Dumbing Down the Met

The New York Times has a piece today on the upcoming "Gelb era" at the Metropolitan Opera.

At the end of this season Joseph Volpe, who has run the venerable opera house for the past 16 years, will step aside in favor of Peter Gelb, a former record company executive who is the son of Arthur Gelb, a former managing editor of The New York Times and biographer (with his wife Barbara) of Eugene O'Neill.

Gelb fils is nothing if not ambitious. In an interview for the Times article, Gelb states that "My work at the Met is going to involve everything, even subtitles." This in an opera house that already has "Met Titles," which are on the back of each seat.

"Mr. Gelb's program," the Times continues, "calls for a collaboration with Lincoln Center Theater that will engage Hollywood directors like Anthony Minghella and Broadway directors like George C. Wolfe, as well as musical figures like the theater composers Michael John LaChiusa and Adam Guettel and the jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. Major conductors who have never appeared at the Met will make debuts, including Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim and Esa-Pekka Salonen. The Met will install a gallery for works by contemporary painters, extending its reach into the visual arts. The artists include John Currin, Richard Prince and Sophie von Hellerman."

You can just tell what's going to happen, can't you?

I wrote an article for the now-defunct Opera Monthly about 15 years ago called "How to Behave at the Opera," in which I pointed out, somewhat presciently, that the operagoing experience was in the process of being ruined by a bunch of rubes who wants to have the cultural prestige of attending the opera but have no idea what they're listening to or have a clue as to how to respond to it. They're akin to the idiots in the outer boroughs building "McMansions" on plots of land not big enough for a moderately sized house: lots of money, and no taste. That's the audience that the Met is shooting for with these changes to a 123-year-old institution.

At least you can forestall the incursion of obnoxious "McMansions" by altering the zoning laws, as has been done in some neighborhoods in Queens; but what can be done to prevent the dumbing down of the Met that's going to take place once the next three seasons (which have already been scheduled by the Volpe regime) are over?

Do we really want to see productions of classic operas by George C. Wolfe, who almost single-handedly ran the Public Theater into the ground with his self-indulgent revivals, almost every one of which bombed? Or hear new works by musical mediocrities like Michael John LaChiusa? Or see productions of "Parsifal" where all the Flower Maidens perform in the nude? At least that last idea has some historical precedent -- it was suggested to the powers that be at Bayreuth in the 1930s by a fervent Wagner fan with some clout: his name was Adolph Hitler.

If Gelb thinks that by bringing in so-called names from the outside and embracing new technologies he can somehow make the Met "relevant" (i.e. profitable) then he's delusional. Opera podcasts are not going to cut it, especially when the Met is still refusing to release the bulk of its classic opera broadcasts from the 30s and 40s on compact disc (while legally harassing those who do). People who coo orgasmically while listening to Fergie opining about her "lady lumps" are not likely to download a Ring cycle -- even one with Flagstad and Melchior. And the people whose ticket sales and donations already keep the Met going (described in the article on average as "a 62-year-old college graduate earning about $120,000") are hardly going to appreciate the kind of dumbing-down of the house that the Gelb regime has in mind.

Hmmmm... alienate the old subscribers who have kept the place going for decades in the hopes of attracting a musically illiterate audience that doesn't give a shit about opera and who won't show up anyway. Now that's a way to run an opera house!

Tom Moran