Brendan O’Neill talks to Peter Gelb about why The Met stuck to its plans and allowed New York's opera-goers to see The Death of Klinghoffer - but won't let it be broadcast in Europe.
‘I’ve been compared to Adolf Hitler. I have received numerous death threats.’ Who knew running an opera house could prove so hairy? Most of us, when we think of the opera, imagine well-spoken women in well-cut finery and men in black tie watching baritones through binoculars. But Peter Gelb, head of possibly the world’s most prestigious opera house — the Metropolitan Opera in New York City — has had a somewhat different experience in recent months. He’s been on the receiving end of the kind of flak and slurs you’d expect to see in the underbelly of the internet rather in the rarefied world of high art, encountering, he tells me, critics who have behaved ‘somewhat irrationally’, one of whom even suggested the Met should be ‘burnt to the ground’. Gelb’s crime? He dared to stage John Adams’ opera, The Death of Klinghoffer... Keep reading on Spiked
‘I’ve been compared to Adolf Hitler. I have received numerous death threats.’ Who knew running an opera house could prove so hairy? Most of us, when we think of the opera, imagine well-spoken women in well-cut finery and men in black tie watching baritones through binoculars. But Peter Gelb, head of possibly the world’s most prestigious opera house — the Metropolitan Opera in New York City — has had a somewhat different experience in recent months. He’s been on the receiving end of the kind of flak and slurs you’d expect to see in the underbelly of the internet rather in the rarefied world of high art, encountering, he tells me, critics who have behaved ‘somewhat irrationally’, one of whom even suggested the Met should be ‘burnt to the ground’. Gelb’s crime? He dared to stage John Adams’ opera, The Death of Klinghoffer... Keep reading on Spiked