Good formid York. This is the Metropolitan Opera. Managers. Thank you, Peter Gelb, for being here. I'm really happy and excited to talk to you and I have lots of questions to ask.
Thank you very much for having me.
Well, I will try my best to answer them.
Okay, we start here. There's nearly no rules here, but there's one rule. We always start with either an easy or a tough question. What would you like first?
The first then is the last time you've been to Hamburg State Opera and why?
That's a very difficult question actually because I've been to the Hamburg Opera but it's been years and I honestly don't remember what I saw the last time I was in Hamburg. I apologize. It was many years ago.
Oh, so it wasn't that spectacular. I guess.
You know, unfortunately having run the Met now for 16 years I've seen so many performances here and abroad that not every one of them stands out. Hamburg Opera is obviously a very important company. And the Met has a very good relationship with its German audience. And certainly I speak to German opera companies frequently. I just for some reason have not in recent years had any contact with Hamburg Opera but that doesn't mean it couldn't change in the future.
Okay. Then the question I thought might be different is what's your best way to treat a tenor who is in a foul mood?
To treat a tenor who has a foul mood on a working day. Well, you know, my policy is to be very sympathetic to performing artists because they are incredibly courageous creatures who have to deal with incredibly difficult circumstances. I mean this, you know, opera singers are really the great vocal athletes of our time and particularly on the stage of a house the size of the Met, which is larger than probably any opera house in the world, the challenges are even more daunting. So I have only admiration for tenors and sopranos and other vocal type singers. I believe very much in my philosophy in dealing with artists my whole life is that the ends justify the means, which means that I don't mind a tenor in a foul mood as long as the tenor can sing well. And I am there and my team at the Met is there to support tenors whether they're in good moods or bad moods.
Okay. But let's get serious now. I just wondered what was it like to close the world's largest opera house. You have about 3,800 seats in your house for more than a year trying to survive, ordering all these severe cuts, and then opening up again. What was that like?
Well, certainly the entire pandemic has been a challenge greater than anything I've ever faced. And certainly I am not alone in the world in facing the unbelievable challenges and difficulties that have affected everyone in every walk of life. You know, the Met as you know is very different from the German subsidized houses subsidized by the state. We had no choice if the Met was going to survive other than to when we closed down to also have to reduce our expenses dramatically. You know, the government support in the US is equal to about 2% of our entire budget. So we have very minimal government subsidies, a few hundred thousand a year on average. And although we did receive one grant from the government late in the pandemic of $10 million but our annual operating costs are $300 million a year. And there was no way we could and two-thirds of those costs are the payments, the fees paid to all of our unions. The Met union employees, the orchestra, the chorus, the stage hands are all incredibly hardworking and very proud of what they do for the Met. I'm very proud of their work. You know, I think it's fair to say the Met's orchestra and chorus are amongst the greatest in the world. But when we had to close down we had to furlough many of them and this was very difficult for the members of the company. We would not have survived if we hadn't cut our expenses in that way.
Do you think that the damages are so severe that they are beyond repairable or is there a way back to normal?
Well, first of all we're not in a normal world right now. There is no normal. The new normal is very abnormal. But I can tell you this, you know, that since the Met came back together and rehearsals began for the chorus in August and for the orchestra at the end of August and September, we have started performing. We've put on many many performances and we've already opened nine or 10 different operas. Certainly I would be wrong to say that there are not some hard memories of the people who suffered through the pandemic without pay. Although we were trying our best to support them with healthcare and other ways. And then ultimately for the months before we reopened with partial payments of their fees. But I think what happens at the Met, and this could be true of other companies as well, is that once people started working together again that became the first and foremost important thing in their minds. Everyone is working really hard at the Met. And I think the rapport between the orchestra and the chorus and our wonderful music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, is as powerful and positive as ever. And they're delivering great performances every night. So I think that you could say that there may be some residual negative feelings but I think overall the attitude of everyone working inside the company is one of proudly producing great performances.
But what's the mood of the art scene in New York in general? I mean you over here you mentioned it, federal and state governments they tried to help artists financially and in the US arts were generally lost, they were on their own. And what's it like to live with that kind of pressure now and what's the mood, how do your colleagues feel in other theaters? Is there a general perception of we're getting back on our feet again somehow or is there just fear and anxiety and nobody really knows what to do?
Well, I mean the fact is we are on our feet. We're performing and unlike German houses which are either half empty or one quarter full, we actually have full capacity in the Met right now and there are performances that are selling out with all of our seats full with very strict mask mandates. You know, one of the differences I think between the Met and some of the German and Austrian companies is that we from the very beginning felt the only way back was to secure the safety and health of the company in the most rigorous fashion. So we have an absolute mandatory vaccination policy. Nobody is allowed inside the opera house, whether they be an employee or an audience member, without being fully vaccinated. And yesterday we announced a booster mandate as well which goes into effect next month. And we have a very rigorous testing procedure in place that we're conducting together with Mount Sinai Hospital. So because of that the company members and the audience members feel safer inside the Met than perhaps in most places in New York City. So there's a feeling of optimism I think on the part of the company that they can continue to perform and audiences can come. However, with the rise of the new variants, we don't know what will happen. So that certainly is a cause of concern. And there is some, I think until information about the new variant is revealed fully and people understand exactly what it means to their lives, there will always be uncertainty and then there will be a next variant. However, the one thing we need to know is that ultimately we have to find a way to live in this world with COVID because it's not going away. And that is the sole source of anxiety and depression in New York City right now as it is in most parts of the world.
Do you more now more than ever envy your European colleagues and especially your German colleagues because they don't play one piece for weeks. They change the menu all the time. They're supported by the state. That's happened in a way.
Well, you know, I certainly admire my German colleagues, but I wouldn't want to trade places with them. I'm very happy running the Metropolitan Opera, which I think is one of the greatest theaters in the world. And you know I think that we actually are, I think the energy and excitement around the Met right now is very high because particularly because of the new work that we're emphasizing at the Met. You know when I first came to the Met 15, 16 years ago I was faced with a very conservative audience. And it was a slow build to be able to emphasize more and more new productions and new work.
Right now this season at the Met we're actually presenting premieres of three contemporary pieces. Two of which were commissioned or partly commissioned by the Met. Fire Shut Up in My Bones which opened our season. The first opera by a Black composer to be presented at the Met. Terence Blanchard's work which is a huge success and sold out its performances and brought a new diverse audience to the Met and made the Met really part of the mainstream cultural conversation in New York City in a way that it has never really achieved before. Also just now tonight we're ending the run of a brilliant new work by a genius young composer who's only 31 years old, Matthew Aucoin, his work Eurydice which was a spectacular success. And later in the season we're presenting Brett Dean's Hamlet which I saw about five or six years ago in Lyon and immediately decided to bring to the Met. And we're also presenting the first Don Carlos ever in French at the Met. Of course that's not in the same category. It's different. The point is that we're, and right now this weekend we're opening an English-language family-friendly production of Massenet's Cendrillon which we of course in English we're calling Cinderella which is 90 minutes long and it's in its abridged version that we're presenting. And with a charming production by the French director Laurent Pelly with a top cast. When we do family entertainment whether it's our English-language Magic Flute that's playing right now which includes Rolando Villazón as Papageno which is a huge hit with the audiences or whether it's this new Cinderella, we don't dumb down the casting. We cast as if we're putting on an adult opera on the highest possible casting level. So we have Isabel Leonard in the role of Cinderella. Emily D'Angelo is one of the rising star mezzo-sopranos in the role of Prince Charming. We are engaged in making opera more accessible and more available to more people. And this is making the Met that much more exciting and interesting cultural institution. And the people who are inside the company feel very excited by that. They like the fact that people are coming to the Met and enjoying these new experiences.
Since you mentioned Terence Blanchard's opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, that's the first opera by the first African-American composer since the opening of the Met about 140 years ago. And you put Gershwin's Porgy and Bess on the menu. And so this great subject of Black Lives Matter and wokeness and diversity, does this also help at the box office? Are the people that have been complaining about an opera house being so white, so middle-aged, so centered on European traditions, do they also buy tickets or is this still a hard thing to sell to them?
Well, as I mentioned a moment ago, Fire Shut Up in My Bones sold out. So the answer is quite obvious. It attracted a new audience. I would say 16 years ago it might not have been possible for me to put on programs like this. Although when I first arrived at the Met, one of the first composers I contacted was Wynton Marsalis who I had worked with on many projects in my days at Sony and before I came to the Met and who I asked to write an opera and he's still thinking about it. So you know, the idea of having a Black composer write an opera is certainly not a novel one, but it was the first time a Black composer's work was performed at the Met in the case of Terence Blanchard's opera. And I do not believe in wokeness for the sake of wokeness. I believe in great art. And certainly though, if Black Lives Matter and changing changes in society give us the flexibility to broaden our programming, I'm all for it. I just don't believe in jumping through wokeness hoops as a standalone exercise.
So is the Met going to be able to pick a white singer for an Aida or for Otello? Or do you think you might even be forced somehow to always take the colored singer for roles like this in the future? Because otherwise everybody's going to get insane in minutes.
No, I think that we will cast the best singers for the roles that are available. And we're relatively colorblind in our casting. What we did do about four or five maybe six or seven years ago is we stopped using racial makeup. We don't, if we cast a white tenor, we're not going to put dark in his skin. And that's something that we put into place some years ago. And I think that's right. I think that's the right decision to make. You know, the thing about the Met also is that there are very few singers who, because the Met is so big, the space, it is harder to cast at the Met than in smaller European houses. The available number of top singers for certain parts like Otello is very limited. Our audiences are used to hearing the best voices in the world and we're not going to compromise that. Fortunately, there are a number of terrific African-American and other Black singers who we do cast at the Met and who also sing at European houses. One of the breakout successes this season was Ryan Speedo Green who is a member of the Vienna Opera ensemble and who has sung several different roles on the stage of the Met. He had strong supporting roles in both Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Porgy and Bess and will be singing more standard repertoire in the future. And certainly singers like Latonia Moore or Angel Blue are of the highest quality and can and will sing Aida and sing other verismo roles too.
I mean you have to think commercial and the Met has to offer all the big names all the time. How do you plan a season when you have this pressure in your neck that people are always demanding the same stars or no names for their money and nobody seems to have the patience anymore to wait for someone to build up a career, to build up a repertoire, to just get into the tracks and take the time it needs.
Well, you know, the thing is it's difficult for a singer to arrive fully formed on the stage of the Met. They have to develop somewhere and but it's not to say that we haven't, you know, we have. My philosophy in casting is to bring singers along. Even though scheduling of major roles is sometimes done as far in advance as four or five seasons, because of that if we believe in a young singer we will cast them in multiple roles over a series of years and see them develop. I mean the classic example of that is Anna Netrebko who when she first came to the Met obviously was unknown and she had already made her debut before I got there. She sang in War and Peace when it was under Gergiev in I think 2005 when I became the head of the Met in 2006. I knew it was pretty obvious that she was brilliant young talent. And I made a point of meeting her and signing her for two operas a season for every season going forward and watched her along with the audience grow and develop into this amazing dramatic soprano. You know, but early on in her career she was singing soubrette roles, lighter roles that fit her early career voice as a coloratura soprano really.
You don't have to mention any names, but what were the weirdest ideas or wishes you've heard from singers? Like, I just want the green M&M's or I don't want the temperature higher than I don't know, whatever. I need this driver to bring me. Are there any ideas where you have thought that are you out of your mind? I mean, you're singing great, but this is insane. Is there any examples you can give without giving any names?
