Some might call the Metropolitan Opera’s current predicament a textbook example of schadenfreude. But if this major cultural institution closes, we’ll all lose.
Here’s the backstory: Back in June, in response to national events and concerns over racial justice, the Met released a statement affirming its support for the cause of “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, And Belonging.” In their statement, the Met pledged to enact some of the following changes:
• The Opera must commit to hiring composers and conductors of color in the operatic and symphonic seasons each year.
• The Opera must commit to hiring soloists of color during each Carnegie Hall season.
• The Opera must commit to hiring people of color in upper administration.
All wonderfully inclusive and on-brand for an institution already steeped in social justice activism. Except for one problem: By the time this statement was released, the musicians who work in the orchestra hadn’t been paid in months, with no projected paycheck in sight. The road to bankruptcy is paved with good intentions, and bankruptcy is where the Met is headed if it continues to prioritize virtue-signaling over art. Promising to make all of these hires when payroll is frozen was a terrible decision.
Musicians haven’t been paid since April, but the Met recently announced that they will start paying a new salary for a “Chief Diversity Officer.” The New York Times explains, “Marcia Sells has been brought on to rethink equity and inclusion at the largest performing arts institution in the United States.” Is this the last of the “diversity” hires for an organization that is already delinquent on the payroll for their existing employees. The looming question: how does the Met survive? A blog covering classical music explained the dire straits: “In March, the orchestra’s musicians say they were furloughed with only two weeks’ pay. By October, a third of the orchestra said they had been forced to quit New York as their home, with the 2020-2021 season canceled and no prospect of a salary.”
“We have now been unpaid for 10 months and counting,” the ensemble said in a statement. “The Metropolitan Opera is an outlier in our industry; every other major orchestra has been compensated since the very beginning of the pandemic.”
An article in the New York Post alleges that the opera company used “budget musicians” for its pay-per-view New Year’s Eve gala, without telling donors or ticket holders. “It is artistic malpractice and unacceptable that non-Met musicians are being hired to perform under the banner of the Metropolitan Opera,” Adam Krauthamer, president of the musicians union AFM Local 802, said in a statement. He continued, “Let’s be clear: hiring non-Met musicians under the banner of the Metropolitan Opera and outsourcing the orchestra’s work is an attack on the Met as an artistic institution and an insult to the very artists who work there.”
The top line is clear: The Met can’t pay its musicians, one-third of whom have fled New York, but it can take on an executive salary to ensure its programming, which thus far only exists online, is “diverse.” Management has signaled that they’re unwilling to pay their actual talent. Nor is there even a projected date for the resumption of paid in-person events that have a hope of refilling the Met’s coffers and restarting payroll.
How they’re spending and where they’re cutting corners speaks volumes about the Met’s leadership. Sadly, it’s clear that actual art is less important to these custodians of culture than is virtue signaling. That doesn’t bode well for the Met as an institution or for the future of the fine arts in New York and across the nation.
