A minute and a huff
La Cieca presents an open letter from a parterre box reader.
Dear Metropolitan Opera:
I have been a loyal subscriber to the Met since I moved to the New York area, but I am sad to announce that I will not be buying a subscription to next year’s season.
Looking back at my season this year, I have found that most of the performances for which I’ve bought tickets a year early have had major cancellations, either weeks before or the day of. Here’s what has happened to me this year in my subscription follies:
- Aida on October 21st: Dolora Zajick canceled
- Turandot on October 28th: Maria Guleghina canceled
- Hoffmann on December 23rd: Rolando Villazon, Rene Pape and Kathleen Kim canceled
- Hamlet on March 24th: Natalie Dessay canceled
- Traviata on April 7th: Leonard Slatkin canceled
- Tosca on April 14th: James Levine and Karita Mattila canceled
- Lulu on May 12th: Levine canceled
Now for many of these nights there were great performers in their place. Olga Borodina‘s Amneris was wonderful, Lise Lindstrom was a powerful Turandot, Rachelle Gilmore was a fantastic Olympia. Leonard Slatkin didn’t know the score so anyone will be better than him, and I am a huge fan of Fabio Luisi and trust in his ability to create a wonderful Tosca and Lulu.
I am also aware that these cancellations are not directly the fault of the house, and only rarely the fault of the performer (except in the case of Slatkin), but still the questions remain:
Why should I purchase my tickets a year in advance with this frequency of cancellations? What is the advantage for a young, busy, cash-strapped opera lover?
There must be some incentive to purchasing tickets in advance for it to be viable in the eyes of the opera world as it stands today, but as it is the risk is too great to gamble what spare money I do have on the potential of seeing a poor replacement for a star who I was scheduled to see.
Since I can no longer expect that the announced cast will show up, I will continue to go to the Met, but only purchasing tickets the day of the performance, standing room if need be.
The Met has said over and over again that they are trying to attract the next generation of opera enthusiasts. I am that audience: a 25 year old professional with the passion to attend the opera. Unfortunately, I’m getting tired of the inconsistency and price. As I consider how I’ll buy tickets next year, it seems more likely that I will be calling for standing room tickets at noon each day I intend to go.
Rush tickets are not a possibility for me, as I work all day and cannot sit in line. We might as well face the reality that your rush ticket program is not reaching the audience you targeted. Stroll by the rush ticket line any day and you’ll find the same retirees who would have bought family circle had the rush program not been available.
The money currently put forward for the rush ticket program would be far better spent on a “Young Met” program, allowing people such as myself a way to go to the Met regularly.
The draw for the next generation of opera fans is waning fast, and you must do something to address this situation. Realize that the people you want aren’t buying subscriptions anymore, partly because they don’t have several hundred dollars (at least) burning a hole in their pocket, and partly because they never know what they’re going to get.
You were recently given the largest gift in Met history. I hope to see some progress in coming seasons regarding these issues, and I am looking forward to another year of operatic enjoyment in your storied house, albeit on a day-by-day basis.
I welcome any response and would love to share my personal experience and thoughts with anyone willing to listen, my personal email is devon.c.estes@gmail.com.
With love and hope,
Devon C. Estes
I stopped subscribing many, many years ago. It wasn’t just for the myriad of cancelations (some of which, frankly, were rather forseeable). Not only are subscribers treated no better than anyone else off the street (sorry to sound like Mommie Dearest here…), but we’re pinned down to performances we may not want or need. The 1982 (?) Macbeth disaster with Scotto killed the subscriber ticket exchange program, also. I essentially stopped going because more productions were banal or heading towards regie-Eurotrash conceit, and the singing, more often than not, wasn’t worth the price of the ticket. I fully understand that the MET cannot operate in a “festival” mode all season long, but in turn I cannot be asked to subsidize a very expensive and often recklessly-managed institution by purchasing subscriptions in advance.
I’m a little surprised how everyone is irritated with Slatkin for accepting an engagement to conduct a work with which he’s unfamiliar: Levine infrequently went “elsewhere” to learn operas to bring to the MET. It is the opera house’s responsibility to assure that the conductor knows the opera and/or has a modicum of operatic experience to earn the confidence of the cast. Not everyone will succeed, of course, and the “safe choices” don’t always work perfectly, either. Colin Davis came to the MET in 1967 and conducted Peter Grimes for the first time; it wasn’t a disaster. But he was already an “opera man,” having been at Saddlers’ Wells since the early 60s, in the way Slatkin probably isn’t. This should have been apparent to the MET’s management.
On the issue of singers’ cancelations and replacements, I think this is a problem all over the world now and has been for at least a generation. Yet that doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to commit to paying money up-front never to know who’s going to be singing that night.
Subscribing provides no guarantee of casts. The benefits of subscribing are lower prices and better seats. While there are some valid concerns in this letter, my overall reaction is: “Cry me a river”.
But cancellations are a danger of live theater. That’s always how its been. There is always the risk, always, in any live production of any kind, that an understudy or cover may have to go on. That’s just how it works. I agree that cancellations have seemed rather frequent in the past few years, but I doubt the numbers have gone up; it’s just far easier to report them now that La Cieca has apparently placed small recording devices in every office in the Met.
Now listen Devon Estes, you silly little pup, back in the days of Bing there was no casting announced at the beginning of the season. Subscribers bought a series of operas and the casting was announced on snakes and posters in front of the theater a week or two in advance. There wasn’t even a roster of artists printed. The first day the box office opened there were photos of all the leading artists plastered on the walls – just like in the concourse lobby right now. Fans would scan the photos to see who was singing. One year Licia’s picture was gone and there was consternation! Lois Kirschenbaum made her reputation by getting the singers schedule directly from the artists themselves.
So consider yourself lucky you have some idea who might be singing.
The Young Met thing returns us to the question of bringing the mountain to Mohammed, I think. While I agree that the Rush line is generally a collection of retirees camped out since noon, the change in standing room policy does change the availability of some kind of ticket for those who want to make a last minute decision to attend. Guaranteeing an appearance by Netrebko isn’t necessarily going to bring in someone who wasn’t much interested in hearing her in the first place.
Frankly, as someone a couple of decades away from retirement but no longer eligible for any kind of Young Met program, I’d think that they’d do more to expand their audience if the house seemed a bit more daring and vital than it even does of late. God, look at next season–when Nixon in China is “new” something’s really wrong. I know, I know, Boheme puts butts in seats, but honestly, the old war horses have never seemed older or warrier. There are plenty of culture vultures in this city who attend things because they’re perceived as somehow important, somehow of more immediate cultural import than the 572nd performance of Tosca this season. BAM gets them in for Les Arts Florrisants performances, and not because they’re all undernourished fans of the French Baroque.
This has all been said before (I’ve not eaten lunch yet, and my blood sugar’s low). For the most part I sympathize, though I should add that I didn’t start actually subscribing until in my 30s, and spent plenty of my younger years on the old Saturday standing room line, waiting on cancellations, landing in perfs that weren’t sold out in advance, and just sitting by the radio on Saturdays–one learned to make do and realize that you just didn’t get into everything you wanted all the time. Twenty-five seems slightly young to feel quite so put out over it.
Is the lower prices part even true anymore? I thought the prices are the same, only you get first pick.
Why so unkind to this seemingly nice young man?
One solution I have often suggested would be to allow subscribers (or even all ticket holders) to change dates within the same opera. While I understand the no refund policy, it would be a nice gesture to your most loyal customers to allow changes.
Also, one thing I have learned first hand is to be super nice and friendly always to the people at the box office. The nicer you are to them, the more willing they are to accommodate requests.
Kashania and Baritenor really hit the nail on the head for me. I think we’re actually pretty lucky as far as substitutions go, as the Met has the resources and the weight to bring in great covers on short notice. Sure I was bummed not to see the original cast for Fille this year, but those are the breaks in live performance, and to me it makes about as much sense as complaining to the Met about the rain in Lincoln Center plaza.
Tubsinger said subscribers are subsidizing the Met, which just seems silly to me. Subscription tickets are modestly less than ordinary tickets, and subscribers usually get better seats than purchasing single tickets, along with exchange priviledges. But nobody is subsidizing anything — you’re paying for a service, and paying much less than the actual cost. In return, the Met gets a certain fraction of the seats to all its shows sold well before the season starts. You might still think it’s a waste of money, fine, but subscribing isn’t some munificent deed for which you should be awarded a shiny medal.
With that said, something like discounted subscriptions for young people – the New York Philharmonic has something like this called MYPhil, which is great — seems like it would be a smart move.
uwsinnyc, I think some subscriptions are a little cheaper, maybe 10%, especially Friday night. But the main savings, if I remember when I worked it out a month or so ago, was that you don’t pay as much in service charges, especially if you buy multiple subscriptions.
I’m glad to see that someone with complaints has actually written to the offending body. (At least, I HOPE this letter actually went to the Met.)
I agree with Baritenor that live performances can offer no guarantees. Live means life and life is full of unfortunate surprises, whether they be vocal nodes, bad backs, unprepared colleagues, etc. If people want a sure thing, they should stick to YouTube and recordings.
I do think that Devon Estes is putting unwarranted emphasis on the cancellations, BUT I’m still glad he actually wrote to the Met powers it. I hate it when people complain about stuff they don’t like, but do nothing about it. Not renewing a subscription in a huff in the hopes that the opera company management knows why just pisses me off. When I finally reach my subscription-related huff, you can bet the house I’ll include an explanatory letter. How could I expect them understand the consequences of their mismanagement if I don’t tell them?