The Met, under new management
'06-'07 season looks fairly solid
The Metropolitan Opera announced its 2006-'07 season earlier this month and also provided a few glimpses into the future beyond that, and the sky has not fallen.
Wags have had great fun predicting what the regime of general-manager-elect Peter Gelb might bring ever since the controversial impresario was named in 2004 to take over from Joseph Volpe at the end of the current season.
Early in his career, back in the late '70s, Gelb, 52, headed the Boston Symphony Orchestra press office, and later he worked in artists' management and as a producer of the Metropolitan Opera telecasts. He arrived as president of
In fact, next season looks pretty solid, and some of the initiatives are promising, even if most of the detailed planning can't represent Gelb's handiwork because of the lead time involved; the first season he will oversee in its entirety is 2009-'10. But he has worthy objectives: lower pricing and an investigation into the potential of new technologies, as well as a commitment to the traditional musical values represented by Met music director James Levine, to cutting-edge theatrical values, and, most of all, to new work.
Next season brings six new productions, including a world premiere (Tan Dun's ''The First Emperor," with Placido Domingo in the title role), the first Met production of Richard Strauss's ''Die Aegyptische Helena" since 1929 (with Deborah Voigt in the title role), and such standbys as ''The Barber of Seville," ''Madama Butterfly," ''Orfeo ed Euridice," and Puccini's ''Il Trittico." A sign of the times in this era of operatic economizing is that the Strauss production is borrowed and ''Butterfly" is a coproduction with two other companies.
On the other hand, there are points of interest in casting or production in almost all of the programming. ''Orfeo," for example, will be directed by choreographer Mark Morris with mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the title role.
There is a mix of Baroque opera (two works), Mozart (two), bel canto works (two), Verdi (four), and Puccini and other verismo composers (10). There is one French opera (''Faust"), one Czech opera (''Jenufa"), one Russian opera (''Eugen Onegin"), Ponchielli's gloriously absurd ''La Gioconda" (back for the first time since 1990), and surprisingly, only one Wagner opera (''Die Meistersinger"). Most of these will be sung by casts drawn from the ranks of the world's most important singers.
Levine conducts eight operas next season and three Carnegie Hall concerts with the Met orchestra. His Met contract runs through 2010-'11, and he has agreed to remain at least two seasons beyond that in order to preside over a new production of Wagner's epic ''Ring" cycle, which will be directed by Robert Lepage. In the Met's Feb. 13 press conference, Gelb announced that he has offered Levine a life contract (in 2013 Levine will turn 70). Last week Levine said by telephone from Symphony Hall that he was grateful for the offer but added, ''Man proposes, and God disposes."
One important change Gelb has made is restructuring ticket prices, reducing the cheapest tickets to $15 (11 percent of the house); 82 percent of the tickets are frozen at the current rates, and 7 percent of the most expensive seats will be even more so.
Looking to create an operatic equivalent for ballet's ''Nutcracker" as a holiday cash cow, the Met will present an abbreviated version of Mozart's ''The Magic Flute" at ''family-friendly" prices.
Other ideas sound familiar. Many of the leading operatic stage directors of recent years have worked at the Met during the Volpe era, but not the most controversial ones. Peter Sellars will make his belated debut with John Adams's ''Dr. Atomic" in the 2008-'09 season, and Patrice Chereau comes the season after. Gelb seems to be taking a leaf from the book of his famous predecessor Sir Rudolf Bing by bringing in directors from outside the world of opera. Bartlett Sher (''The Light in the Piazza") and Jack O'Brien (''Hairspray") will direct ''The Barber of Seville" and ''Il Trittico," respectively. There may even be a few performers from outside the world of opera, which is also nothing new. Broadway's Kristin Chenoweth may sing Samira in a revival of John Corigliano's ''The Ghosts of Versailles" in 2009-'10, and why not? The part was written as a vaudeville turn for mezzo Marilyn Horne in the last seasons of her Met career.
Back in the 1950s, the Met experimented with pay-per-view performances delivered to movie theaters, but neither the technology nor the public was ready for the experiment. Gelb wants to try it again.
The next major commission has gone to Newton's Osvaldo Golijov, who will compose his first large-scale opera for the 2010-'11 season. And there is an interesting program to develop new works in collaboration with the other Lincoln Center theaters. Among the artists invited to participate in this program are Adam Guettel, Jake Heggie, Michael John LaChiusa, Wynton Marsalis, Rachel Portman and Nicholas Wright, Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner, Michael Torke and Craig Lucas, Rufus Wainwright, and Boston's Scott Wheeler. Everyone on this list has a track record, although not necessarily in opera, and one wonders whether all of them have the combination of theatrical instincts and compositional chops to meet the challenge of this art form. Being famous for something else is not necessarily the best credential for creating an opera, but you never know how a project will turn out.
Other future details are still obscure. Will some of Levine's more challenging favorites such as Berg's ''Lulu" and Schoenberg's ''Moses und Aron" reappear on the schedule? Still, promised productions of Janacek's ''From the House of the Dead" (directed by Chereau), Thomas's ''Hamlet," and Rossini's ''Armida" don't make it sound as if the Met is dumbing down a whole lot. It may prove difficult for Gelb to fulfill his promise to deliver more leading conductors, although he has announced that Riccardo Muti will make his belated debut in the 2009-'10 season and that his old friend Seiji Ozawa may come to conduct Tchaikovsky's ''Queen of Spades" in 2008-'09.
Gelb's job isn't easy, and the challenges he faces are byno means new, and by no means specific to the Met or even to opera. He must build a new audience amid a changing society while retaining the loyalty and support of the company's core constituency. There is no way that he, or anyone else, could succeed in attaining every objective, but he does seem to have started off on the right foot.
