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.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
