“The Metropolitan Opera, which has continued to struggle at the box office and face what it calls ‘economic challenges,’ has offered voluntary buyouts to 21 of its 243 administrative employees,” writes Michael Cooper in Thursday’s (9/28) New York Times. “ ‘The Met continues to face economic challenges as it copes with the changing environment for presenting opera,’ Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in a note he sent to the entire company on Thursday, a few days after the season opened…. The Met … has been working to cut its costs for several years…. The company spent $294.3 million in the fiscal year ending in July 2016—its lowest operating budget in seven years—but still ran a small deficit of $177,000…. The Met is seeking to cut its budget this year to $280 million…. A small portion of the necessary cuts are to come from administrative costs [which] the Met hopes to achieve … through voluntary buyouts. The administrative employees being offered early retirement are not members of the Met’s powerful unions, which represent its orchestra, chorus, stagehands and others…. The contracts with several major unions, including the ones representing the Met’s orchestra and chorus, expire at the end of July.”
Posted September 29, 2017
