We live in a country where, if you are a financial institution engaged in criminal misconduct that brings a national economy to its knees, not only do you suffer no punitive measures whatsoever BUT money collected from the coffers of taxpayer revenue remitted by the population you’ve screwed over goes to compensate you for any money you’ve lost and make sure you wind up with even more control over said national economy.
But, on the other hand, if the New York City Opera has a seven million dollar deficit, it’s painted as an irresponsible rogue element that is just getting what it deserves if it goes belly up.
And a pissy billionaire who happened to be mayor of New York City could give a great cultural institution the back of his hand and go blithely on his way.
How much money, speaking only in brass-tacks terms for the moment, does the demise of NYCO take out of our municipal economy?
Not to mention, of course, the hit to the city’s prestige, its artistic-quality-of-life.
I do not like the fact that at the Met Gelb is targeting (scapegoating?) the unions. I know, it’s the current thing. Everybody’s doing it. But if the unions are going to take a hefty pay cut, then the stars ought to as well. They need the Met as much as the Met needs them.
If the stagehands get a little less overtime, so be it. But the idea that we should be shocked, shocked, that a chorister or musician might make $200,000 a year is ridiculous. These people have invested years and untold amounts of money to train to the level of mastery they’ve attained. Both chorus and orchestra are highly improved from years past. They work extremely hard and they ensure that the Met maintains a standard of excellence.
And how many 24-year-olds on Wall Street make much more?
But the fact is, it’s not Gelb or the unions that are the culprit. It’s the Sisyphean task of putting on grand opera in this country, which is virtually the only one in which opera if almost entirely privately-funded. And no matter how many concessions the unions may eventually make, nor how much Gelb indeed may offer to cut his own salary, nor whether Juan Diego takes less money, those problems are not going to go away.
Nor is opera going to have an easy time surviving in a media environment in which it now receives almost no coverage from network TV or “mainstream” print publications.
Nor is it going to have an easy time surviving in an education environment which has eliminated music and art education from the public school syllabus.