Metropolitan Opera Announces Layoffs, Salary Cuts & Postponement of a New Production
By Francisco Salazar(Credit: Jonathan Tichler / Met Opera)
The Metropolitan Opera has announced that it is laying off workers, cutting salaries of its top-paid executives, and postponing a new production from its 2026-27 season.
The company’s General manager Peter Gelb told the New York Times that he was forced to take these steps due to concerns with the Saudi Arabia deal, under which the Saudis agreed to subsidize the Met in exchange for the company performing at the Royal Diriyah Opera House near Riyadh three weeks each winter. He added that although he remained confident that the deal would happen, his decision to make cuts was due to concerns about the future of the Saudi arrangement.
He said, “I understand the Saudis have had to recalibrate their budgets because of their own economic concerns… I’ve been assured that it’s going to go forward. But we have been waiting for some time.”
According to the New York Times, the Met is considering selling the naming rights to its theater and is also considering selling the two Chagall murals, valued at a total of $55 million by Sotheby’s, that were commissioned in the 1960s to hang in the building’s Grand Tier. The paintings would however, remain in the theater, per a condition that would be part of the sale.
Additionally, next season the Met will reduce its offering to 17 productions, down from 18, postponing Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” which was set to be directed by Simon McBurney and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
The Met also said that it was laying off 22 people who hold administrative posts and 35 executives who make more than $150,000 a year will see cuts in their pay of four percent to 15 percent. Gelb and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will also take pay cuts. However, the general Director said that the salary cuts would be temporary and suggested that full pay would be revived in 2027.
Last summer, the Metropolitan Opera announced a deal with Saudi Arabia that would bring the company more than $100 million over five years (the New York Times piece states that it would be $200 million over eight years). At that time Gelb noted that it would cover a “substantial portion” of the Met’s financial needs through at least 2032. Additionally, it would allow the company to no longer dip into its endowment for emergency funds. However, it was met with controversy due to the Human Rights Violations in Saudi Arabia. Gelb at the time defended the decision telling the New York Times, “All the democratic governments that I know of are engaged in business with Saudi Arabia.” He added, “I have to put the survival of the institution of the Met first… I don’t operate the Met according to my personal feelings on every issue.”
This latest news comes after the September announcement that Gelb would be extending his tenure with the Metropolitan Opera through 2030.
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