codicil is the new black
My dears, you only thought the whingeing about the Met ticket exchange line was over. Now that the shell-shocked and frostbitten survivors of the Gelb Gulag have dragged themselves back to their rent-controlled flats on upper Columbus Avenue, the next stage of the protest against the Met’s barbaric practices can begin.
As in every violent political coup, the freedom fighter eventually must embrace guerrilla tactics. The insurgents have already launched a volley of intemperate letters to the editor in The New York Times, peppered with such stinging rebukes as “Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, would be ill advised to ignore, dismiss and anger longstanding subscribers and fans of the Metropolitan Opera…. As any astute arts manager knows, a solid subscriber base is key to the financial stability of a performing arts group.” Strong stuff!
But when a dictatorship is so entrenched that it withstands a strongly-worded letter, there is only one option left on the table: an option so horrible and inhumane that La Cieca hesitates to mention it for fear of seeming to endorse so drastic a measure. If Peter Gelb is not ready to apologize to all those footsore subscribers and, at the very least, offer them sherry and biscuits, at least one of the undertrodden has suggested, “those of us who have cited bequests to the Metropolitan Opera in our wills contact our lawyers and leave bequests instead to other organizations that do not have an attitude.”
Yes, the old “I’m cutting you out of my will” ploy, so beloved of passive-aggressive dowagers in 19th century English literature, will surely send the right (handwritten, delivered by footman) message to the futuristic monolith that is The Metropolitan Opera.
I missed some of what this dust up is about. Is there no “free period” for exchanges prior to opening the box office to non-subscribers” In Los Angeles, we subscribers to the Opera and LA Phil can exchange tickets without charge, usually for two months prior to the “official” box office opening. And we can do it by mail as well as in person.
OMFG, boycott the Met? Really? For every serious opera lover or doyenne who actually cuts them out of the will or who boycotts, some neuveuax riche couple with their own reality show will come along and replace them. And Blythe Danner will always be there.
My long and triumphant association with the company has lent the Met so much artistic cachet that I have never been expected to pay for any ticket I demanded.
Sorry but I find all this whinging a bit of your old tempest in a… I have subscriptions to both the Teatro dell’Opera (ballet and opera series) and the Academia Ste Ceceila here in Rome and we can’t exchange tickets under any circumstances. I even tried to exchange with an upgrade for the upcoming Muti Otello (January past when there were seats available) and was told no by the Box Office Manager.
The service charge on Internet tickets here is running around 17% though the service charge at the box office seems to be between E2.50 and E7 and is given the fancy moniker: prebooking fee. The prebooking period seems to be right up to curtain time.
And dealing with box office staff can be an experience.
Example #1: la Fenice says on their website that you can order tickets by fax so I ordered ticket by fax – I admit I was being cheap and trying to save the Internet booking fee. When I hadn’t heard from them in a week I called:
Me: I’m just wondering what happened to my fax order for the Barbiere etc.
Box Office Person: We don’t know we don’t accept fax orders.
Me: But why does it say on you website that you do?
BOP: We don’t know we don’t accept fax orders.
Me: But I sent you a fax with my credit card number and all the requested details. What happened to it?
BOP: We don’t know we don’t accept fax orders.
And so the conversation went.
Example #2 I was picking up tickets for the Abbado Fidelio at the Will Call window in Emilio Reggio had fought my way through the crowds in the main lobby to get to the Box Office. At the window indicating Internet Ticket Pick-up I was told: No tickets were not there – go to the desk in the main lobby. Fought my way back through the crowd to the desk and joined the line up – well okay an Italian line-up: seven people across all trying to get the attention of two very harried young ladies. And no it was not me that pushed that old lady out of the way – honestly!
And keep in mind this is all happening in Italian because very few of the Box Office staff in any of the houses speak a second language – though there have been some very charming attempts when they’re confronted with my Italian.
But it seems to be all part of the experience of opera going here. And it makes for good party stories.
Boycotting the Met is a ridiculous idea. It is one of the best opera houses in the world, and I have to say, although I think the Royal Opera House is a much more suitable theatre, and I think musically it is of the highest quality, the Met really shows them how it is done when it comes to production values. Met casts are also a notch more starry. I can’t imagine what they could possibly do to make me stop visiting the Met, however much they irritated me and however galling it became to put money in their pockets. With respect, boycotting the Met and going to the New York City Opera instead (not even an option, this season) is, as La Cieca says above, cutting off your nose to spite your face. Depriving yourself of some wonderful nights at the opera would constitute a Pyrrhic victory for you – one which the Met wouldn’t even notice. I’d be there every other week if I lived in New York.
It’s not what the letters said. It’s the fact that they were published by the paper at all.
The Met has gotten more than its fair share of pretty, puffy press from the Times since Gelb started running things, so it’s almost shocking to see ANY ill ink spilled about Peter in the pages of his father’s old employer.
“All the news about the Met that Peter Gelb says is fit to print” – maybe that’s changing. Those letters could just as easily have ended up in the circular file in the newsroom, and yet they found space for three angry ones.
Although, as I wrote earlier, I waited on line for over four hours on Ticket Exchange Day #1 (and had to leave before being served), I went back the next day amd made satisfactory exchanges of all my tickets.
Even more interesting, I went this Monday, Day #2 of single tickets sales to the public, and bought my “supplementary” tickets. I was able to get every single ticket I wanted (actually I had to take FC over BALC for the Damnation matinee) and it was all done very politely and expeditiously. No problem at all getting good seats for Thais, Sonnambula, Giovanni, Salome, Tristan, Rondine, Onegin or any tf the others I wanted. 38 tickets in all. In fact all of the singles were at least as good as my subscription seats. Figure that one out. (And this is as an unwashed, technically unaffiliated single ticket buyer on the second day of public sales.) I may just skip the subscription/exchange deal entirely next year, and just buy everything I want when it goes on sale to the public. Although it IS fun and encouraging getting the big subscription brochure in the dead of winter.
What! Hostile about laddering one of your stockings in the mad rush to change tickets? Feel that you are being treated as a ‘third tiered class person’ as against the Met’s ‘list of illustrious generous patrons’charmed and looked after by Gelb’s financial benefactory PR department? Well, Opera was always accused of being an elitist past-time. Solution ‘Don’t buy! Don’t go! Save your money, stay home, play an opera on equivalent CD or DVD imstead. After all, being there for those two or three hours at the Met or wherever: is just so you can say at your next party gathering, “Oh yes, I was there too!”. Now that’s totally life changing, I don’t think!
I LOVE the Gianni Schicchi pic!
Don’t you have “booking fees” in New York, as we do now in the West End. It’s just a way of pretending your ticket is cheaper than it actually is. No-one is fooled and I think in terms of customer satisfaction it might be simpler to raise the prices and don’t mention the booking fee.