Peter Gelb blames critic for Met flop
NewsPage 6 in the NY Post – not the first place you’d turn to for opera reviews – has a speech made by Peter Gelb at a private fundraiser, lambasting Zachary Woolfe of the NY Times for poor sales of the season-opening opera, Grounded.
He called the opera ‘a brilliant work that has a brilliant story, and it has great emotional impact…
I’ve been around long enough to know that critics write — and they should write — what they feel. But sometimes you get the sense that there’s an agenda.’
‘There’s a great deal of resentment on the part of some critics — not all critics, some critics — about the idea that music should be approachable by a large audience and should be available to more people and some critics might [prefer to] keep it sacred, in some ways, for themselves.’
Woolfe had written in the Times that Grounded ‘doesn’t risk much, politically or musically.’ What is lacks ‘is musical depth and intensity….
‘Tesori’s gift for tunefulness, so charmingly evident in her musical theater work, has unfortunately been sidelined, as if it’s too lowbrow for the likes of opera. And there’s not enough that’s interesting or idiosyncratic in her score — its orchestration, structure, vocal lines — to compensate.
‘The result is often faceless and bland.’
Tickets are, as you’d expect, still available.
They should have named it “Dead on Arrival”. At least folks would have known long in advance.
It may be that some critics still think that ugly, modernist sounds in opera reaffirm the work’s precise location in the ‘now’, in the time of glorious ‘modernity’. It’s a matter of aging, that even critics cannot escape.
But with this opera, there is nothing ‘wrong’ with the music, which is very much of ‘now’ – but whether that is a good thing is quite another matter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqKt4-IORDk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cnKr2Ejw1U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVFbk4z4nBI
Subject matter seems the usual American silliness, though, on the assumption that involving planes and war makes it nicely contemporary.
The more an opera is anchored in the reality of the surrounding world, the less chances it will survive – unless the music transcends the topical and becomes universal, so that the work becomes accessible to very different places and times.
Who is Jeanine Tesori? A tatoo’d female composer with a broadway background – of course:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojDjOyovS4Q
The Met tried to present contemporary work that is accessible to a general opera audience and they could only find the usual average thin fashionable stuff. The dichotomy between modernist ear grinder and cheap poppy confection is an artificial one. For instance there is Guillaume Connesson who wrote an accessible light opera with so much more musical content:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw0rBvptoJw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fWCTlQ9yYc
What does tatoo’d have to do with anything?
They’re like nose rings.
It is a tangible marker either of anti-social or anti-self. Either way a problem. It’s nonsense that someone needs to obliterate their body to express themselves. Simply put, there is trouble inside. And it doesn’t take long to find. In this case, this opera.
Let’s look at some tatoo statistics. Below are the estimated percentages of people who have at least one tatoo, by generation:
Boomers: 13%
X: 32%
Millenial: 41%
Z: 23%
Tatoos are not my cup of tea, maybe partly because I am a baby boomer. But between my personal observation of perfectly normal people having tatoos and the above statistics, I would seriously question your negative associations.
Plenty of people in these generations smoke as well.
So what’s your point?
Tatoos are a cultural marker, and only suitable for certain types of people, who want to distinguish themselves from the crowd in a very physical way. When crowd people begin to tatoo themselves, it looses all meaning and becomes a visual slur.
Observing the trend from these statistics, it might indicate a peak, and then a sudden downtrend in its use by generation. However, I agree with CBR’s thumbnail perspective.
We don’t know about gen Z yet. They were born 1997 – 2012. The younger end may catch up.
The statistics are posted are from the USA.
“Subject matter seems the usual American silliness” – Really? I can think of numerous Italian operas full of Italian silliness, German operas full of German silliness, etc…
Yes, but the German / Italian operas still in the repertoire have music which transcends any silliness that can be detected.
It might be that some critics think that, but Woolfe’s criticism of Tesori’s music was exactly the opposite, that she sidelines her ability to write catchy tunes “as if it’s too lowbrow for the likes of opera.” Whether this is fair criticism or not, he’s not claiming that accessible tunefulness is a bad thing in opera.
“The more an opera is anchored in the reality of the surrounding world, the less chances it will survive – unless the music transcends the topical and becomes universal, so that the work becomes accessible to very different places and times.”
Very well put John and it prompted me to apply that to a lot of operas and symphonic works.
Zachary Woolfe has been hammering his local NYC organizations recently. Just this week he also laid into Manfred Honeck and the NY Phil.
My fly on the wall informed me that since some time, Mr Woolfe suffers from éclat multiples. (A rare condition with, among other symptoms, painful boils between the toes.)
I don’t understand the thumbs-down here. Do these people understand how painful a condition like multiple eclats are?? My PA had it once and she was unbearable for weeks.
Gelb calls operas “shows.”
Enough said!
It’s because PG treats opera as a “product”. (I’ve heard him reference it as such.). As a revenue-producing activity, it can be argued, but from the leader representing an arts organization, PR-wise it is disheartening.
Art ,like everything else is a commodity in the modern world. PG is trying to keep a warhorse medium alive . It’s a business. I don’t understand the complaints
A Principal at a large performing arts high school 30km away refers to it as a “proforming” arts school. Seriously, is he aware of his Freudian Slip? Discuss.
What’s your point? For all intents and purposes a performance is still a show, especially to non-musicians and us performers are entertainers. I’ve worked with many that take this industry way too seriously. It’s supposed to be fun, make you laugh, cry, whatever; it’s not open heart surgery, no one is going to die if the show flops.
Peter Gelb IS the problem.He has no idea about opera as a form, nor any understanding that opera survives because the music is emotionally powerful on its own. Having suffered through the musical ennui and uninspiring fabric of Tesori’s Grounded, the critics are right.
Why does no one focus on Gelb’s dubious list of career “achievements”? At Sony he eliminated the classical division, lumping it in with jazz. He went millions over budget for the ill-conceived, overbuilt and mechanically problematic Ring production, he dips into the endowment to shore up his mismanagement shortfall, did his best to undermine and abandon the orchestra during Covid, and knows little to nothing about suitable vocal casting for repertory operas. Gelb truly believes the audience prefers watching opera at home on the couch. It is time for the board to find someone competent to replace the source of the problems at the Met.
Gelb must have a dossier on each of the board members, lol.
If Gelb does not have a dossier on each of his Board members, how on this good earth does he manage to keep his job? Year after year it seems disasters follow disasters, Gelb’s grand plan to attract new opera goers has backfired spectacularly, ticket sales continue on their downward spiral and the Endowment which was supposed to be topped up as part of the last negotiation deal with the unions seems to be collapsing almost as fast as the New York City Opera Endowment did. So many in the world of music wonder what it is that can possibly keep such an unproven, unqualified and untalented administraor in his job. I certainly don’t!
“opera survives because the music is emotionally powerful on its own.”
An important point that many journalists and commenters miss. Try marketing an “opera” DVD without the music, on the basis of the drama alone.
PG is neither a man of the theater nor understands music. What’s left? His pallbearer’s sense of personal style? His wit?
He reminds one of Gaylord the buzzard in the comic strip Broom Hilde. I completely concur with his regular appearance in mortician attire.
Proof example: Maeterlinck’s play ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ was never a success and is never taken from the shelf – it appears to be plain boring and lifeless. Debussy’s full-blooded and numenous music gave it eternal life as an unique opera.
“numinous”
Yes, it would end up like most modern movies! But more interesting
Can’t agree more
Well… first it’s time for the Met to hire a competent board!
Holy Mackerel… You nailed it !!! The board needs to Wake the F**k up and grow some balls!
I wholeheartedly concur with your comments. The Met’s problem is Gelb and has been for quite sometime.
The irony… A project designed specifically to attract a broader range of people to the opera has trouble attracting any people at all. Just admit it was a bad idea and move on!
So much for “The buck stops here”.
Neither Peter Gelb, nor Zachary Woolfe have a single clue what opera or operatic singing is.
If Zachary Woolfe can bring down Peter Gelb, Woolfe will have rendered a public service and earned his place in the pantheon of classical music critics.
Alex Ross didn’t like the opera either (“It all rings false”), though he praised Emily D’Angelo.
Ross hasn’t liked Gelb either, and in his blog he’s joined the bruhaha over Gelb’s recent comments.
I feel profound sorrow for the fine singers who are forced to sing this dreck, just for the paying job.
As if you didn’t hate the woke Gelb enough….this happens.
1) “sometimes you get the sense that there’s an agenda.”
An “agenda” is anytime someone disagrees with you.
Poor Gelob, Met patrons have an “agenda”, an agenda for good opera!
2) “the NY Post – not the first place you’d turn to for opera reviews”
The story goes, in the 1980s, the publisher of the NY Post was at a cocktail party with the CEO of Bloomingdale’s (department store), the publisher asks, “how come you don’t advertise in our paper?”, the CEO of Bloomingdale’s answers, “because your readers are my shoplifters”
No, I don’t imagine the readers of the Post go to the opera or know who Gelb is, but they might hang around Lincoln Center to mug operagoers leaving the opera at night
This strikes me as positively Stalinistic; Telling critics that they should write what Gelb would like them to think, not what they actually think.
Gelb is such a baby! I have not read ONE single glowingly positive review of this dumb opera. In fact, it’s even worse than being simply a mediocre opera. I have met more than one person who has told me they were going to the opera “for the first time” to see Grounded, who came away from it thinking it was dumb. Even a complete neophyte can tell when a show has a hackneyed plot or uninteresting music. Productions like this most definitely contribute to a growing disinterest in opera by the general public.
And let’s be honest, Woolfe’s review isn’t even close to being a slam on the level of some others I’ve read about this drivel.
On March 3rd, 1875, the Opéra-Comique in Paris premiered an opera which was completely lambasted in the press – the critics tore it to shreds. Oh, BTW, that opera was CARMEN.
Yes but Carmen was slated because of its ‘seedy’ content, not the musical content….
I thought that Carmen was rejected because nobody in his right mind could imagine that an attractive woman could fall for a toreador, of all people.
Gelb: “There’s a great deal of resentment on the part of some critics — not all critics, some critics — about the idea that music should be approachable by a large audience…”
——–
Huh? Both the music and subject of “Grounded” don’t look too approachable.
Gelb would be on stronger ground if Jeanine Tesori were into John-Williams-type melodies and “Grounded” was a theme about, say, Snow White being saved by the prince.
However, Gelb is correct in describing some critics as being too much into the esoteric and inscrutable. But “Grounded”? That appears to be both visually esoteric and aurally inscrutable. Or aurally esoteric and visually inscrutable.
Better luck next time, Pete.
Can’t find find a legitimate opera composer from Italy instead of a Broadway composer moonlighting as an opera composer? So many of opera productions today are being hijacked by Hollyweird and musical theater people who know nothing about opera’s Grand Tradition.
Hmm, as I recall it, the first critics were quite dismissive of Les Mis…
Peter Gelb has an unattractive, unconvincing habit of scapegoating critics for the long string of artistic and box-office flops that has been a hallmark of his tenure. Wake up, trustees!
poor Gelb….he should’ve known better. Especially when the reviewer in question explicitly wished that Tesori’s “gift for tunefulness” had not been “unfortunately sidelined.” How does that translate to not wanting the opera to be accessible? At least get your story straight….
Zondonai, I agree 100%.
Rigoletto with the car and the stripper pole; The Taymore Die Zauberflote; Butterfly with the wood puppet; New DZ with Papageno in underwear Horror
I know it is still a couple of weeks until this is streamed to cinemas, but at our local cinema there are the vast amount of………TWO seats sold. Poor reviews must be having a knock-on effect which doesn’t help the cinemas, regardless of whether the critics are justified, or as in this case near unanimous.
Why is it, Mr. Gelb, that if you sell a lot of tickets to something it means you are a great impresario and have created something wonderful, but if you don’t sell tickets, it’s the audience’s – or the critics – fault for not appreciating the work? There are some things that people just have limited interest in seeing or hearing. The audience can’t be right about one thing and wrong about the other.
Gelb should thank his lucky stars that he even got a NY Times review. They are that difficult to get these days. Take what you can and get out while you are ahead.
This is such nonsense. So snarky and elitist for no reason. GROUNDED is amazing! For Opera to continue even the oldest and snobbiest must evolve.
No one ever credited Gelb with a high taste level. His productions by and large are from hunger, his chosen operas go from problematic to rancid depending on the Euro-trash set designers he chooses. No one wants to pay $300/ticket to sit in the orchestra and watch projections on a blank stage. The MET made it’s reputation with top singers and shock and awe staging prior to Gelb. Time for him to look inward ad the dreck he produced thus far and realize, he’s still well below his pay grade and retire. It’s not the Times fault for his disaster.
It was soooo boring! Grounded sucked.
Maybe the MET and other A houses should not waste resources premiering unproven works?
An opera should receive 3-4 workshops and performances in a lesser setting before making it to an A-house stage. Purely just to prove its worthiness of expenditure of resources. There should already be audiences demanding to see/hear the work.
The artform can’t afford to scare away potential new audience goers with new works that alienate or simply just aren’t well written musically.
This is 100% Gelbs fault for letting something half-baked make it into programming.
Plenty of critics writing about the world of opera complain about all manner of issues relating to performances. When they are positive, the opera companies happily use quotes from their reviews in their advertising. When they are bad, they are just trashed. To suggest in public that poor ticket sales are the result of one bad review in one newspaper illustrates for the umpteenth time over nearly two decades that Gelb lives in some sort of phantasmagorical fictional reality of his own making. How is it that he totallly fails to accept –
1. Opening any season with a totally new work from a relatively unknown operatic team is always a dicey proposition?
2. Have sales of subscriptions generated usually weeks and months in advance either deteriorated to such a level that the opening work in a season has such poor audiences – or have subscribers just chosen to stay away?
3. Is the Met’s marketing so dependent on one review from one critic?
4. Grounded is not in fact a new opera. It was premiered by the Washington Opera last season. That company described the opera thus: “”Jess is a hot shot F-16 fighter pilot, an elite warrior trained for the sky. When an unexpected pregnancy grounds her, she’s reassigned to the “chair force” to control drones in Afghanistan from the comfort of a trailer in Las Vegas. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo stars as a pilot and mother shaken into a downward spiral as her separation between career and home crumbles. What price is inflicted upon the operator of a lone drone in a blue sky?”
Were I to have read [4] above, I for one would not have been interested in attending.
It seems to me a no-brainer, if you’re going to commission an opera from a Broadway composer, wouldn’t you go straight to Andrew Lloyd Webber? And keep hounding him and upping your offer until he says yes?
Or just go full Opera Australia and do Sunset Boulevard? There are plenty of end-of-career singers who would chomp at the bit. It’s kind of fool-proof and even Bart Sher or Mary Zimmerman couldn’t do too much damage.
With respect to @vadis and what probably seems a better idea, Lloyd Webber did admit to a reporter from London’s Telegraph newspaper in 2014 that he hadn’t had a ‘hit’ in the 20 years since he finished Phantom of the Opera, and he’d written and produced six musicals in that time – all of which bombed artistically or financially and usually both. In his book The Hot Seat, former NYT theatre critic Frank Rich estimated the loss on the original 1990s US production of Sunset Boulevard including its road tours was a whopping US$20 million. The show was hugely expensive, partly on account of the scenery, partly considerable legal battles and particularly on massive overruns on its weekly marketing costs to keep the public buying tickets. To be fair it does now seem to be undergoing profitable revivals in various parts of the world.
On the other hand, as @Poops McGee points out in an earlier post, new works should not just be thrown on to the stage as was the case with Grounded prior to its Washington opening a year earlier. In this respect, opera managements might indeed take a leaf out of Lloyd Webber’s playbook. Up to 2 years prior to the premieres of his major works like Phantom and Evita, he always mounted workshop productions with audiences at his large country home in Sydmonton outside London. Thereafter he worked on changing and polishing before the productions got anywhere near rehearsals in a London theatre.
Even allowing for the economics, if this level of preparation is possible in musical theatre it is surely possible for opera companies to negotiate with the unions something not unreasonably similar for newly commissioned operas.
No one here has mentioned the very clear failure of management on the part of Gelb: Grounded premiered in Washington a year ago to terrible reviews. Instead of cancelling the Met gig, or at least changing the schedule so Grounded was not the season opener, Gelb chose to “revise”. But revisions don’t help if the basic material isn’t compelling in the first place. It is just throwing more money at a failure and making it a more expensive failure. The Met’s endowment isn’t going to last long if this crazy refusal to face reality does’t stop.
The Met’s endowment HASN’T lasted long. The difference between “isn’t” and “hasn’t” is important. Donors giving to endowment funds never assume they are giving to slush funds.
I enjoyed the visual presentation and acting of Grounded, but I agree that it lacked “tunefulness” which could have much better expressed the emotions of the characters. And I do appreciate modern compositions, but mix it up, don’t shun what makes music resonate.
Grounded is a masterpiece of theater which makes any questions about the tunefulness or accessibility of its music irrelevant. The music serves the story and the poetry of the best libretto this viewer has heard of more than 50 new works in the last 15 years. It also manages to capture, through this use of poetry and sonic fracturing, the singular human experience war visits on an individual: the duality of living in a tortured past (or in this case, present) alongside a seemingly beautiful life.