Nicholas Wroe talks to Peter Gelb, General Manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, about business models and death threats.
Opera is not many people’s idea of a good business model,” laughs Peter Gelb, general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The statement is such a truism, he says, that he was recently invited by Stanford University to speak about the industry to its postgraduate economics students. “Aside from the costs, complexities and risks of putting it on, they wanted to know how an ageing industry, with a loyal but also ageing customer base, attempts to keep that customer base while simultaneously trying to appeal to a new audience. It is an interesting question, and one not dissimilar to that faced by news organisations at the moment.”
The Met is the largest and most powerful opera house in the world and Gelb is routinely referred to as the most powerful person in the industry. But for all that, such have been the economic challenges facing the Met that he has found himself over the last few years embroiled in disputes with opera unions over cost-cutting that threatened to close the house down. And money is only one factor. The culture wars loom large for an art form increasingly dismissed as marginal, and last season Gelb had to contend with death threats as well as accusations of antisemitism and censorship arising from the Met’s production of John Adam’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer, as well as gay rights and pro-Ukrainian demonstrators objecting to Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and star soprano Anna Netrebko’s apparent closeness to Vladimir Putin. Last week’s opening of the 2015/16 season, Gelb’s 10th in charge, with a new production of Otello, was relatively low-key by these standards, but was still preceded by vehement public discussion as to whether the Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko should wear blackface to sing “the Moor”. (He didn’t... Keep reading on The Guardian
Opera is not many people’s idea of a good business model,” laughs Peter Gelb, general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The statement is such a truism, he says, that he was recently invited by Stanford University to speak about the industry to its postgraduate economics students. “Aside from the costs, complexities and risks of putting it on, they wanted to know how an ageing industry, with a loyal but also ageing customer base, attempts to keep that customer base while simultaneously trying to appeal to a new audience. It is an interesting question, and one not dissimilar to that faced by news organisations at the moment.”
The Met is the largest and most powerful opera house in the world and Gelb is routinely referred to as the most powerful person in the industry. But for all that, such have been the economic challenges facing the Met that he has found himself over the last few years embroiled in disputes with opera unions over cost-cutting that threatened to close the house down. And money is only one factor. The culture wars loom large for an art form increasingly dismissed as marginal, and last season Gelb had to contend with death threats as well as accusations of antisemitism and censorship arising from the Met’s production of John Adam’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer, as well as gay rights and pro-Ukrainian demonstrators objecting to Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and star soprano Anna Netrebko’s apparent closeness to Vladimir Putin. Last week’s opening of the 2015/16 season, Gelb’s 10th in charge, with a new production of Otello, was relatively low-key by these standards, but was still preceded by vehement public discussion as to whether the Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko should wear blackface to sing “the Moor”. (He didn’t... Keep reading on The Guardian