NY Times Prints Article Spotlighting Met Opera Financial Hardship One Day Before Company Reopens Season with Sold Out Production
By Francisco SalazarOn March 9, the Metropolitan Opera will reopen for the back-half of its 2025-26 season. At the core of that reopening will be its new production of “Tristan und Isolde,” headlined by Lise Davidsen and selling so well that another show had to be added.
While that would suggest a wave of positivity for the company heading into the final three months of the season, that energy has been dampened by a story published by The New York Times exactly one day before.
In a story titled “The Metropolitan Opera’s Desperate Hunt for Money,” the renowned publication reported that Peter Gelb has scrambled to find money to sustain the Met and keep it afloat. The article even notes that Gelb reached out to richest man on the planet, Elon Musk (also notable for slashing lots of government funding at the start of the current President’s term), by promising to help the billionaire produce an opera in outer space.
According to an interview with the Times, Gelb said, “I wrote to him and I said, ‘I would love to talk to you about the Met. We would love to be part of your Mars expedition, and we’ll produce an opera for you on Mars.’”
However, Gelb was rebuffed by Musk, who never replied.
The article also revealed that Gelb’s salary of $1.4 million last year was only cut by $150,000 even though 22 workers were laid off and others who made over $150,000 were also cut.
Among the other revelations made in the article were initiatives that Gelb was contemplating as he attempted to right the ship. The General Manager was floating the idea of shifting “Live in HD” more toward at-home streaming to accommodate new viewing habits and is in talks with arts and music schools that may be interested in paying to make the Met their “East Coast laboratory campus.” He also noted that he is developing a “new pitch for donors, one that focuses on how in a complicated, factionalized world, the Met is a source of “cultural enrichment and enlightenment.”
The article also noted that Gelb is still sure the Saudi Arabia deal will go through and said that it is “is necessary to cover a ‘substantial portion’ of the Met’s financial needs through at least 2032 and to avoid further tapping the endowment.”
Additionally, Gelb is waiting for a possible $100 million or more gift from a deceased donor who left the Met a portion of the proceeds from the upcoming sales of two companies.
However, for the all the forward thinking the article did note the company’s constant tapping into the endowment as well as the credit downgrade. It also emphasized that next year, millions of dollars of short-term debt will be due. Additionally, box office receipts are down as are “Met in HD” revenue, which is down more than $10 million.
To seemingly put the nail in the coffin, the article even quotes Anne Midgette, former chief classic music critic of The Washington Post, who states that she believe Gelb should have left years ago.
“I think they need to get rid of him and find somebody else because they shouldn’t be in these kinds of dire straits and draining the endowment is not the answer,” Midgette says in the piece.
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