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The Metropolitan Opera Will Remain Closed Until At Least Fall 2021
By
Ben Yakas
Published Sep 23, 2020
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Sep 23, 2020
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The Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts organization in the U.S., announced today that it has canceled its entire 2020-2021 season, and won't return until the fall of 2021 at the earliest.
In a press release, the Met explained the decision was based on the advice of health officials who helped them determine that it wouldn't be safe for them to resume its usual rehearsals and performance schedule until a vaccine available and widely in use, and wearing of masks and social distancing was no longer a requirement.
“The inability to perform is taking a tremendous toll on our company,” said the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb. “Our future relies on making strong artistic strides, while collectively reducing our costs until the audience has fully returned,” he said, noting that it was unlikely audience levels would be close to normal levels until well after the pandemic is over.
“But we have faith that the members of our company and the public will understand why and how our return to normalcy must be managed," he continued. "Meanwhile, we will continue with all of our digital media initiatives, which have kept the Met connected with our audiences here and abroad throughout the closure.”
The Met, which has been closed since early March, furloughed around 1,000 full-time employees, including all of the opera’s musicians, chorus singers, and stagehands, at the start of the pandemic. In an interview with the Times, Gelb told them that the Met would offer to begin paying its work force again during this period "if the unions agreed to leaner multiyear contracts." He didn't specify the amount of the cuts, but noted, “These are not normal times. These are pandemic times. There’s going to be a residual fallout from this that is going to go on for several years.”
The Met did lay out their ambitious plans for the 2021-2022 season to build anticipation in hopes that people will buy tickets ahead of time, especially those who bought tickets to now-canceled events who may be convinced to exchange them for the newly announced upcoming operas.
Those plans include three contemporary Met premieres, which they note is the most since 1928, starting with the Opening Night presentation of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, on September 27th, 2021. It marks the first time The Met will mount an opera by a Black composer. The season will feature five more new productions: the Met premieres of Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice, Brett Dean’s Hamlet, and the original five-act French version of Verdi’s Don Carlos, and new stagings of Verdi’s Rigoletto and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.
In other efforts to make The Met more diverse, the company has also named three Black composers—Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery, and Joel Thompson—to the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater New Works commissioning program. They also announced the commission of African American visual artist Rashid Johnson to create large-scale artworks that will be on display inside the opera house during the 2021–22 season.
They're also planning on earlier 7 p.m. curtain times, as well as several operas with reduced running times and some family-friendly productions like Cinderella, in an attempt to make productions friendlier to an audience that they expect will still be cautious because of the virus. “We’re trying to send a signal that the Met wants to meet the times in which we live head on,” Gelb told the Times. “Given all the calls for greater social justice and diversity, we think it’s appropriate, after being off for a year, to come back in a way that demonstrates the Met’s social responsibility.”
The Met's announcement is sure to have an impact on other similar cultural industries and how they are planning for the immediate future, including Broadway and the live performance industry. Currently, there are still strict COVID-19 guidelines in New York about the amount of people who can meet for outdoor events. Indoor gatherings for performances are for the most part not allowed, though one Times Square venue was able to quietly reopen with limited capacity live shows thanks to a loophole in the rules because they don't have a liquor license and aren't considered a theater.
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metropolitan opera
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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