“Starry (and often epically long) concerts are a Metropolitan Opera stock in trade,” writes Zachary Woolfe in Monday’s (4/13) New York Times. “The ‘At Home Gala’ the company is planning for Saturday, April 25, [comes] as the Met has been forced to cancel the final two months of its season and begin an urgent effort to raise the tens of millions of dollars it is losing because of the coronavirus pandemic…. The concert will feature more than 40 artists, including stars like Anna Netrebko, Jonas Kaufmann and Renée Fleming, performing from their homes and streamed on the company’s website…. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, will host the concert from New York, alongside Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, who is in Montreal. The event … will begin at 1 p.m., and the program will be available … until Sunday evening.… The company has been attracting robust audiences for nightly streams of performances from its Live in HD archives. But … its situation is grim…. ‘I don’t think potential audience members are going to want to return to any large performing arts venue until they know it’s safe,’ Gelb said. ‘And that’s going to require a situation where it really is safe.’ ”
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