NEW YORK, NY.- When the Metropolitan Opera staged a starry adaptation of “The Hours” last year, the first world premiere at the company since 2006, something unusual happened.
The Met had long struggled to attract new audiences for classics like “Carmen,” “Don Giovanni” and “Tosca.” But “The Hours” gave it a jolt of energy: More than 40% of ticket buyers had never set foot in the opera house.
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, had a hit. The box-office success of “The Hours,” by writer Greg Pierce and composer Kevin Puts, deepened their belief that contemporary works could help ensure the future of opera, an art form seemingly always in existential crisis. So, the Met persuaded the work’s three leading singers — Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato — to rearrange their schedules to make room for a revival next season.
With a cash shortfall and lackluster ticket sales, the Met is betting big on operas by living composers — which, in a shift, have been outselling the classics since the company returned from its pandemic shutdown in fall 2021. It plans to stage 17 new and recent works over the next five seasons, including seven commissions.
The lineup includes Matthew Aucoin’s “Demons,” based on the Dostoyevsky novel, and a comedy about the Asian American experience by composer Huang Ruo and screenwriter James Schamus. Talks are underway for an opera adaptation of the 1987 romantic comedy “Moonstruck” by composer Ricky Ian Gordon and John Patrick Shanley, who wrote the film’s screenplay.
This is all something of a return to the past for the Met, founded in 1883. In the company’s early days, composers like Puccini and Granados roamed its halls; in the 1910s alone, the company gave 15 world premieres.
Still, contemporary opera isn’t always an easy sell, and some of the Met’s latest offerings have received mixed or tepid responses from critics. Many longtime ticket buyers worry that classics will be squeezed out: There is no early 19th-century bel canto next season, and Mozart is represented only by an abridged, English-language “Magic Flute” for families.
In a joint interview, Gelb and Nézet-Séguin discussed their plans for the company’s future. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Q: Financial woes have prompted the Met to withdraw $23 million from its endowment and cut the number of performances next season by about 10%. Why do you believe that shifting the focus to contemporary opera, which doesn’t exactly have a long track record of success, is the way forward?
PETER GELB: It’s not contemporary opera. It’s the right contemporary opera. Just saying that all contemporary opera is going to change the fortunes of the Met and other opera companies, I think, would be misleading.
One of the challenges is the fact that for many decades, with a few exceptions of composers like Philip Glass and John Adams, a large proportion of new operas were inaccessible to a broader public. They may have been works of great artistic merit, but by composers who were appealing more to the intellect than hearts of listeners.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: Now, composers are more aware of how to appeal to audiences. It’s not about tonal versus atonal. It’s larger than this. It’s using music to connect with audiences and their emotions, and being more aware of reflecting the realities of today.
Q: Some people worry that the focus on contemporary opera will come at the expense of familiar pieces. A third of next season is devoted to new works, and there is no Strauss.
GELB: There is no Strauss next season because there will be two Strauss operas the following season: “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” and a new production of “Salome,” both conducted by Yannick. We’re going to get to all the repertoire. It may not happen every season. But there will always be Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and others.
NÉZET-SÉGUIN: In a repertory house like ours, it’s the nature of the beast that you can have something that feels like it’s there only to fill the night. And routine is the enemy of art for me. I believe in the repertory system, but we have to find ways of avoiding this kind of routine. We might say, “It’s been six years since our last ‘Don Pasquale.’” But do we have the perfect cast for it? No. So maybe we do it two years later.
Q: What’s the right balance of contemporary and classic works?
GELB: To find the right balance, we have to experiment. It’s safe to say that by the end of this five-year period we will know the answer.
NÉZET-SÉGUIN: It’s not a question of quota. I’m allergic to this. I don’t think it’s the way to go. Maybe the balance needs to be taken across two or three seasons.
Q: The Met used to have a loyal subscriber base. But now audiences are increasingly fragmented, with many people favoring single tickets, especially for contemporary opera.
GELB: Being fragmented is not necessarily bad. It’s like Broadway. If somebody goes to one Broadway show, it doesn’t mean he’s necessarily going to go to the next Broadway show. Our goal is to make the new opera experience one which people become more and more familiar with, as we do more and more. Certainly there will be an overlap in the audience. There’s no question that will develop as a result.
Q: Is the subscriber model dying, dead?
GELB: The subscriber model has been dying for 50 years. When the new Metropolitan Opera opened its doors in 1966, the house was entirely sold out on subscription. There’s a Rudolf Bing memo to the board explaining apologetically that [as general manager] he’s going to have to break up subscriptions to enable some tickets to be sold to the general public, because none were available.
When we survey our audiences, we learn that a self-described opera lover today is someone who comes to the opera a couple of times a year. A self-described opera lover 20 years ago was someone who came to the Met 20 times a year.
Q: What are you looking for in works to commission?
GELB: We’re looking for great composers who are interested in telling stories that the public can relate to.
NÉZET-SÉGUIN: We need a variety. I don’t want always the same musical language. It’s going to be important for me to present as much Kaija Saariaho as Brett Dean as Kevin Puts as Terence Blanchard.
GELB: I’m a big believer in continuity — in having arcs for artists and composers. Blanchard’s “Champion” is a perfect example of that, coming after the success of his “Fire Shut Up In My Bones.” Similarly, Puts came to us recently wanting to write another opera, but also asking if we would consider a new production of his first opera, “Silent Night.” And we’ve added Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Conquest Requiem” to the first half of a double bill that also features [Osvaldo Golijov’s] “Ainadamar,” to prepare for her first opera, which is about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, which the Met will also stage.
Q: How does working with living composers change the experience of making opera?
NÉZET-SÉGUIN: Seeing a living composer, a living librettist in the house — interacting with new choreographers, musicians, members of the creative team — is inspiring the works by the dead ones as well. Then when we do a new production of a Wagner opera, or we go back to a Verdi work, everybody is seeing it differently. It’s kind of giving it new life. It’s as if we imagine that these people are more in the room, and we feel a bit more free.
Q: Several years ago, the Met announced a plan to join forces with the Brooklyn Academy of Music to stage contemporary opera, in an effort to connect with a broader community. But that effort fell apart during the pandemic.
NÉZET-SÉGUIN: That’s one of my great regrets of the pandemic. We’re still pitching projects to BAM, and I think something right will come out of it. I still like the idea of getting out of the building, but in the meantime we’re just trying to welcome more people to our own building.
Q: Opera seasons are often planned up to five years in advance. Will the focus on contemporary opera require a more fluid approach?
GELB: We will try to be more flexible so that a new work that we see has potential can be revived, as we are doing next season, with revivals of “The Hours” and “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” Certainly if “Champion” is a great success, you can count on it coming back to the Met.
Q: Always with the same casts? Or could you see reviving “The Hours” with three different stars?
GELB: Maybe there will be three new divas.
Q: How did you convince Fleming, O’Hara and DiDonato to return for “The Hours”? It must have been a scheduling nightmare.
GELB: I didn’t need to. They were easily convinced because they wanted to do it. Our artists see that’s where the action is, that’s where the excitement is. It’s artistically very satisfying for them to be working in a different way, which is actually working with composers and being part of the creative process. They’re no longer re-creative, interpretive artists. They’re part of the creation of the work.
Q: Yannick is leading more than half of the 17 planned premieres in the next five years. Why is it important to have the music director so heavily involved in new operas?
NÉZET-SÉGUIN: These works bring people out of their comfort zone, obviously. An opera in jazz like “Champion,” thank goodness, we build from “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” But it’s still a shock for many people. It’s about swing and other elements. I’m not saying that individual musicians of the Met orchestra don’t know how to do it. They know how to do it. But it’s not what they do usually.
I’ve seen other opera companies and orchestras give this kind of work to a specialist or someone else. It sends a message to people and the team: “Oh yeah, it’s something that’s outside of our core. So why should we commit to it on the same level?”
I also hope that our audience by now thinks, “If Yannick does it, maybe we should give it a try, because we will trust that he will do it.”
Q: Yannick, you lead not only the Met’s orchestra but also the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal. How can you expand your commitment to contemporary opera while keeping up with these other demands?
NÉZET-SÉGUIN: I have to be careful to not be learning a new piece every week. I’m 48, I started my career in my early 20s, and I already have a lot of the main repertoire, whether it’s opera or symphonic. I’m going to dedicate more of my focus to new pieces, and learn the other stuff maybe more slowly than I thought a few years ago.
Q: Where do you see the Met in the next 25, 50, 100 years?
GELB: Hopefully we see the Met thriving artistically, and that we will have created a new artistic foundation that will help it continue to grow.
NÉZET-SÉGUIN: If this is a new golden age of opera at the Met, then it’s our responsibility, our mission, to create a home. And to keep the Met as the mother ship of great opera in the world, and therefore great new opera.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
