By Zachary Woolfe 6/05/12 5:32pm

Peter Gelb. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan Company)

High Drama at Season’s End: Peter Gelb Bludgeoned His Critics, and Fabio Luisi Had a Too-Light Touch

By the third week in May, the Metropolitan Opera’s 2011-12 season had been over for a week or so. Not that an opera company’s summer is really a break. Most of July is spent planning, and by August preparations are underway in earnest for the start of the season in September. The final week or so of May, however, is a reliable respite. The phones slow down; staff members usually get away for a few days. Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 2/01/12 5:47pm

Opera

Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde and Jay Hunter Morris as Siegfried in Wagner's “Götterdämmerung.” Photo by Ken Howard. Courtesy Metropolitan Opera

Dead Ringer: Robert Lepage’s Götterdämmerung Leaves Something To Be Desired, Echoes Zeffirelli Spectacles

I hope it will spoil no one’s six-hour evening to learn that Robert Lepage’s production of Götterdämmerung, the fourth and final opera in Wagner’s Ring cycle, ends the way Mr. Lepage’s cycle began.

Although it was only September, 2010, it seems a long time ago that the Metropolitan Opera’s 2010-11 season opened with Das Rheingold, Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 9/08/10 4:22pm

Maestros! Divas! Unions! Another Met Season begins

This season at the Metropolitan Opera will be dominated by the story of a maestro and a diva. Opening night, Sept. 27, music director James Levine returns to the podium to conduct Wagner’s Das Rheingold, as the Met releases a box set of 32 CDs and 21 DVDs–22 complete operas in all–in honor of his Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 2/10/10 12:39am

The Curious Case of Peter Gelb

Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, is not a man given to self-revealing gestures. In interviews he comes across as studiously bland—undramatic and unconfessional. He is soft-spoken, and while he is by all accounts an exacting, detail-oriented boss, he’s not a performer, nor does he wear his heart on his sleeve.

Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 2/04/10 7:42pm

The Metropolitan Opera Brings Back Joseph Volpe

Under Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera  has been focused on the fresh and the new, streaming out spiffy high-def broadcasts of its elegantly marketed new productions. But this week brings to the company a blast from the past with the return of a familiar face. Joseph Volpe, who served as the Met’s general manager from Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 12/09/09 1:15am

The Real Offenbach

Operagoers got a flashback to 1998 at the Metropolitan Opera last Thursday. It was the beginning of the second act of the Met’s new production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, directed by Bartlett Sher. The curtain rose on an almost bare stage. Against a background of rich, dark blue, a white panel slowly began to Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 12/01/09 11:23pm

The Diva Gets Domesticated

Anna Netrebko is a very good, very famous singer. It feels almost heretical to ask her about the way in which her dazzling career might, at some point, wind down. But at the pinnacle of success, still young at 38, she has already given the matter some thought.

“What would I like to do Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 10/07/09 4:46pm

The Met’s Messy Season Limps Into Third Week of ‘Boos’

“Questo giorno di tormenti!” the characters exclaim at the end of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro: “What a day of troubles!”

At this point, Peter Gelb would probably gladly settle for just one day. Instead, his problems, which began opening night, are stretching into the third week of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2009-10 season, the first Read More