Call it brio, joie de vivre, zest, élan vital, perhaps Lebenslust. You might even call it “fun.” But no matter what you call it, that’s not the mood Renée Fleming was in when she dropped in for lunch with Muse at Bloomberg.
The Metropolitan Opera expects to achieve a balanced budget in 2011, the first for the company since 2004. In other good news, contributions and grants were up about 21% between 2009 and 2010; program service revenue rose about 6% in the same period. Maestro James Levine took a 5% pay cut, sending his 2010 compensation tumbling to only $1.5 million. [Bloomberg]
At a time when New York’s opera companies are supposed to be going into estivation (I mean, Peter Gelb is in Vietnam, for heaven’s sake!) there’s certainly no lack of breaking news about New York City Opera. Today’s heart-rending roundup, after the jump. Read more »
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