NEW YORK \u2014 Despite encouraging box office figures for the season’s first half, the financially strapped Metropolitan Opera scaled back its 2026-27 schedule with its fewest productions in at least 60 years.<\/p>\n
The Met announced Thursday it will present 17 productions, its lowest total in a non-truncated season since the company moved to Lincoln Center in 1966. There are just five new stagings, and revivals of three popular operas account for 71 of the 187 individual opera performances (38%): Puccini\u2019s \u201cTosca\u201d and \u201cLa Boh\u00e8me,\u201d and Verdi\u2019s \u201cAida.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes more sense for us, and this is an experiment \u2014 to present these works in extended runs,\u201d Met general manager Peter Gelb said. \u201cAnd by double-casting them, it also is more economic in terms of how many different shows are playing in one week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ticket sales of 72% this season are up from 70% in the first half of 2024-25.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, it\u2019s back to pre-pandemic levels,\u201d Gelb said. \u201cWe\u2019re not grossing as much money because the average price per ticket is slightly less than it was, because we have a younger audience and more discounted tickets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mason Bates\u2019 \u201cThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,\u201d which opened the current season in its world premiere, sold 84% of tickets in a success rate that prompted the Met to schedule an extra four performances this month.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my goals at the Met is to stimulate new audiences with new works,\u201d Gelb said. \u201cThis one was one of the most successful we\u2019ve presented so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKavalier\u201d was followed by an English-language holiday time staging of Mozart\u2019s \u201cThe Magic Flute\u201d (83%), Bellini\u2019s \u201cI Puritani” (82%), Puccini\u2019s \u201cTurandot\u201d (77%), Puccini\u2019s \u201cMadama Butterfly\u201d (74%), \u201cThe Gershwin\u2019s Porgy and Bess\u201d (73%), and Donizetti\u2019s \u201cLa Fille du R\u00e9giment,\u201d Bizet\u2019s \u201cCarmen,\u201d Bellini\u2019s \u201cLa Sonnambula\u201d and \u201cBoh\u00e8me\u201d (68% each).<\/p>\n
Lagging were Mozart\u2019s \u201cDon Giovanni\u201d and Strauss\u2019 \u201cArabella\u201d (64% each) and Giordano\u2019s \u201cAndrea Chenier\u201d (57%).<\/p>\n
Next season opens on Sept. 22 with a new production of Verdi\u2019s \u201cMacbeth\u201d starring soprano Lise Davidsen and directed by Louisa Proske.<\/p>\n
Composer Missy Mazzoli\u2019s \u201cLincoln in the Bardo,\u201d based on George Saunders\u2019 novel, has its world premiere on Oct. 19 and stars Christine Goerke, Stephanie Blythe, Anthony Roth Costanzo and Peter Mattei in a staging directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.<\/p>\n
There are three new-to-the Met productions: Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s \u201cJen\u016ffa\u201d starring Asmik Grigorian in a Claus Guth staging that debuted at London\u2019s Royal Opera in 2021 (Nov. 16); Puccini\u2019s \u201cLa Fanciulla del West\u201d with Sondra Radvanovsky and SeokJong Baek in a Richard Jones staging that premiered at the English National Opera in 2014 (Dec. 31); and the company premiere of Kevin Puts\u2019 \u201cSilent Night\u201d featuring Elza van den Heever and Rolando Villazon in a James Robinson staging first seen at the Houston Grand Opera last month (March 8, 2027).<\/p>\n
A gala with more than two dozen stars is scheduled for May 25, 2027, to mark the company\u2019s 60th season at Lincoln Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a kind of golden age of opera singing,\u201d Gelb said. \u201cThe only difference between today and 30 or 40 years ago is that 30 or 40 years ago opera was much more in the cultural mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLincoln\u201d was not included among the eight simulcasts to move theaters due to a post-pandemic drop in audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cA title that is unknown, even with whatever maximum efforts of marketing and publicity that are done, will underperform to a degree where it is not really financially viable for the movie theaters or for us,\u201d Gelb said.<\/p>\n
A Simon McBurney staging of Mussorgsky\u2019s \u201cKhovanshchina\u201d was postponed as part of budget tightening that included 22 layoffs and 4-15% temporary salary cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, I have to wear two hats,\u201d Gelb said. \u201cI have to wear my artistic hat, and I have to wear my financial hat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next season will be Gelb’s 20th anniversary season as general manager, and he says he intends to retire when his current contract expires in 2030.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat certainly is our current plan,\u201d Gelb said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Despite encouraging box office figures for the season’s first half, the financially strapped Metropolitan Opera…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3046,288,157,232,75,84,83,158,9,24,63,905,3047],"class_list":{"0":"post-140651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-ap-a-wire","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-lifestyle","12":"tag-manhattan","13":"tag-manhattan-headlines","14":"tag-manhattan-news","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-theater","20":"tag-wires-bot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}