Word: yorke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...best of its repertory. Boston audiences still must endure the conditions of Hynes Auditorium--universally referred to as a "barn," with poor acoustics and bad sight lines. But in 1981 the Met in Boston will move to the refurbished Music Hall, and the last major advantage the New York house can claim will disappear...
Some observers speculate that the telecasts may actually have led to the upgrading of the tour. "What they're televising is their finest stuff," a New York-based writer on music says. "If the company then shows up in your home town with lower quality than that, you'll feel you're getting short shrift...
...increase in quality over the past three or four years, the change has placed the artistic shortcomings of the company in relief. It can muster high-quality productions and casts for the week-long stint in each of the cities the tour visits, but the regular season in New York is much less consistent...
...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...
Much of the Met's work at its New York base remains excellent, of course, and it continues to offer the widest variety of any North American opera house. But the moves towards television and a full-blooded tour hold the prospect of a radically different future for the nation's premier company --one in which talented casts and good productions are lavished on televised operas and those destined for the national tour, and the venerable New York opera house languishes, relying on its national income and the docility of its audiences instead of consistent production standards to keep...