Comments 223- Despite Drastic Financial Steps, Met Opera Turns to Layoffs and Cuts
Despite Drastic Financial Steps, Met Opera Turns to Layoffs and Cuts
The largest performing arts organization in the country will lay off workers, cut salaries and reduce its offerings. It may also sell its Chagall murals that are valued at $55 million.
Over the past five years, the Metropolitan Opera has drained money from its endowment, entered a still-tentative $200 million deal with Saudi Arabia and cut back its performance schedule as it struggled to bring stability to an institution hammered by the coronavirus pandemic.
But in the latest sign of the persistent financial challenges facing the largest performing arts organization in the country, the Met announced on Tuesday that it would lay off workers, cut the salaries of its top-paid executives and postpone a new production from its coming season.
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in an interview that he was forced to take these steps because of concerns about the deal with Saudi Arabia, under which the Saudis agreed to subsidize the Met in exchange for the company performing at the Royal Diriyah Opera House near Riyadh three weeks each winter.
Although Gelb said he remained confident that the deal would come through, his decision to impose the cuts now — midway through the Met’s fiscal year — suggested concern about the future of the Saudi arrangement. When the deal was announced in September, it had seemed like a lifeline for the company, which has an annual budget of $330 million, reflecting the Met’s history of big expenditures on elaborate stage sets and top-tier singers.
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“I understand the Saudis have had to recalibrate their budgets because of their own economic concerns,” Gelb said. “I’ve been assured that it’s going to go forward. But we have been waiting for some time.”
Gelb said the Met was contemplating even more changes in an effort to overhaul its finances.
The company, he said, is considering selling the naming rights to its theater, following the lead of two other buildings in the complex: David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic, and the David H. Koch Theater, home to New York City Ballet. The Met has retained CAA Sports, the sports branding arm of Creative Artists Agency, to suggest possible affiliations with corporations that might want their names affixed to the house.
Also under consideration is the sale of two Chagall murals, valued at a total of $55 million by Sotheby’s, that were commissioned in the 1960s to hang in the building’s Grand Tier. (As a condition, the buyer would have to agree to leave them in place, with a donation plaque.)
In the months ahead, Gelb said, the Met is likely to lease its 3,800-seat theater for pop artists when it would otherwise be dark. That has already begun: “The Last Ship,” a musical written by and starring Sting, will be presented at the Met for nine performances in June.
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“We are being as entrepreneurial as possible,” Gelb said. “What is clear is that we have to come up with new business models. It’s true for all performing institutions, but the costs are so great for running an institution like the Met, that it is necessary to find new ways to fund it.”
The Met’s latest retrenchments come as many cultural organizations have been grappling with shrinking audiences, declining donor contributions and cuts in government funding. The cuts announced on Tuesday are expected to save $15 million this fiscal year and another $25 million the next.
The company’s decision to enter into a deal with Saudi Arabia became a point of tension because of the kingdom’s history of human rights abuses, including its implication in the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident who wrote for The Washington Post. But Gelb defended the arrangement, noting that the United States had sought closer relations with the Saudis in recent years, and presented it as a way to stabilize an opera company that has been in distress. The deal is expected to bring the Met as much as $200 million over eight years.
Paul Pacifico, a cultural official for the Saudi government who helped negotiate the deal with the Met, did not respond to a request for comment.
As part of the latest cuts, the Met will reduce its next season to 17 productions, from 18. (Before the pandemic, it programmed about 25 per season.) Gelb said that the company would postpone its new production of Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” which had premiered last year in Salzburg, Austria, directed by Simon McBurney and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
In addition, 22 people who hold administrative posts will be let go. There are a total of 284 administrative positions, and the Met’s payroll includes upward of 3,000 people. The 35 executives who make more than $150,000 a year will see graduated cuts in their pay of 4 percent to 15 percent, depending on their salaries. Among those affected is Gelb, who last year made nearly $1.4 million. Also included is Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music director, who was paid about $2.05 million, both as the music director and for performances he conducted, for the fiscal year that ended in 2024, the latest year that disclosure forms are available.
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Gelb said that the salary cuts were expected to be temporary, and that employees were told their full pay would be revived by August 2027, or sooner if the Met’s financial situation improved. He would not say if the remainder of the cuts would be rescinded if the deal with the Saudis came through.
“I have to show we can finance the Met going forward and at the same time demonstrate that we can cut the costs that we can cut without undermining our artistic results,” he said. “We have to do it.”
One move the Met is not considering, Gelb said, is tapping its endowment again. Since 2022, the company has drawn $120 million from its $217.5 million endowment, an unorthodox and risky move that arts executives said was a sign of the depth of the Met’s financial problems. As a rule, institutions should draw only the interest that is accumulated by an endowment.
Gelb said these cuts, as well as the hunt for new sources of revenue, were intended to put the Met on firmer financial footing.
“What we are trying to do,” he said, “is make sure we do not have a deficit.”
Adam Nagourney is the classical music and dance reporter for The Times.
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Comments 223
Family circle is almost always sold out. Lower the prices lower down and get more regulars. Increase the number of wins for those fun $25 lottery seats. Talk to BAM or Heartbeat Opera or the Prototype Festival, because they’re bringing in audiences. Keep going into the schools, but then build those relationships with affordable tickets for the students and their families so it’s not just a one-off. Is that enough to start with?
Look to Opera Theater of St. Louis, which has done innovative programming for years and cultivated a wide and diverse audience and donor base, buoyed by a $50 million gift a few years ago and plans for a new venue.
Why am I NOT surprised? The Trump "Age" is NOT the Gilded Age. There are no Trump magnates trying to clean their respective names/reputations through altruism, charity or good deeds.
Congestion pricing is keeping suburbanites away from the opera just as it’s doing on Broadway. Taking the train home at midnight is impractical. People used to come to New York for shopping, but now Saks is bankrupt — tolls, congestion charges and parking make coming to Manhattan for shopping impractical.
Is it possible Mr. Gelb can live on $1.0 million per year instead of $1.4 million? Same question for Mr. Nézet-Séguin with $1.0 million instead of $2.0 million. Not to mention all the perks they no doubt receive. That's $1.4 million in savings per year right off the bat. And please don't tell me they could make better money in the private sector. It is a great privilege to be the manager of, and the principal conductor at, the premier opera company in the world, or at least in the U.S. Supposedly, the music's the thing, and not the money.
Opera, as with many other "art" forms, has run its course. It's not interesting, nor is it fun, to sit and listen to someone warble on in a language one does not understand. And before you go on about it, just how many do you expect me to learn? I only know three. The stories are not interesting,. The "singing" is downright painful. The haughtiness is palpable, and guaranteed to shrink your audience. Face it: If the opera can't attract an audience sufficient to support it, then let it die. Nothing is forever.
If I had donated to the Met endowment, I would be extremely upset by the fact that a gift whose intent was to provide long-term support has instead been used to patch cash flow for a year or two. What horrible financial management.
Just curious. Is there a breakdown of the job roles of the 3,000 people on the Met payroll? And how many shows per year does all that work lead to? Some people may think the questions above are rhetorical. Not so. I just want more info.
There are small cities that don't have an annual budget of $330 million. Yeah, make some cuts!
How is Gelb still running the place? I remember that clanking, 45-ton monstrosity he put onstage way back in 2012 for Wagner's Ring cycle. I wonder if he is blaming that mess on COVID, too?
Remember when the rich and powerful were also patrons to the arts? Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg just care about more more more.
This month I have been to the opera in Pisa and London -- full houses in both cases, with a good proportion of young people. But every time I go to the Met there are acres of empty seats. Why? American musical education is partly to blame -- part of the general philistinism. But the situation has deteriorated, and putting on pop concerts is not the answer. Gelb has to go (and not just because he has almost eliminated Wagner -- though I shall not forgive him for that).
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@voltaire Also perhaps the $179+ a seat ticket price? Not even young people, mid career people like me might balk at those prices.
Why does the Met Opera board still support Gelb as he runs the organization into the ground? THE LAST SHIP was a failure on Broadway. Booking it at the Met will be creative and financial disaster. It’s an insane decision (and I am not a snob— there are many, many great musicals the Met should be doing but are too snobby to do). If Sting is involved then it is a desperate cash grab— as desperate as begging Saudis for money. Gelb has thrown away good productions and replaced them with bad ones. The new operas are terrible. And no one wants to see the cheaply produced modern productions, or the expensive failures like Gelb’s awful Ring cycle. Would someone in the know explain why Gelb remains in charge?
Pop musicians can bring in 10s of thousands of fans at higher prices for a performance. And then do it again tomorrow. Opera is a dying product
I used to love the opera (still do). I remember attending the Met in the late 2000s when they would put on stunning, cutting edge productions. They were the only ones putting on shows like that. Now, Taylor Swift as adopted, actually, many elements from the Met productions. So why go listen to the fat lady sing with pyrotechniques when you can listen to Taylor sing instead with pyrotechniques and gyrating stages?
A sad state of affairs. At least the big executive people are taking pay cuts. Distressing that they've gotten in bed with the Saudis.
Of course you can't jeopardize the opera just because the Saudi government chainsawed a person to death. Opera is far too important. Just curious, but how much money did the top management earn during these recent financial crises ?
The biggest problem for the MET is Mr. Gelb himself, and by extension, the Board members who support him. He has spent funds unnecessarily, like wasting an enormous amount of money on the silly Wagner Ring machine. Mr. Gelb should realize that what sells the Opera is great music making and great voices. Yannick is not worth 2 million a year! That is an insane amount for what? To date, his best hire is Daniele Rustioni, a phenomenal musician. And Mr. Gelb should have no right to sell the Chagall Murals. He is hired help. He does not own the MET. If he had any integrity, he would resign.
America is paying for its allergy to public funding of the arts. The idea that the free market will somehow lead us to what's best is foolish because it leads to the lowest common entertainment denominator. If I hadn't seen Met productions of The Ring on PBS I might not have found my love for opera. (I certainly didn't encounter it in school.) Ayn Rand types will disagree and have us crossing our fingers that some technocrat overlord will discover Puccini and write a check.
No doubt the Met will have the sole right to determine which performances to put on in Saudi Arabia.
This is equally sad, predictable, and culturally disastrous. I make no apologies for deeply regretting the intrenchment of pop musicians into the Met; it's another sign of the cultural degradation that we see everywhere. It's predictable, however, due in part to the Met's ridiculous commitment to absurd new productions that cost millions of dollars. I've set through 17th century "Lucia" set in a Midwestern meth-riddled town and, more recently, "Carmen" in a Southwestern rodeo setting. Both were absurd. The list goes on. Like so many others, I can only wonder once again why the old Met was torn down and the monstrous Lincoln Center was built.
Who on earth goes to a concert for the conductor? With $2 million you can line up several performances from the world's top artists. Also, I don't believe for a second the other top executives are only making $150k compared to the $1.4 million from Gelb. This looks like just another example of useless upper management draining an institution dry and running it into the ground. Clearly they weren't worth any of that money since they were dipping into their endowments constantly.
The met opera, Rafael Nadal, the list is endless - people and institutions ready to sell their souls to Saudi Arabia for cash. Enough sportswashing for now, it seems, time to move on to culturewashing. The Met should go under if it can't sustain itself without making deals with the devil...
How about Gelb handing in his resignation, bringing back Netrebko, and getting back to classic opera instead of the woke fueled spectacle that Carmen has been reduced to?
Productions like the current 'Carmen' are reasons the woke restagings turn people off.
posted by Pimp My Voice at 3:47 PM
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