I’ve touched on this topic several times before, but as the Met’s future becomes more uncertain every year, I thought a revisit would be worth a few minutes. Basically, there are only two types of problems that confront mankind and his institutions – money and craziness. Of course, the two are often joined as tightly as Siamese twins.
The Met’s difficulties are mostly due to insufficient funds, but there is also more than a soupçon of nuttiness involved. After all, it’s an opera house we’re considering. The Met differs from European lyric theaters in that it does not receive a government subsidy. It has always relied on the generosity of others. It was founded in 1883 by a handful of very wealthy patrons and sustained through much of its history by patronage.
Gifts and grants have kept the house open ever since. The company once had a fundraising campaign that reminded potential donors that it lost $100,000 every time it raised the curtain. This was when $100,000 was real money. In a spasm of jejune pique, I suggested they not raise the curtain.
The Met receives indirect support from the government because donations to it are tax-deductible. The recent increase in the IRS standard deduction has resulted in fewer taxpayers itemizing deductions on their returns. The unintended consequence of the current tax law has disincentivized small and moderate donations to organizations like the Met. Collectively, the absent donations are a huge amount that arts institutions and their likes no longer receive in amounts equal to those of the past. On the other hand, current tax law allows elderly individuals with substantial IRAs to make large donations under very favorable taxation while still maintaining the increased standard deduction. The Met should vigorously target this cohort.
Obviously, the Met has to increase revenue or decrease expenditures – or both. Both fiscal remedies face numerous difficulties. The first way to increase income is to sell more tickets. As mentioned above, even if every performance were sold out, the Met would still have insufficient operating funds. But every little bit helps, and the solution to the Met’s problems requires multiple remedies.
The Met has an auditorium with 4,000 seats. It is the largest opera house in the world. By comparison, La Scala seats about 2,000. The Vienna State Opera House has a capacity of a little more than 1,700. The Met is in New York City, which has a population of about 20 million, counting its suburbs. Thus, its potential audience is large. But opera is a niche taste in the 21st century, so its real audience is much smaller. Also, New York offers many other forms of entertainment that compete with the Met for the recreational dollar. New York has lots of tourists, but relatively few of them are interested in opera.
Thus, the Met has to meet the tastes of those few who are interested in opera. The company says it feels obligated to support new works to its audience. Accordingly, it has been presenting about three modern operas each season, which, no matter how appealing to the cogniscenti, do not sell tickets like the great masterpieces that are at the core of the company’s repertory – those of Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, etc. These productions are expensive and are an unnecessary cost to the company.
In my opinion, the Met should not present any new work that has not proved itself at smaller companies. Alas, there are no such works being written today. There are only two composers since the end of World War II who have written operas that have entered the standard repertoire – Benjamin Britten and Francis Poulenc.
When you have a worn-out product that sells for a stunning price, you have a major problem. The highest-priced ticket at the Met sells for north of $400. An evening at the opera with dinner before or after the show, the expense of getting to and from the house can run around $1500. Even in New York, this is a lot to pay for a show that may bore you or that doesn’t feature world-class singers.
Which raises the next problem. While the company has many fine singers on its roster, only a few could be called superstars. A generation or two back, the house was full of extraordinary artists. The company’s ill-advised foray into international disputes hasn’t helped this dearth of great singers. Peter Gelb, the benighted general manager, fired the Russian Anna Netrebko, the world’s leading Verdi soprano, because she wasn’t sufficiently anti-Putin. Never mind that she had family living in Russia. Gelb then proceeded to hire a slew of good, but not great, Russian singers without regard to their opinions on international events. The reasoning, if any, behind this sequence is opaque.
The next problem, which likely has no solution, is the Met’s 15 or 17 unions. These bargaining units raise the company’s payroll to levels it cannot support.
A recent analysis in The Wall Street Journal reported that personnel costs at the Met consume roughly two-thirds of the budget and that the company has 15 unions representing more than 3,000 employees. If two-thirds of its $331 million budget goes to personnel, total compensation (salaries, overtime, pensions, health insurance, payroll taxes, etc.) is approximately: $331 million × 0.67, or $220 million annually.
Because the overwhelming majority of Met employees are represented by unions – the orchestra, chorus, soloists, stagehands, wardrobe, makeup, electricians, carpenters, scenic artists, ticket sellers, and many others – the unionized workforce probably accounts for well over 80% of personnel costs. These figures suggest that compensation attributable to union-represented employees is on the order of $175–200 million per year, including benefits and pension contributions.
Thus, there isn’t that much money to pay the cost of productions (new or old), soloists, and conductors. and other non-unionized creative personnel. With a product in less demand than in prior years, and not that much money to devote to art, the company may be in a death spiral.
Its demise would be a cultural disaster. But disasters are a regular feature of life. What is a preventative remedy? One doesn’t readily occur to me. I am a diagnostician, not a surgeon. That the Met needs major surgery is undeniable. But it needs even more than that. Singers who will fill the house, new works that will command both old and new patrons to attend the company’s shows, and fiscal policies that reflect financial reality are all required to make the Met the operatic powerhouse it once was. These and more are needed to right the company’s course. It may well be that it will have to collapse before it can be fixed.
