New York’s Woke Metropolitan Opera is now facing layoffs and big budget cuts despite all the organization’s efforts to bring its finances back in line.
The Met has already slashed its schedule of performances to save money, dipped deeply into its endowment fund, and even tried to enter into a deal with Saudi Arabia, the latter of which is still being discussed, according to the New York Times.
But apparently it has not been enough to bring the struggling performance company’s finances in line. Now, the Met has announced that it will begin laying off workers, cutting existing staff salaries — including that of top executives — and cancelling one of its large productions for the 2026 season in its next desperate steps to attain fiscal solvency.
The first major move the opera company is taking is to further reduce its schedule from 18 performances to 17 by cancelling its planned production of Modest Mussorgsky’s 1887 opera Khovanshchina, an opera following the rise of Russian Czar Peter the Great and his efforts to modernize Russia beginning in the late 1600s.
The Met, which has been struggling since the pandemic, is also laying off some 22 staffers who hod administrative posts as well as cutting the salaries of 35 executives who make more than $150,000 a year. The 35 executives will see cuts of between four and 15 percent in their salaries. In addition, General manager Peter Gelb and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will also take pay cuts. Gelb, though, claimed that the salary reductions are temporary and full pay may be restored as soon as next season.
The cuts are expected to save the Met $15 million this year and another $25 million next year, Gelb says.
Unfortunately for the Met, negotiations for its hoped-for deal with Saudi Arabia have ground to a halt. Met officials had agreed to play three weeks each winter at the Royal Diriyah Opera House near Riyadh in exchange for the Royals subsidizing the company in the U.S. However, Gelb has reported that the expected infusion of cash is now up in the air.
“I understand the Saudis have had to recalibrate their budgets because of their own economic concerns,” Gelb said, the Times reported. “I’ve been assured that it’s going to go forward. But we have been waiting for some time.”
While the Met badly needs the life-saving cash, the deal raised many an eyebrow thanks to Saudi Arabia’s dismal record of human rights abuses.
Gelb defended his deal making, though, saying, “All the democratic governments that I know of are engaged in business with Saudi Arabia.” And added, “I have to put the survival of the institution of the Met first… I don’t operate the Met according to my personal feelings on every issue.”
With the Saudi deal on hold, though, Gelb noted that more belt tightening is needed.
“We are being as entrepreneurial as possible,” Gelb exclaimed. “What is clear is that we have to come up with new business models. It’s true for all performing institutions, but the costs are so great for running an institution like the Met, that it is necessary to find new ways to fund it.”
Along with that “entrepreneurialism,” the Met is considering selling naming rights to a corporation and even selling the two murals by famed artist Marc Chagall, which famed auction house Sotheby’s has valued at $55 million.
The Met’s choice of performances may not be helping its bottom line. Most recently, its production of the opera Carmen came under fire for being reworked to feature ICE agents harassing an OnlyFans prostitute and being set on the U.S.-Mexico border, instead of being set in 1820s Seville, in Spanish Andalusia, like it was originally written.
In April, it appeared that Gelb’s “big bet” plans to reimagine the Met’s performances was not as financially successful as he had hoped. And some reviewers marked the revamped Carmen as “a misguided modernization.”
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