This week on Rhode Island Public television,
WSBE: (Comcast 294, Cox 808, Full Channel 109, and Verizon 478)
Saturday, March 21, 2015, 8:00pm
Sunday, March 22, 2015 3:00am
Monday, March 23, 2015 12:00am
Great Performances at the Met
Borodin's
Prince Igor
PRINCE IGOR - Borodin's defining Russian epic,
famous for its Polovtsian Dances, comes to the Met for the first time in nearly
100 years. Dmitri Tcherniakov's new production is a psychological journey
through the mind of its conflicted hero, with the founding of the Russian
nation as the backdrop. Star bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov takes on the
monumental title role, with Gianandrea Noseda conducting.
SYNOPSIS: http://www.metopera.org/metopera/season/synopsis/prince-igor?customid=786
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Metropolitan Opera
Board to
Have a New President
By MICHAEL COOPER
MARCH 6, 2015 6:09 PM
The Metropolitan Opera, which has been
grappling with serious financial challenges, will soon have a new president of
its board of directors.
The current president and chief executive of
the board, Kevin W. Kennedy, has decided not to stand for re-election at the
Met’s annual meeting in May, and the board’s executive committee has
recommended Judith-Ann Corrente be nominated to succeed him, according to an
email sent to board members on Friday afternoon that was obtained by The New
York Times.
The changing of the guard is being made as the
board embarks on a new campaign to double the size of the Met’s endowment fund,
which was been weakened by larger-than-usual withdrawals in recent years and is
now smaller than a single year’s operating budget.
Ms. Corrente, who is the co-chairwoman of the
Met’s new fund-raising campaign, joined its board in 2007 and currently serves
as its secretary. Mr. Kennedy, a former Goldman Sachs executive, has been the
president of the board since 2011, leading during a tumultuous time in which
the Met, facing big expenses and weakened box office receipts, turned to its
workers for concessions.
“After standing with management and my fellow
board members through the historic negotiations of this past summer, it is time
for me to pass the leadership baton,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement in which
he expressed support for Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager.
Ann Ziff will remain the chairwoman of the
Met’s board.
The Met, the nation’s largest performing arts
organization, faces big challenges. Its deficit swelled to nearly $22 million
last year on an operating budget of $315 million. While the Met has become a
prodigious fund-raising machine in recent years, its board members warned last
year that donations could not continue to rise faster than the company’s costs.
After acrimonious labor talks, the company’s
orchestra, chorus and other unionized workers all accepted their first pay cuts
in decades, but the cuts were not as deep as those that were initially sought
by management. In the fall some of the Met’s top stars — including Anna
Netrebko, Joyce DiDonato, Plácido Domingo and Renée Fleming — agreed to
voluntarily cut their fees to help the company in its moment of need.
Mr. Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in
an interview that the company was on target to have a balanced budget this
year. He praised Mr. Kennedy for his work on behalf of the Met during the past
four seasons. “These years, with the added pressure that is on grand opera,
maybe every year should count for two,” Mr. Gelb said.
Even with all the cost-cutting, financial
risks remain. The Met has once again had to use the enormous Chagall paintings
that hang behind its famous arched windows as collateral to secure its line of
credit with Bank of America. And Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the
company’s credit rating in December, citing the company’s “weakened financial
profile.”
The Met is hardly alone: A number of opera
companies around the nation and the world have struggled recently, including
New York City Opera, which declared bankruptcy and closed; the San Diego Opera,
which threatened to shut down last spring but was revived after an outcry; and
several European companies that have seen cuts to the government subsidies they
rely on.
Mr. Kennedy has been nominated to become an
honorary director of the board. In his statement he praised Mr. Gelb for
“maintaining the Met’s high artistic quality and giving close attention to its
financial challenges.”
Ms. Corrente also serves on the boards of the
Lawrenceville School, the Lang Lang International Music Foundation and Emily’s
List.
William C. Morris, the chairman of the
executive committee of the Met’s board, praised both of them in the email that
was sent Friday afternoon to board members.
“We offer our thanks to Kevin for his years of
dedicated service on the board and, in particular, for steering us successfully
through the most recent union negotiations,’’ he wrote, “and our appreciation
to Judith for her willingness to help guide the Met forward in the coming years.”
A version of this
article appears in print on 03/09/2015, on page C3 of the NewYork edition
with the headline: Change Ahead in Board at Metropolitan Opera.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/metropolitan-opera-board-to-have-a-new-president/?_r=0
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The New Yorker:
Peter Gelb and
A Fight at the Opera
by JAMES STEWART
The New Yorker has just published an assessment of General Manager Peter Gelb's handling of the Met Opera’s financial problems; the link is above his photo.
Here is a link to his profile on the Met web site if you want a little background:
http://www.metopera.org/metopera/about/whoweare/gelb.aspx
Here is a 2013 New York Times assessment of Gelb:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/magazine/the-epic-ups-and-downs-of-peter-gelb.html?pagewanted=all
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Here is a 2013 New York Times assessment of Gelb:
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OPERA ON THE INTERNET
WITH
DAVE D' AGUANNO
Several internet radio stations this coming
Saturday afternoon (March 21) will be carrying the LIVE broadcast from the Met
of Massenet's "Manon" with soprano Diana Damrau as Manon + tenor
Vittorio Grigolo as Des Grieux.
(www.wrti.org/)
French Radio, on the other hand, will be
offering a LIVE performance from Lyons of one of Gluck's most popular operas:
"Orphee & Eurydice."
(http://sites.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/accueil/)
In addition to recent performances (and even a
video) of Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor", Radio 4 (the
Netherlands) is bringing us yet another performance of this delightful comedy.
This time it's a performance from Lausanne. (BTW, Radio 4's website is being
very secretive about when this performance was actually given.)
(http://radio4.nl/)
However, if comic operas are not to your
liking, you can always tune in to German Radio this Saturday for a broadcast of
Czech composer Zdenek Fibich's incredibly tragic opera from 1884 -- "The
Bride of Messina" -- which has been described as "the most
Wagnerian" of all his operas. The performance being aired took place in
Magdeburg last Saturday (March 14).
A
performance from Brussels of Wolfgang Rihm's 1978 opera "Jakob Lenz"
is now available for streaming, with subtitles available in either French or
Dutch:
http://www.lamonnaie.be/en/mymm/related/event/426/media/2248/Jakob%20Lenz%20-%20Wolfgang%20Rihm/
You should be able to access the video anytime
within the next few weeks.
Enjoy!
DAVE
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The Met
Saturday afternoon radio broadcast March 21, 2015
12:30 pm ET*
12:30 pm ET*
Massenet's
Manon
Villaume; Damrau, Grigolo, Braun, Testé
*Note earlier starting time
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No opera on
WGBH this week!
WGBH this week!
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