MET Opera Home Audiences Finally Get The Big Picture With Demo

Easy as 1-2-3: The new tutorial to stream opera onto your television posted on Instagram has over 12K views

Twelve years ago when the Metropolitan Opera was getting ready to launch its MET on Demand streaming service, the company likely wasn't prepared that one day the world would have a pandemic forcing it to rely on its videography cache of the Live in HD catalog to sustain some cash flow from audience members and engagement with donors through the announcement of Nightly Met Opera Streams this spring. This blog discussed the option of the MET to go with Roku as a streaming service for their operas and now for the first time if you don't have the service, you can still watch on the big screen with the new tutorial posted on Instagram.

Home Theater: Enjoying the opera greats in the comfort of your living room

"Experience every stunning performance in our Met Stars Live in Concert series on a bigger screen using Google Chromecast or Apple AirPlay. Follow these easy step-by-step instructions to learn how to cast the high-definition stream onto your television. Tickets for the entire series on available now at metopera.org/metstars." This is extremely important considering that the MET has been forced to not only lean on the huge back catalog but also employing a pay-per-view model creating new content for online users worldwide. "After having to cancel their upcoming

Free Trial: How many operas could you watch in seven days?

 performances due to coronavirus concerns, the Metropolitan Opera announced it would stream encore presentations from the award-winning Live in HD series of cinema transmissions on the company website for the duration of the closure. This new offering will begin Mar. 16 [2020] with the 2010 HD performance of Bizet’s Carmen Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and starring

Netrebko, Gelb, And Sher Discuss MET Season With New York Times

Peter Gelb Paid $2.1 Million As MET Opera Deficit Balloons

"The Metropolitan Opera disclosed on Friday that its general manager, Peter Gelb, earned a total of $2.1 million in salary and benefits in 2013 but said a pay cut he took last year remains in effect. Mr. Gelb’s 2013 compensation was detailed in a tax filing released by the Met at the close of a challenging period marked by labor strife and financial setbacks. The opera company’s operating budget for the 2013-14 season was $315 million, down about 3.5% from the previous season. Its deficit ballooned in the same period, rising to $22 million from $2.8 million. In December, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the Met’s credit rating, citing a 'marked decline in liquidity' and the company’s increased reliance on an operating line of credit. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services affirmed the company’s 'A' bond rating in April but revised its

The MET Uses More Art To Secure $30 Million Credit Line

L'Ete as seen in this 2008 photo for Vogue, featuring
Sarah Jessica Parker and Chris Noth at the Metropolitan
 Opera, shot by Annie Leibovitz.

"The Metropolitan Opera Association Inc., as part of an agreement to renew a crucial $30 million credit line, pledged more of the artwork that adorns its home in New York's Lincoln Center to lender Bank of America Corp. The nonprofit secured the credit line with two sculptures by the late French artist Aristide Maillol displayed at the opera house, including the 62-inch bronze L'Ete (Summer) and the 69-inch Venus Without Arms, according to a notice filed Feb. 18 with the New York Secretary of State. Bank of America agreed to extend the credit line on Feb. 6, according to the Met's financial statements. The Met had already pledged a pair of Marc Chagall murals to Bank of America before the credit line came up for renewal in August. Moody's Investors Service, in a Dec. 22 statement, cited the move as one reason for downgrading $100 million of the opera house's bonds, saying the pledge of the murals to the bank was 'effectively subordinating the interests of unsecured bondholders.' Ranked as the nation's largest performing-arts organization, the Met had a $21.9 million loss during the fiscal year ended July 31, 2014, as salaries paid to performers and production costs outstripped box-office receipts, contributions and revenue from high-definition broadcasts, an innovation by general manager Peter Gelb." [Source]

Sonya Yoncheva Makes Vogue Magazine Spread For Debut

A Star is Born: Soprano Sonya Yoncheva Arrives

"As Yoncheva made her debut in major operas in Europe, word of her singular range and tone made its way to Gelb. 'We have a very sophisticated scouting system,' he later explained by phone. 'Sometimes I hear reports about young singers that make it clear we should bring them in. European opera houses are typically smaller than the Met. Singers who can make an impression in a smaller European house sometimes do not have the same success on stage at the Met. The singer has to be even more intensely charismatic on stage.' Following her turn as Gilda, Gelb said, Yoncheva has been on a 'meteoric rise to operatic stardom.' Tonight, Yoncheva will begin the first of four performances in La Traviata, one day after releasing her first album, the result of an exclusive, long-term deal with Sony Classical. She is now booked five years out, including in the opening of the Met’s next season, when she will sing the part of Desdemona in a new production of Verdi’s Otello that is slated for a live-broadcast in movie theaters around the world." [Source] Read the full article "Meet Sonya Yoncheva: Opera's Brightest New Star" by clicking here and see more photos by Vogue's Ruven Afanador after the jump. Sonya Yoncheva will be appearing at the Metropolitan Gift Shop on January 22 to sign copies of her new CD, see details here. Sample tracks off the soprano's new album are also after the jump. 

At 66, Kathleen Battle Continues To Float Gorgeous High Notes

A video of soprano Kathleen Battle from last evening's performance in Philadelphia of "Underground Railroad: An Evening of Spirituals" proves she still has plenty to sing about with that famous lyric voice. The project started a couple of years ago, inspired by Peter Gelb when he was still at Sony, and has toured ever since. "Legendary soprano Kathleen Battle's newest program celebrates the roots of African-American music and freedom via the Underground Railroad. Battle's sumptuous voice takes flight in this evening of enchanting music, featuring favorite and meaningful spirituals, hymns, and musical majesty. Although Battle's luminous soprano voice has graced the world's great opera houses and concert halls, there is a special place her heart for the songs and spirituals of the African-American journey. In this moving evening, Battle and acclaimed pianist Cyrus Chestnut explore the music that expressed the suffering and salvation of enslaved Africans as they found their way to freedom." [Source] Read an exclusive interview about the concert here and how Peter Gelb inspired the project here. Watch the soprano sing "Fix Me" after the jump. Below is a video interview and rehearsal footage from local CBS Philadelphia.

Arthur Gelb, Father of Peter Gelb, Is Dead At Age 90

Peter Gelb, left, with his parents Barbara and Arthur Gelb at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010.

"Arthur Gelb, who by sheer force of personality was a dominant figure at The New York Times for decades, lifting its metropolitan and arts coverage to new heights and helping to shape the paper in its modern era, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 90. His son Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said the cause was complications of a stroke. Hired as a copy boy in 1944, Mr. Gelb rose to become a singular Times figure in the second half of the 20th century, leaving a large stamp as critic, chief cultural correspondent, metropolitan editor, deputy managing editor and managing editor, the post he held when he retired at the end of 1989. Mr. Gelb, writing for the culture pages, discovered stars in an expanding Off Broadway universe. His reviews and news coverage helped propel the fledgling careers of, among others, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce, Jason Robards, Joseph Papp and Colleen Dewhurst." [Source]

Renée Fleming Heads The Line-Up Of New Productions At MET

Renée Fleming under the hot pursuit of Nathan Gunn (Photo: Brigitte Lacombe/Metropolitan Opera)

The Metropolitan Opera announced its 2014-15 season today. Check out the online brochure here. Several new productions are added to the repertoire and many works created under the Peter Gelb regime will be revived. The New Year's Eve Gala will be focused on

Susan Stroman's new interpretation of Franz Lehár's 110-year old operetta Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow as it will be performed in English) starring mega-star Renée Fleming in her role debut as Hanna. "The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play, L'attaché d'ambassade (The Embassy Attaché) by Henri Meilhac. The operetta has enjoyed extraordinary international success since its 1905 premiere in Vienna and continues to be frequently revived and recorded. Film and other adaptations have also been made. Well-known music from the score includes the 'Vilja Song,' 'Da geh' ich zu Maxim' ('You'll Find Me at Maxim's'), and the 'Merry Widow Waltz'. The operetta was first performed at the

Theater an der Wien in Vienna on December 30, 1905, with Mizzi Günther as Hanna, Louis Treumann as Danilo, Siegmund Natzler as Baron Zeta and Annie Wünsch as Valencienne. It was Lehár's first major success, becoming internationally the best-known operetta of its era. Lehár subsequently made changes for productions in London in 1907 (two new numbers), and Berlin in the 1920s, but the definitive version is basically that of the original production. The operetta toured Austria and in 1906 enjoyed productions in Hamburg's Neues Operetten-Theater, Berlin's Berliner Theater (starring Gustav Matzner as Danilo and Marie Ottmann as Hanna, who made the first complete recording in 1907), and Budapest's Magyar Szinhaz. Its English adaptation by Basil Hood, with lyrics by Adrian Ross, became

a sensation in London in 1907 and ran for an extraordinary 778 performances, followed by extensive British tours. The first performance in Paris was at the Théâtre Apollo on April 28, 1909. Many international productions, as well as revivals followed, as did sequels, spoofs and film versions. http://www.musicals101.com/widowhist3.htm. The operetta originally had no overture; Lehár wrote one for the Vienna Philharmonic to perform at his 70th birthday concert in April 1940." [Source] For a full synopsis, click here. 

Is Rising Star Director Stefan Herheim MET Opera Bound?

The director in picturesque Salzburg. (Photo: Kerstin Joensson/AP)

"Stefan Herheim started directing operas at age 6, moving puppets around a tiny stage to recordings of his favorite works. No surprise then that the man known today for the intellectual rigor of his productions also infuses them with a sense of childlike wonder. Herheim's father played viola in the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo, and as a youngster he often attended performances and then re-enacted what he had seen. 'It was my need to be God and have my own opera house and conquer this world of my own,' Herheim said in an interview a day before his latest production — Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg — opened at the Salzburg Festival on Friday night. (It plays five more times through Aug. 27.) Conquer this world he has, at the age of 43, and though he doesn't have his own opera house, he works regularly at Europe's best. And now he's coming to the U.S. as well: Peter Gelb, who runs the Metropolitan Opera, was in the audience for the Meistersinger opening and afterward made preliminary arrangements to bring it to the Met in a future season. Herheim got his musical training playing cello, then spent time as a production assistant at the Oslo opera and even ran a touring marionette troupe. In his 20s, he moved to Hamburg, Germany, to study opera production with the legendary Goetz Friedrich." [Source]

Eine Wagner-Film Komplimente des Metropolitan Oper

For more information about locations to catch the film, as well as the story about the making of the piece, click here.

First Glimpse of Anna Netrebko at MET "Manon" After-Party

More gorgeous photos of Ms. Netrebko by photographer Julie Skarratt can be found here. See more pictures of guests (including Paulo Szot, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Barbara Walters and Peter Gelb) click here.

The Metropolitan Opera By Numbers in Fortune Magazine

(Photo: Stephen Wilkes/Fortune magazine)

Fortune magazine writer Shelley DuBois takes a look at what the MET has been up to in terms of rejuvenating its brand. "When Peter Gelb, who had been an executive at Sony Classical records, took over in 2006 as general manager of New York's Metropolitan Opera, attendance was fading and the average age of ticket holders rising. Gelb brought in Broadway and West End directors, took chances on innovative, edgy works, and started beaming operas around the world in HD movie theaters. The result: a younger, broader audience and a record year financially for the world's biggest opera.

BY THE NUMBERS
57.7: The average age of audience members at performances in 2010, down from 60.4 in 2005, according to the Met.

$182 million: That's what the Met raised last fiscal year -- up 50% from the previous period. Board chair Ann Ziff and her family, heirs to the Ziff Davis publishing fortune, pledged $30 million.

1,700: The number of venues in 54 countries that will screen Met operas in HD this year. Some 8.5 million tickets have been sold so far. Last year HD produced $11 million in profits for the Met." [Source]

Anna Netrebko, Stephen Costello, Peter Gelb on "Charlie Rose"

Soprano Anna Netrebko, tenor Stephen Costello and General Manager Peter Gelb, stop by the studio of the Charlie Rose Show to discuss the current David McVicar production of Donizetti's Anna Bolena. Watch the full episode by clicking here.

Metropolitan Opera Opening Night Gala Dinner Photos

Henry Kissinger, Met Opera General Manager Peter Gelb, bass-baritone Erwin Schrott, soprano Anna Netrebko, Sid Bass, Mercedes Bass and Oscar de la Renta.
(Photo: Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg)

“'Let’s just say, I think this is my time,' Anna Netrebko suggested after her performance in Anna Bolena at the Metropolitan Opera’s opening gala last night. 'Tomorrow it’s going to be someone else’s.' Netrebko sang in a new staging of Donizetti’s opera about Anne Boleyn, whose beheading started a trend at the court of Henry VIII. Netrebko had taken her seat at the post-performance supper. The meal was spiced lamb and pearl couscous. The decor included giant banners of Holbein paintings, candlelight and bowls filled with flowers, grapes and pears. It was a sumptuous conclusion to Anna’s final mad moments when she swept her long hair away from her neck and ran off to her beheading. Netrebko, seated next to her director, David McVicar, recalled staging the moment. 'We worked together, and we came up with the simplest solution,' McVicar said. 'He is the one who decides,' Netrebko said. 'What I work on, is if I have enough rings on my fingers to really sparkle.' 'She is the true queen of the opera,' Mercedes Bass, chairman of the gala and wife of oil billionaire Sid Bass said, as waiters passed around sherry trifle. 'She controls the stage.' The Basses funded the production, the Met’s first of the opera. The Met plans to produce Donizetti’s two other Tudor operas, even though Netrebko has declined to sing in them." Click here to see more photos of the event. [Source]