NEW YORK: Proposed pay cuts, declining ticket sales, dire reviews and threatened strike action, the Metropolitan Opera in New York is embroiled in perhaps its ugliest crisis in 30 years.
As the wealthiest opera company on the planet and the biggest classical music organization in the United States, the Met dwarfs counterparts in Europe with a budget of nearly $327m.
Yet staff are locked in a bitter dispute with the company’s managing director of eight years, Peter Gelb, over proposed pay cuts of 16 percent that threaten to delay the start of the new season.
If no resolution is found by July 31 in the dispute over pay -- which represents $200m of the Met’s budget -- the company has threatened to order the first work stoppage since 1980.
Gelb turned up the pressure on Wednesday, telling The Wall Street Journal that staff should prepare for union workers to be locked out from August 1. While spending and fundraising have increased, ticket sales have declined steadily for the last four seasons and the Met says it must slash overheads now to avoid bankruptcy in the future.
New York City Opera, formerly the Big Apple’s second company, went under last October and the Met says the audience for opera is in decline and that it must get costs under control.
“The Metropolitan Opera is facing one of the biggest financial challenges in its 131 year history,” a spokesman told AFP.
“Donors are not willing or able to continue to finance the growing gap between flat revenues and growing expenditure.”
But musicians’ unions say poor ticket sales reflect bad Gelb productions, not declining interest in an elitist art form, and that slashing salaries is unfair.
“We’re really fighting for the survival of the Met artistically and financially,” clarinetist Jessica Phillips Rieske said.
Gelb proposes a 16-percent pay cut from August 1 to save $30 million.
Musicians are outraged. They say they already work 30 percent more than any other orchestra in the United States in exchange for the lowest quality of life because New York is so expensive.
They are also question the urgency of the financial crisis, saying that the company ran a deficit of only $2.8m last year.
Rather than cutting pay, they want Gelb to save $20m by commissioning one or two fewer productions, staging fewer overtime operas and slashing wasteful rehearsal time.
Gelb, a nephew of violinist Jascha Heifetz who came to the Met from Sony where his biggest hit was the soundtrack for movie “Titanic,” has been a polarizing manager.
AFP
