Metropolitan Opera will not raise the curtain until September 2021

Performances at the imposing Metropolitan Opera in New York were scheduled to start this September, but it will still take until September 2021 to hear the music and voices again from the stalls in the largest coliseum in the United States. As the general manager, Peter Gelb, lamented, in a video posted on the entity's website, the reopening plans - which had already suffered a first delay from September to New Year - have been definitively ruined.

"We regret to inform that, based on the recommendations of the health authorities that advise the Met and Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Opera has made the extremely complicated decision to cancel the entire program for the 2020-21 season," states the accompanying statement. to video.

“Due to the hundreds of artists rehearsing and performing in enclosed spaces and due to the wide audience we host, it has been concluded that it would not be safe for the Met to resume activities until the use of a vaccine is frequent, immunity has been established. , and masks and social distancing are not a mandatory requirement ”.

The Metropolitan Opera, which was inaugurated 137 years ago and has a capacity of 3,800 seats, has now been closed for six months, since the city authorities warned of the uncontrolled advance of COVID-19 infections in March.

Accumulated losses in these months amount, according to

, to 150 million dollars and a thousand employees have not been paid since April in a forced suspension of their jobs.

Tickets worth $ 20 million had been sold for the season that has been suspended, but the theater, which accompanied the announcement of the final cancellation with the presentation of the 2021-22 programming, expects that money to be reinvested in tickets for the following year.

The reopening of the coliseum will bring a program with a clear desire to connect with the social and cultural demands that are shaking the US The first opera to be performed at the post-covid Met Opera will also be the first composed by an African-American, Terence Blanchard, who it is represented there.

In the 2021-22 season there will also be five conductors, performances will be brought forward and works directed at families will be presented to try to renew the audience, whose average age is estimated to be 57 years.

The coliseum is also pending a negotiation with the powerful unions that represent the workers, and has had to face three and a half million compensation to the conductor of the orchestra, James Levine, who was fired after being involved in accusations of sexual abuse .