Metropolitan Opera House photo by Kathy Willens
“The Metropolitan Opera announced Wednesday that the still-untamed coronavirus pandemic has forced it to cancel its entire 2020-21 season … keeping it dark until next September,” writes Michael Cooper in Wednesday’s (9/23) New York Times. “Far from being a gilded outlier, the Met, the nation’s largest performing arts organization, may well prove to be a bellwether. The outbreak has kept the 3,800-seat opera house closed since mid-March…. Roughly 1,000 full-time employees, including its world-class orchestra and chorus, [have been] furloughed without pay since April. Now … Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, is making plans to adapt to a world transformed by the pandemic, including by trying to curb the company’s high labor costs…. The Met plans to return to its stage next September with Terence Blanchard’s ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones,’ the first time it will mount an opera by a Black composer … part of a new focus on contemporary works alongside the ornate productions of canonical pieces for which the company is famous…. Mr. Gelb did not specify the amount of the cuts he would be seeking, but said that much of the savings could be achieved through changes in work rules.”
