The Met is now officially Second Hand Rose
OperaWe reported yesterday that all four contemporary operas in the Metropolitan Opera’s new season had their first staging – with all risks taken – in other US companies.
The plot now thickens.
Salome, one of the two non-contemporary new productions, was developed at the Bolshoi in Moscow.
Somehow, the Met forgot to mention that.
Still, what has New York come to when its major opera house cannot create a single new show on its own?
And why is the New York Times so supine it cannot put these questions to the general manager? Even the fanboy site is more critical.
Peter Gelb (pictured left) has been there far too long.
John Berry perhaps?? Ha, ha! Send over ACE too! Even more ha, ha! John would shake them up! But then the problem of these enormous barn-sized opera houses of America are a problem in themselves, the Met no exception.
Yannick has lost his shirt, even.
The NY Times treats season announcements now as a chance for a “what we’re looking forward to” article. No in-depth reporting, no deeper analysis. The AP’s Ron Blum does a much better job in at least digging into the attendance numbers. Back when there was a Twitter, you’d also get a lot of commentary from people in the opera world but that’s essentially over now too.
The MET is no longer giving the Gray Lady a major advertising committment. No pay, no play.
The fact that shows premiere outside the Met doesn’t mean that they had no hand in developing them. Many of their biggest premieres in the past years were presented first elsewhere, such as the ENO or the Festival d’opéra de Québec. That doesn’t mean they’re not MET shows – just that they gave them a test run elsewhere.
There’s a difference between buying a production and co-developing a production.
Exactly. And why wouldn’t they want to work out the kinks on a smaller stage first?
The Met has scarcely originated any new productions of their own since Gelb’s intendancy. The few it has have been disasters like that hugely wasteful and expensive white elephant, the Lepage Ring. I understand the economies of shared productions, but vastly more economical were older productions which would last for decades and also remain faithful to the creator’s intentions. Boheme, Tannhäuser, Dialogues of the Carmelites, etc. Previous Met productions of Boris and Don Carlo were vastly superior to those on display now.
And that’s the sort of thing that has landed the MET in financial troubles. If the show doesn’t make it, it was wasted money. Gleb has done a lot of that, from developing a font for a ridiculous amount of money, to his gimmick productions that are done after a season, or two. Keep in mind, their ever well attended Madama Butterfly lasted from Bing to Volpe. Huge return on investment of that production. Gelb’s GMROI is pathetically bad and he leaks money like sand from a broken hour glass.
The schadenfreude deepens
The Met is dead and you can all thank Gelb for killing the most famous opera house in history. The NY Times has always been complicit in its silence in criticizing him because of, well, you know…woke.
The most famous opera house in history? Oh, please.
La Scala, La Fenice, San Carlo, Vienna State Opera, Bayreuth, Bolshoi, Covent Garden, Semperoper Dresden.
For well over 100 years, the Metropolitan Opera was the big daddy of them all. The Bolshoi for most of the 20th Century only had Russian singers with once a decade bringing in a George London, or Jerome Hines as a gimmick. San Carlo and La Fenice hasn’t had a legendary reputation since Bellini, the Wiener Staatsoper for most of the 20th c. was a German language house, Bayreuth is a Festival which performs one composer’s works, Covent Garden was always a second to the MET in the 20th c. The Semperoper in Dresden was a Wagner House in the mid 19th c. and not comparable to the MET of the 20th c. The greatest singers of the world, no matter their nationality sung at the MET, people from all over the world would come to see the legendary productions at the MET. Gelb destroyed its’ reputation.
May I respectfully suggest that you look up ‘famous’ in the dictionary?
Remind me how many Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini or Richard Strauss operas received their first performances at The Met.
There is more to the world than The US of A.
Oh yeah, right – Gelb killed it all by himself – the state of the world had nothing to do with it… Money continues to grow on trees, and the entire world flocks to Opera….
I was with you until your last sentence.
sorry the most famous are in Europe and much better – the MET is a monster and run down by a useless manager
And recent statistics show that the 21st century relevant PC works are not the box office salvation they were touted as being.
Is there supposed to be something magical about “Met” shows? Judging from the Met’s Gelb-era productions, we may be better off this way.
Audiences seem to think they’re pretty magical when they are Zeffirelli or Ponnelle productions.
Yes, but Zeffirelli and Ponnelle are now dead.
Pity!
Yes, but there should still be directors who know, love and respect opera.
Or Otto Schenk/Scneider-Siemssen.
What was Ben Franklin’s comment about houseguests and fish after 3 days? The MET Board held their noses for too damn long, the houseguest is now petrified. Show Gelb the door, it has become pathetic.
And show laughing boy the door too.
The NY Times wants The Met’s advertising.
And the Met can’t survive without The NY Times.
The MET can’t afford to advertise there. Gelb robbed 1/3 of their endowment to pay bills he’s already run up with his mediocrity plan.
Actually, I think the Met participating in the development of an opera through several production stages is working quite well. Admittedly the first production itself might be more modest in means and designed for a smaller stage size, but the concept itself can be thoroughly tested and revised, and especially for younger composers and those new to the idiom, it can be extremely helpful. The recent Terence Blanchard operas were developed that way. He was present in the audience last night at a production of Mary Zimmerman’s “The Matchbox Magic Flute” btw. Thinking about what that might mean ….
How it is happened that MET is getting Bolshoe production when It is Russhian occupation of the Ukraine and giving many to biggest Putin supporters like gergieb
It is stinks
Whatever anyone likes to say, the Met is ABSOLUTELY the best! The quality of the performers, orchestra, and productions. Nobody does it like the Met.
20 years ago that was an accurate statement. Since Gelb has been there, meciocrity at best. The gimmick productions are from hunger.
And recent statistics (Operawire) now show that the “relevant” PC 21st century operas are not the salvation of the box office that was being touted.
Wendy Reed, Do you know all other opera houses or at least all the famous ones? Making this kind of statement without that is invalid. You can say that you love the Met, but saying that it’s the best is a comparison that requires knowing all the others.
I loved the Met as much as anyone, but there are other marvelous opera houses in this world. Instead of saying that one is the best above all others, we should stop with this stupid measuring and realize how rich we can be if we are to enjoy great opera from the outstanding houses around the world.
I feel that you are terribly unfair to those 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th rate. . .
The MET is a huge house and they might well argue that as the #1 house in the U.S. (if not the world), it may not always have to produce just tried-and-true operas, but at least “tried.” A new opera is a huge investment and if it fails to fill 3600 seats, that’s a problem.
It’s a good thing they are at least doing some new operas, even if someone else did it first. After all one of the big challenges with new operas and orchestral works isn’t getting the premiere; it’s getting the second production.
I’m not a Gelb fan, as it were. But I fail to see how he has been any worse for the house than his predecessors. None of them had to deal with COVID.
How to deal with COVID…you mean like close the house (understandable) without compensating the artists (many already in town rehearsing) and were primarily left stranded…and then have a HUGE money raising campaign (to the tune of $40 MILLION dollars)..again, with the artists getting nothing…and then cutting the salaries of the artists (even on negotiated contracts), the orchestra, and chorus? Of course, considerations had to be made…but the cuts were always at the expense of the artists and not the bloated administration costs and costly (and ugly) productions.
The Met’s problems under Gelb predated COVID by a number of years. Another convenient excuse for a failed GM. (P.S. Joe Volpe had 9/11…)
9/11, awful as it was, occurred prior to the season and delayed it briefly but didn’t shut the house down for a year. And the message for most leaders was “go out and get back to normal.” I heard the CSO and Barenboim perform Tristan at Carnegie Hall about six weeks after 9/11.
Covid didn’t help but the problem is wokeism and Gelb – the MET is over guys – most shows just bad and only the press pushed being woke approve but the audience is gone – read my lips they will sooner or later close it – it’s too big anyway for most operas which should be performed in a more intimate atmosphere than in it’s ugly freezing monstrous building – go to Europe and enjoy opera there and it’s less woke there
Edward Johnson had to deal with a devastating economic depression and then a world war. Covid was nothing compared with those. He had his faults but the Met survived and flourished artistically; and without new “relevant” works. Just the re-introduction of Mozart, nurturing and promoting new American singers as fine as any in the world, and a healthy, bix office popular German wing in an era when we were at war with Germans but did not let politics call the shots in the arts.
Aren’t I correct in saying that more than 85% percent of the repertoire in any opera house premiered elsewhere? As to productions – is it any different at any of the major opera houses? Seems everyone is doing share the cost. So why is the Met being singled out?
The Met is a anachronism. It’s a huge barn that symbolizes so much of what is off-putting about New York. I’ve been to the Met but the best opera experiences I’ve had were in smaller houses in Europe. That’s where you’ll still find ensemble casts in human scaled productions and halls. Big used to be everything before the internet and the appreciation of smaller-scale quality experiences. Much like today’s Yankee Stadium or Empire State Building, or Rockefeller Center, where half the visitors are taking selfies of themselves to prove they made it to experience something “Big.” The Met has become a captive to its own self aggrandizement.
So true. Even small (500 seats) European provincial theaters can have magical productions, not to speak of chamber operas. Kyril Petrenko began his opera career in Meiningen and did a Ring production there. “Big and bloated” is over”and Gelb is a dinosaur.
finally some truth
Why do you hate the Met so much? You don’t even live here? Isn’t there something in Old Blighty that you could hate on?
Go to the dictionary. Find the difference between hatred and criticism.
so true Norman – it’s just hideous how they have destroyed the monster there – liberal press and wokeism but in Europe they might follow
Opera might be dead in a decade or two and no one wants contemporary ‚classical‘ music
It’s all a lie what they write – The Hours was so poor and all the others will be forgotten also
Wake up – it’s over
I didn’t attend the Met pre-Gelb so have little frame of reference there, but would like to say I find the current Met a joy to experience.
The greatest vocalists worldwide, a marvelous orchestra, wonderfully creative stagings, and the historic canon of opera — all incredibly affordable still.
I marvel at how their staff can process and seat thousands of people who all seem to arrive 15 minutes before curtain time. On the ground where it counts, this is a well-run organization.
If I had longer experience with the Met, I imagine I’d agree with the commenters who rue the loss of what the Met was 20 years ago. As a relative newcomer to opera, in a world hell-bent on deconstructing Western culture, I find myself grateful for what the Met continues to preserve and provide today.
Gelb never should have been GM in the first place. And about 1/2 of the administrative positions need to be done away with. What a waste of money on lots of useless personnel!
A deep dive on the Met? When we are facing erosion of democracy around the world and here at home, loss of women’s, voting and human rights, and 2 wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza- as they say: FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS!
I guess if women won’t wear pearls anymore, men should, only it isn’t exactly flattering. Men have traditionally worn them, but over their clothes, not over their skin.
Also, no Wagner? That’s disgraceful!
We could say that about any if those half dead fossils in the Supreme Court,
The Met has lost the plot. That Carmen staging was an abortion. Yannick Seguin and these new contemporary interpretation is soiling opera. Carmen reminded me of the scene in blazing saddles with the motorcycle gang with the pseudo motorcycles.