figures?
Peter Gelb, who recently has been asking the Met’s rank and file for salary concessions, had his own compensation bumped up 36% for the 2007-08 season.
According to Bloomberg News, Gelb earned about $1.5 million during his second year as the Met’s general manager. Since then he and the Met’s senior staff have taken 10% cuts.
What La Cieca finds particularly intriguing about the Bloomberg piece is that it reveals that Gelb still takes home a smaller paycheck than Joe Volpe did at the end of his Met incumbency. Uncle Joe’s final haul was $1.7 million for the financial year ending July 2006.
I think that everyone must remember that the Metropolitan Opera is a NON-PROFIT organization, therefore the bulk of their funds are raised through donations. Sports organizations, American Idol, etc are all FOR-PROFIT “corporations” that earn their money, not have it donated.
Now, I don’t begrudge Mr. Gelb a wonderful salary for a very difficult job, but it’s just not possible for non-profit organizations to sustain themselves and their funds when so many employees are being paid VERY high salaries. The non-profit world cannot be financially-run like Wall Street or major sports clubs.
Sorry but singers’ fees have zilch to do with Administrators’ salaries.
Whichever way you want to cut the cake, Mr Gelb is working very cheap. Good luck to him.
What exactly does non-profit status imply? I was under the impression that it involved all surplus being reinvested in the organisation rather than being handed out as dividends to shareholders. If this is correct, in what way does it exclude certain employees receiving high salaries?
I don’t think the argument is about how much he is paid, but how much he is asking people to pay back…
Regarding singers incomes, as I understand it, the really big names can add significantly
to their income with high profile concert appearances. So someone like JDF , Trebs, etc
may take in 150,000 Euros for a big concert.
This certainly beats even the top fees ($16K)
at the Met but don’t some European and Asian House pay higher performance fees anyway?
But this is really just for the top names.
$150,000 per concert? OK, so you have around 6k seats in your auditorium. YOu have to rent the auditorium, pay the orchestra, conductor, perhaps a chorus, pay the ticket distibutor, the advertising, the media rights… and, as a promoter, you have to earn enough money to pay your staff and yourself and your overheads. See how this might not work?
The only people who could command that kind of fee were Pavarotti and Domingo.
We do not of course have the official figures for the two recitals, but as far as I know, Flórez was flown in for two private recitals for bankers, one in Valencia, one in Madrid. One pianist, no chorus, no media rights, no promoter, no overheads. Private party. See how this might work?
But not at $150,000. Perhaps at $25,000.
This compares poorly at any rate with Jonathan Woss’s $10m per year from the BBC. (Woss is the twerp who did the opwa quiz on Wufus which we had a laugh at earlier on in the week.)
“One must take into account publicity contracts, royalties from DVD and Cd recordings etc.”
This amount is negligible at best. Renee doesn’t make any money from recordings, and she has the best vocal recording contract in the business. A recording contract is cache and PR. Nothing else.
Beyond that, there are no real endorsements. A free watch, a nice ad placement there, some free travel, etc.,etc., but no real money.