Is the fat lady preparing her last performance?

Awful lot of empty seats...

There's trouble at the Met.  Big trouble.  All of the labor contracts expire on July 31 and, with the almost draconian cuts in salary and benefits proposed by Peter Gelb, the chances of a work stoppage and (at least) a delay to the upcoming season becomes more and more inevitable.

The reasons for the Met's problems are many-fold, but seem simple to me:

• It's a 4,000 seat house.  Attempting to sell that many tickets (at a median price of $153) week in an week out is impossible.  Even heavily discounted productions have had little to no effect on the bottom line.

• Since Mr. Gelb's hiring, the budget of the Met has increased over 50%, to a figure exceeding
  
  $300 million.  Much of these costs were undoubtedly born by the LePage production of Wagner's Ring, more boondoggle than success.  And then there was the $165,000 poppy field for a recent run of Borodin's Prince Igor.  Brisk ticket sales and even the most aggressive fund raising efforts cannot match that kind of drain on financial resources.

• There is the Klinghofer debacle, which is offered in better light in this article from the New York Observer's  Marty Peretz.

• CEO Gelb's solution?  Slash labor costs--all of them.  Rewrite the work rules.  Granted, the Met Orchestra player's make in excess of $200,000/year.  That said, they are among the hardest working orchestral musicians in their field, expected to play productions of multiple operas each week.

• The Met's chorus is also slated for serious salary and benefit cuts.  When one reads of the average $200,000 salary of a chorus member, it does seem more than a bit extreme.  But the actual salary figures indicate a base salary of approximately $100,000.  The extra money is earned in the "chorus heavy" productions championed by Mr. Gelb.

• Of course, one of the company's biggest draws, conductor James Levine, was out with various injuries and health ailments for a lengthy period of time and now conducts from a specially designed podium which raises his wheelchair to the appropriate height.  Given the recent past, one has to wonder how long Levine will be able to continue; fortunately, Fabio Luisi is waiting in the wings and he has already proven himself more than capable of the job.

Only time will tell whether or not the Met might go the way of its lowly counterpart, the New York City Opera, which was shuttered last fall.  While Gelb states that the audience for opera is ever-shrinking, the Vienna State Opera continues to sell virtually every ticket.  Chicago's Lyric Theater, riding on the coattails of a successful run of The Sound of Music, continues to operate well in the black.  (While one might question musical theater on an opera stage, it is good to remember that Oscar Hammerstein himself started as a opera manager himself, running one of the early houses in New York City.

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While on the subject of money, it's always fascinating when Drew McManus (of Adaptistration) begins his yearly compensation reports of orchestra CEO's, conductors, and musicians.  The chief executive list hit the blogosphere today and some of the numbers are telling.  The entire report is here, but a few highlights appear below:

Average executive compensation:  $267,297.

The "Big Five:"

• Boston: $622,938
• Chicago: 577,189, a steal when considering that outgoing CEO Deborah Rutter just brought in the two largest gifts--totaling $32 million- in the history of the organization.
• Cleveland: 584,498
• Philadelphia: 610,446
• New York: 912,858 (I could live on that!)

Michael Henson, who ran roughshod over the Minnesota Orchestra? 619,313.

Debra Borda

The top? Debra Borda at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who has orchestrated (pardon the pun) one of the greatest turnarounds in the business:  $1,751,039.  Of course she got the Disney Hall built and acquired the services of a certain young Venezuelan conductor.  Maybe we need to start calling it the "Big 1" and the "Not-So-Big 5."