Word: mets
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...national tour--though probably a money-loser in itself--has done its share to boost the money flowing into the Met from its national audience. The tour also strengthens the Met's claim to be a national resource when it goes to seek grants from the federal government and national foundations...
...telecasts bring money in faster than the tour, might the Met curtail or abandon the tour? Walter Pierce, managing director of the Met in Boston, says that's not likely. "It's a tremendous undertaking--you literally move the opera house," Pierce says. "If it wasn't essential then the Met wouldn't do it. They want to be a national company and the tour is the only...
...Met expanded its season two years ago from 20 to 24 weeks, and from three new productions a year to four. The triumvirate that now rules the Met--James Levine as music director, John Dexter as director of production, and Anthony Bliss as executive director--is enthusiastic and ambitious, but many New York opera-goers feel that they are spreading their resources too thin...
...Today's Met is capable of extremes of success and failure. Its record with Wagner, for example, is a wrecked new production and a brilliant one in the last two seasons. Last year's Tannhauser remains a model of creative fidelity to the essence of an opera; this year's Flying Dutchman is a travesty, fusing roles and entirely subverting the opera's dramatic and musical content. In its casts, too, the Met's standards fluctuate widely. It's a long way down from the near-ideal Parsifal of this spring to the dismal Norma playing at the same time...
...expects perfection in an art as composite as opera, and the Met presents hits and flops about as frequently as any major company. It is in the middle ground of old favorites, like Il Trovatore and Carmen, the staple of any opera house, that the Met has abandoned its audience. Each year it revives Aida with mediocre singers. Undoubtedly the management calculates that these are operas which will fill seats no matter how meager the cast, and so far box office figures bear them out. Thus the present situation: except for new productions, only operas which are modern; unpopular...