this comment needed a much longer countdown.
It’s often interesting to see the language organizations (“U.S. talk” for “organisations”) choose to describe their own managerial decisions.
The Opera News home page headline says: “Metropolitan Opera Guild To STREAMLINE Operations.”
“Opera News, the Guild’s monthly publication to COME UNDER the editorial direction of the U.K.’s Opera magazine.”
“As the Guild TRANSITIONS, its LARGEST education program, which brings 12,000 school children to dress rehearsals annually, will continue.”
To me those sound like a lot of euphemisms for something considerably more painful, sad, and surgically reduced.
https://operanews.com/news/2023-08-the-metropolitan-opera-guild-to-streamline-its-operations/
Through the Volpe era, every Saturday broadcast had a advert for Opera News in which a Met artist would talk about the magazine and encourage subscriptions. You could sometimes send for a free issue or, if you had a question used on the quiz or a roundtable, win a year’s subscription.
I became a subscriber many years back via an offer (five issues for a dollar.)
For whatever reason, any mention of the mere existence of the magazine vanished from the broadcasts. I’d like to know why. There was no longer any overt interest in increasing Guild membership.
The only membership people care about is BLM and variations on non binary sexuality. Why would they promote a magazine when they can promote rioting for theft, and non-birthing persons lactating.
What you describe is cultural Götterdämmerung.
I hope Opera Magazine will not end up giving undue weight to New York and US coverage. New York has long ceased to be the epicentre of the opera world and opera in the US has become a rather moribund art form driving Opera News to its demise.
True, but the decline in New York is like the canary running out of oxygen before the miners do. Opera has more cultural purchase in Europe, where it was invented, so it’s only natural it should wither first in the US, where the last great waves of European immigration are now about seventy years in the past. But you’re kidding yourself if you think the description “a rather moribund art form” describes a particular geographic subset of “opera.”
I think you kid yourself if you assume that opera elsewhere is as moribund as in the US. On the contrary, opera is still very much alive and kicking in Europe and in the developing world where newly educated young people are discovering the joy of classical music and voice – see the increasing number of young singers from Asia, Africa and Latin America dominating the vocal competitions. I think the lack of musical education in the US and the lack of airtime given to classical music in the US could have deprived the younger generation of this art form. This leaves an increasing aged audience who prefers literal naturalistic productions leading to this sad state of affairs.
Meanwhile in the viola section….
Where are the juxera bipoc warriors when you need them????