in the dark about the park
In what La Cieca hopes may be a quiet voice of reason, or, failing that, just for the sake of clarity, she would like to quote from the press release announcing the Met’s program for the summer of 2008.
“We are trying something new this summer, which we think will be especially appealing to all New Yorkers,’ said Met General Manager Peter Gelb.
And now a line from yesterday’s item in the New York Times:
Peter Gelb, the Met general manager, called the plan an experiment.
One detail conspicuous by its absence is any statement by a Met official saying there will never be a return to the traditional Parks format. In fact, the most that has been said is that this summer the company will try as an experiment a different sort of presentation. The implication here is that if the experiment should not return favorable results, there are several options available: dropping the new format and returning to the old format are two.
The Met has done Parks concerts in essentially the same format for 40 years now. Â Surely any institution bears re-examination after that long a time. It may be that in the summer of 2009 the Met will return to the traditional opera in concert format. It may be that they will present another gala concert like the one planned for this summer. Or they may do something entirely different. But unless they try something new, how will they ever be able to implement the next great idea.
In 1967, the “next great idea” was concert opera performances in New York City’s parks. This program was introduced several years after the Met ceased its regular Tuesday night out of town performances in Philadelphia and as the company was gradually cutting back on it annual national tour. Surely Rudolf Bing and his staff faced at least some opposition for trying something that flew in the face of tradition. Fortunately, though, Bing had the same firmness of resolve that Peter Gelb has displayed in his incumbency at the Met thus far.
I would much rather see two stars in an opera highlights concert than second tier talent in “Boheme” AGAIN or “Butterfly” AGAIN or “Trovatore” AGAIN. Tradition is one thing, stagnation another.
Thanks, Cieca. You might also mention that the Met had for years been giving free concert opera in Lewisohn Stadium, but they’d just torn it down. So doing first Central Park and then a whole bunch of other parks was an outgrowth of what the Met had been doing for years.
But the more casual opera goer might feel differently. I mentioned this today at work and both the casual opera fans were very disappointed.
i hate gelb. i love prospect park and i do not want to see hordes of you manhattan bitches coming down and trampling on my grass. you folks can stay in your island!
I am very disappointed in the loss of opera in the park. I have hosted a dinner party for about twenty of my friends for almost twenty years for the first performance in central park. We all looked forward to this. It was the last hurrah before the summer season. While the casts were not always first string, we got many great performances, Millo as Tosca, Hong as both Violetta and Mimi, Giordani, Guleghina in Tosca, Dimitrova in Turandot, Sweet as Aida, Villereol, Arteta and Radvanovsky as Violetta. So instead of making opera available to people in all five boroughs and in new jersey, we have one glitzy medea event in Prospect Park that will have the frenzy of a Diana Ross concert in unsafe Prospect Park. Thanks for destroying a beautiful tradition for many new yorkers mr gelb.