This season the Met staged only one Verdi opera, La Traviata. Next season it appears there will only be two: A new production of Macbeth, which will open the season, and a revival of Aida. My subject is why the Met is steering away from the work of opera’s greatest and most performed composer.
I have to start from the position that the Met knows what it’s doing – a dubious assumption given that the company has been spending down its endowment, has had multiple downgrades to its credit rating, and has signed an agreement with the government of Saudi Arabia making it the winter resident company in Riyadh starting in 2028. Each winter, the Met will perform three weeks of operas and concerts and provide training programs for Saudi artists and technicians. The venue will be the Royal Diriyah Opera House still under construction. The Met hopes this arrangement will ease its financial woes. That Saudi Arabia allows the death penalty for homosexual behavior does not seem to have bothered the company. As Groucho Marx said: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” Russia bad, Saudi Arabia OK.
Back to Verdi. Traviata and Aida aside, Verdi operas have not done well at the box office over the past few years. But this failure to sell tickets is true of virtually all of the operas the company stages. Most of the new works the company regularly schedules have also failed to attract an audience. The Met is struggling to get back to its pre-COVID level of sales. The company has offered many explanations for Verdi’s operas failing to sell out the house, but the most likely explanation seems to have escaped their notice. There are very few, almost none, great Verdi voices around now.
They had one, but they fired her because her views on Vladimir Putin and the Ukarine war were not coincident with the Met’s. Of course, I refer to Anna Netrebko. Where she stands on Saudi Arabia is unknown to me. Regardless, she’s gone, and the Met has no one who can fully realize the great Verdi dramatic soprano roles.
There’s only one tenor who can dominate the heavy Verdi roles, Jonas Kaufmann, and he doesn’t want to cross the Atlantic anymore and is nearing the end of his career. I am not saying that there aren’t any tenors who can do the Verdi roles well, rather that unlike Netrebko, there are none at the superstar level who can fill the house by their mere presence.
The problem the Met faces is that a trip to the world’s leading and most expensive opera house requires more than a very good cast; it needs a great one. The Met thinks that selling 75% of its tickets represents success. That’s a very low bar that they usually have trouble clearing. The paucity of great singers is not the Met’s fault. This is an unusually dry time for vocal genius. It’s probably the Zeitgeist. The river of talent has changed direction. It no longer flows past opera. It may change direction again, but at least for now opera is landlocked.
Consider the recent past, say the last 50 years of the 20th century. There were so many great singers that I’d take up the rest of this article just listing them. Here are just a few, in no particular order. I’ll focus (though not exclusively) on those who were known for their work in Verdi’s operas. Remember, there were many more star singers from this era than I’ve mentioned below.
I’ll start with sopranos: Callas, Milanov, Tebaldi, Caballé, Nilsson, Price (both of them), etc. Mezzos: Simionato, Horne, Cossotto, Zajick, ecc. Tenors, more than a battalion: Tucker, Del Monaco, Björling, Di Stefano, Corelli, Gedda, Bergonzi, Pavarotti, Domingo, und so weiter. Baritones, again a lot: Bastianini, Warren, Merrill, MacNeil, Milnes, Manuguerra, etcétera. Basses also in profusion: Ghiaurov, Siepi, Ramey, Talvela, Treigle, и так далее.
The point I’m making is that there were many more star operatic performers 50 years ago than there are today. Their reduced number is felt not only artistically but also at the box office.
The Met can sell La Bohème because the opera sells itself. It can be done with good, but not necessarily great singers and the public will still be drawn to it like bears to honey. It may soon consume the entire season. La Traviata requires only one outstanding performer – the soprano who sings the title role. The Met has several sopranos who can do justice to the role. Aida is so masterfully constructed that it can work even when subjected to a risible production featuring singers who have not mastered Verdi’s style. But the rest of the master’s works require four or more star singers if they are to garner an enthusiastic audience. There just aren’t enough of these stars to go around.
The Met has another problem. It insists on doing expensive new productions of new or nearly new operas that the public usually rejects. Even if a new work does well the first time around it doesn’t age well.
The Met is faced with changing tastes, bad decisions, and accidental circumstances. It’s in a hole and can’t stop digging.
I saw Domingo but couldn’t hear him. Very tiny voice
Very sad to read this, but the analysis rings true (though I think there’s a tendency to underrate “today’s singers” in comparison to those of years past).
What seems particularly upsetting is the flailing about with productions–doing that awful new Aida when there was a perfectly decent one; a horrid Tosca that had to be quickly replaced (by a very handsome staging); the Sonnambula, as you’ve written, is another example. Not sure why Lucia and Carmen had to be set in a savagely-imagined contemporary USA, but the singing was good enough (in my opinion) to try and overlook the stagings.
I’m worried for the Met’s future, since New York City seems poised on the brink of a more-dangerous-than-usual experiment. Of course, I wish them well.
How is it tge Board is not hold accountable, and them not holding Gelb accountable? Not only for his horrible decisions about the operas to be performed, but choosing completely ignorant directors to stage the operas, with zero understanding of tge music, or even the libretto? Can t remember the name of the genius who staged Donizetti s funny elisir, with some violence, because he said, the crook has a line about patriotism … obviously, the guy never heard of Samuel Johnson s “patriotism being at times the last refuge of scoundrels” – or listen to Donizetti s music. Then how quickly was the penniless fraud promising millions to tge Met and Gelb and the board falling for him – forgotten? As to Netrebko – pathetic , ignorant decision. Met had no problems Nazi party member Schwarzkopf become a Met star, or regularly performing Strauss – who dedicated songs to Goebbels as I recall. Anyway, La Scala made since Gelb decision Netrebko as the house star, opening its seasons yearly. And filling the seats at Roh, Bastille, Berlin, etc. while the Met stays embarrassingly empty – even with tickets given away. Who is holding this board filled with social butterflies accountable? They obviously do not fill the Met coffers.