Pressure blow in the world of opera.
While in France, the State releases emergency aid to establishments suffocated by inflation, the world of opera is also suffering across the Atlantic.
The prestigious Metropolitan Opera in New York has announced that its next season will have just 18 shows, five fewer than its current 2022-2023 lineup.
An almost unprecedented austerity for the establishment.
"The opera has rested on its laurels for many decades and is now paying the price
," Met Opera chief executive Peter Gelb said on Wednesday to the American news agency Associated. Press.
The establishment has faced moribund ticket sales since its reopening in September 2021, after months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Emergency solution faced with the melting of entries, the reduction of the Met program is also accompanied by a greater opening to contemporary creations.
The 2023-2024 season of American opera, which will begin on September 26, will thus have seven new creations out of the 18 scheduled shows.
New and accessible works
In all, nearly a quarter of the performances scheduled for this next season will consist of works created since 1986. The boards of the Met Opera will notably welcome in the coming months new stagings of Florencia
en el Amazonas
, a composition by the Mexican Daniel Catán dated 1996, as well as
El Niño
, a creation by American John Adams created in 2000.
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For the direction of the Met, the regeneration of the public of the opera will necessarily pass by the increased presentation of the contemporary repertoire.
"Our main objective is to present more new and accessible works which have proven to appeal to a wider, younger and more diverse audience
," assures Peter Gelb.
We need to focus our efforts on operas, old and new, that we think will sell well
. ”
And if the operation should not, in the end, revitalize the entrances?
Could the Met Opera's programming plummet to its historic abyss in the 1980-1981 season, when a monster strike reduced the number of its shows to fourteen?
The general manager of the opera willingly disperses this fear.
“We haven't figured out what the ideal number of shows would be yet, and maybe we never will.
But I don't imagine a number lower than 18,”
said Peter Gelb.
The twilight of the Met is not yet for tomorrow.