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      Met Opera to Mandate Booster Shots for Staff and Audiences

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      It is the first major performing arts institution to require boosters, as concern mounts over rising coronavirus cases and the spread of the Omicron variant. The rule will take effect Jan. 17.The Metropolitan Opera announced Wednesday that it would require all eligible adult employees and audience members to get Covid booster shots in order to enter the opera house, making its safety measures stricter than those on Broadway or at other venues.The Met is the first major performing arts organization in the city to announce a booster-shot mandate that will apply to audiences as well as staff members; the new rule will take effect Jan. 17. The policy was announced as concern about rising caseloads and the spread of the Omicron variant is mounting: The average daily number of coronavirus cases in the city has more than doubled over the past two weeks.“We think we should be setting an example,” Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, said in an interview. “Hopefully we will have an influence on other performing arts companies as well. I think it’s just a matter of time — everyone is going to be doing this.”It is not the first time that performing arts organizations, eager to reassure audiences that they could safely visit theaters, have imposed virus prevention measures that went beyond government mandates. When Broadway theaters announced over the summer that they would require audiences to be vaccinated and masked, it was several days before Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City would impose a vaccine mandate for a variety of indoor spaces, including performing arts venues.Since the Met reopened after losing more than a full season to the pandemic, it has required that staff members and patrons be fully vaccinated to enter the opera house. But Gelb said that it had become “obvious” to him that even stronger safeguards were now necessary.“It’s of paramount importance that the audience members and employees feel safe when they enter the building,” he said. “To me, there is no question — this is the right move.”Since November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended booster shots — either six months after people receive a second Pfizer or Moderna shot, or two months after a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.When the Met’s new rules take effect Jan. 17, people eligible for booster shots will be required to have them to enter the opera house. (There will be a short grace period: People will be allowed in unboosted if the performance falls within two weeks of the date they become eligible for boosters. People who are not yet eligible for their booster shots will still be allowed in.) Inside the opera house, people will be required to wear face masks, except when they are eating or drinking in the limited areas where that is allowed.Met officials said that they reviewed their new policy with leaders of the various unions that represent its workers in advance of Wednesday’s announcement and described the union response to the rules as “very positive.”Len Egert, the national executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists, said that union officials had determined that at the Met, “boosters are warranted,” and had subsequently bargained to make sure its members’ rights were protected.Adam Krauthamer, the president of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, said his union “applauds the Met’s plan to make vaccine boosters mandatory” and called the move “a necessary step forward to ensure the public’s safety and keep N.Y.C. as a beacon of live performance.”The company has adopted strict safety measures since reopening; in October, choristers wore masks backstage during a performance of “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” Todd Heisler/The New York TimesIt was not immediately clear whether other arts institutions would follow the Met. Gelb said he had informed the leaders of Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center that the Met would soon be adding a booster-shot mandate.Synneve​ Carlino, a spokeswoman for Carnegie Hall, said late Wednesday afternoon that officials there were “currently looking at boosters, but have not yet put new requirements into place.” The New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center did not immediately say whether they would change their Covid policies. The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4U.S. surpasses 800,000 deaths. More

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      Yannick Nézet-Séguin Is Now New York’s Conductor

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      After facing anger during a prolonged labor dispute, the Met Opera’s music director has returned to the podium, emphasizing new work.The set for “Porgy and Bess” had been pushed to the back of the Metropolitan Opera’s stage on a recent Wednesday morning, and in front, lines of chairs and music stands had been set up. The company’s orchestra and chorus were coming together for the first time with the cast of “Eurydice” — a recent adaptation of Sarah Ruhl’s wistful play, with music by Matthew Aucoin — to run through the score in what’s known as a sitzprobe.Inside the vast and almost empty Met auditorium, Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, typed on his laptop near the back of the theater. Ruhl was in the house; Mary Zimmerman, the director of the production, which opens on Tuesday, watched, too. Aucoin dashed around, listening for balances.At breaks, he rushed down the aisle to the pit to confer with the leader of any sitzprobe: the conductor. Here that was Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, who offered the ensemble bits of counsel, sometimes asking for delicacy and transparency (“more French in approach”), sometimes for lyricism (“violas and cellos, you could sing a bit more”).The orchestra flew through one breathless passage in the second act, making a gallop to the final burst. “Ecstatic and chaotic,” said Nézet-Séguin, 46, smiling from the podium. “Is this something we can do?”With the New York Philharmonic’s director a newly declared lame duck, Nézet-Séguin is entering an era as the city’s presiding conductor, the one whose artistic achievements blur into civic stature.Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesChaos has lately dominated: The pandemic shut the Met for a year and a half. During much of that period, its unionized employees — including orchestra musicians and choristers — were furloughed without pay as a stalemate over compensation cuts dragged on.But the response to the company’s return has been ecstatic. And at the center of it all — short and muscular, with close-cropped, bleached-blond hair and a taste for rehearsal athleisure — is Nézet-Séguin. Omnipresent and energetic, he has been one of the central figures in New York’s cultural re-emergence, and certainly the city’s most significant and visible classical musician at a transformative moment.Over Labor Day weekend, shortly after the Met reached a deal with its unions, he conducted Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony — the first notes the company had played together since March 2020 — in front of thousands outside the opera house. Audiences soon returned inside the theater to hear him lead a nationally telecast performance of Verdi’s Requiem, for the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11.Later that month, he began the Met’s season in earnest at the podium for Terence Blanchard and Kasi Lemmons’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” from 2019, the company’s first work by a Black composer. Nine days after that, he reopened Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra, of which he is also the music director, in the first of an astonishing nine dates for him at Carnegie this season. With the New York Philharmonic’s director, Jaap van Zweden, a newly declared lame duck, Nézet-Séguin is entering an era as the city’s presiding conductor, the one whose artistic achievements blur into civic stature.At the Met, he works from the ground-floor office once occupied by James Levine, who ruled the company for decades before being brought down by illness and allegations of sexual misconduct. Those troubles led Nézet-Séguin to ascend to the music directorship in 2018, two years ahead of schedule. Levine — who rarely led contemporary operas, let alone two in two months — died in March.When the Met’s unionized workforce was furloughed during the pandemic, some employees were angry that Nézet-Séguin was not earlier and louder in support.Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesThere has been a major change to the office. At the start of a recent interview there, Nézet-Séguin mimed tearing down a set of bookshelves that had blocked the view of Damrosch Park.“It feels symbolic,” he said. “It is to me. It’s about windows open and the fresh air of our repertoire and approach.”Despite the bright new light and the celebratory spirit of the past month and a half, the pandemic has been a dark period for Nézet-Séguin. During labor struggles, a music director’s position — closely connected to the players, but at the same time part of the administration — is intensely uncomfortable. There were musicians angry that Nézet-Séguin, who did not comment publicly on the negotiations until March, just after the orchestra agreed to begin accepting partial pay, was not earlier and louder in support.“It is a position that is unenviable,” Gelb said in an interview. “And one I hated to see him in. I’m used to catching fire during these disputes, and I hated to see him get it, too. I tried to keep him out of it; it was unfair for him to be in the middle of it. But I was not very good at protecting him.”The experience was unsettling for an artist whose rise to the top of his profession has been swift and sunny, and who is unused to hostility from musicians. (They tend to venerate him: “He’s the greatest conductor I’ve ever worked with,” said Harold Robinson, who is retiring as the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal bass after 26 years.)“I didn’t know what to expect coming in,” Nézet-Séguin said of the orchestra’s first rehearsal after the furlough ended. “I said very little at the beginning. I said: ‘We lost many people. We lost members of our company. We lost people in our families, our friends.’ And the first notes were Verdi, actually. We just played it through. Let’s put all our emotions in this. And it helped.”Nézet-Séguin leading a rehearsal for the Met premiere of Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice.”Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan OperaDavid Krauss, the Met’s principal trumpet, said in an interview: “There was some tension in the first half of the first rehearsal back. And by the second half, it was back to business as usual.”Not exactly business as usual. The pandemic, and the calls for racial justice that flared last year, fast-tracked the Met premiere of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” giving it pride of place on one of the highest-profile opening nights in the company’s history. The piece’s success — reviews were positive, four of the eight performances sold out, and the crowds were markedly more diverse than usual — has convinced Nézet-Séguin that works representing the experience of groups often marginalized in the classical canon, including Latinos and L.G.B.T. people, should be fixtures going forward.“This is showing us what we need to do,” he said, “and confirming what I’ve been wanting from Day 1.”But one question is whether, without the burst of publicity that accompanied the Met’s belated presentation of a Black composer’s work, new operas can hold their own at the box office. (To be fair, even classics have struggled to sell in recent years.) Test cases will come: While Nézet-Séguin has his eye on little-done corners of the repertory — he mentioned Gluck, Weber’s “Der Freischütz,” Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt” and Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” — he has decided that if the choice is between a rarity’s revival and a contemporary piece, the latter will get priority.“It should be at the expense, maybe, of some stuff I had wanted to bring back,” he said.“I had a lot of new pieces planned in the future,” Nézet-Séguin said. “But I was maybe thinking I would do one a year, or skipping some years. And now, no.”Jingyu Lin for The New York Times“We are reassessing all the operas I am going to be conducting,” he added, “because I don’t want this to be the exception, to do ‘Eurydice’ and ‘Fire.’ For me, this should be the norm. I had a lot of new pieces planned in the future. But I was maybe thinking I would do one a year, or skipping some years. And now, no.”Aucoin, the composer of “Eurydice,” said that Nézet-Séguin is a collaborator “to a degree that’s unusual for conductors.”“In the chaotic dance scene in Act I,” he added, “there’s this techno-esque line in the background, and my idea was that it should be only in the very bottom octave, the piano’s left hand and contrabassoons. I wanted it to be a pop song heard from another room. But it wasn’t registering. And he suggested we throw some bass trombone in there, and he was right.”On an early November afternoon in Philadelphia, Nézet-Séguin and his orchestra there presented an installment in the cycle of Beethoven symphonies they are also playing at Carnegie this season.Beethoven’s Second and Eighth framed “Sermon,” a suite of arias and spoken texts about race and struggle organized and performed by the young bass-baritone Davóne Tines. At its center is the calm, luminous sorrow of “Vigil,” written by Igee Dieudonné and Tines in memory of Breonna Taylor.New music can often feel randomly scattered onto an orchestral concert, added merely to give a progressive sheen to fundamentally conservative programming. But the mournful “Sermon” felt at home among the symphonies, both complementing and in tension with them, particularly as they were played by the Philadelphians with such graceful, sweet-not-saccharine polish and élan. Old and new, life and death, coexisted and enhanced one another.“That was the idea,” Nézet-Séguin said of Tines’s piece. “Giving him the space to tell us his story. I’m not a private, private person. I like to speak with you about my art; I like to go on television and share who I am as a person. But it’s not about me becoming more famous so that people give me attention. I’m not shying away from attention, but I want it to be helping the collective. I want to be the person who can help shed light on others.”“I’m not shying away from attention, but I want it to be helping the collective. I want to be the person who can help shed light on others.”Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesAt the end of February, Nézet-Séguin will achieve another repertory milestone at the Met, bringing Verdi’s “Don Carlos” there for the first time in its original French — rather than in the more common Italian, as “Don Carlo.” A few weeks later, as part of what is intended to be an ongoing collaboration between his two American institutions — he also leads the Orchestre Métropolitain of Montreal — he and the Philadelphia Orchestra will give the world premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s opera adaptation of “The Hours” in concert, before it is staged at the Met in a future season.The rebuilding of the Met is far from over. Eleven of its orchestra’s 96 regular full-time members retired or left their jobs during the pandemic. Should all be replaced? In what order? That is for Nézet-Séguin, in large part, to decide. And the company’s financial model, which keeps forcing the need for cuts and brinkmanship with the unions, is no closer to being permanently solved.“I can’t say we’re completely behind what happened last year,” Nézet-Séguin said. “We’re not. But at least these moments — this Verdi, this ‘Fire’ and now this ‘Eurydice’ — are helping everyone focus on what matters to us and how we can function together. And making a difference. It sounds cliché, but trying to make a difference in the world.” More

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      The Met Opera Races to Reopen After Months of Pandemic Silence

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      The company, which faced steep losses after the pandemic forced it to shut down on March 12, 2020, is working to lure operagoers back to its 3,800-seat theater. Tera Willis was backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, painstakingly adding strand after strand of salt-and-pepper hair to a half-finished wig — one of dozens she and her team were racing to finish in time for opening night later this month after the pandemic had kept performers from getting measured until mid-August.“I would love about six months,” Ms. Willis, the head of the company’s wig and makeup department, said. “We have six weeks.”The chorus was back at work, singing through masks.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesA performer warmed up at a rehearsal for Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which will open the season.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesIn the Met’s underground rehearsal rooms, chorus members were straining to project through the masks they must rehearse in, a few pulling the fabric a couple of inches from their face for a moment or two. Just outside its gilded auditorium, which has been empty since the pandemic forced the opera house to close a year and half ago, stagehands were reupholstering some worn red velvet seats. Beneath the arched entry to the opera house, an electrician was installing wiring to make some of the heavy front doors touchless.Reopening after the long shutdown was never going to be easy for the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts company in the nation. Unlike a Broadway theater, which must safely bring back one show, the Met, a $300-million-a-year operation, is planning to mount 196 performances of 22 different operas this season, typically changing what’s on its mammoth stage each night.The financial stakes are high: The Met, which lost $150 million in earned revenues during the pandemic, must now draw audiences back to its 3,800-seat opera house amid renewed concerns about the spread of the Delta variant. Will people return in force, after getting out of the habit of spending nights at the opera? Will the Met’s strict vaccine mandate — it will ban audience members under 12, who cannot yet be vaccinated — reassure operagoers, especially older ones? How much will travel bans hurt the box office, where international visitors made up as much as 20 percent of ticket buyers?The Met is warily watching sales. It has sold about $20 million worth of tickets for the season so far, the company said, down from $27 million at the same point in the season before the pandemic. Subscriptions, which have been steadily eroding at American symphony orchestras and opera companies in recent years, are down by about a quarter from before the pandemic, but officials expect more subscribers to renew when they feel safe about attending. Strong recent sales, and the speed with which the Met sold out an affordably priced performance of Verdi’s Requiem on Saturday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, offered hope that audiences will come back.The financial uncertainty led the Met to seek concessions from its unions, some of which will be restored if and when the box office approaches prepandemic levels. The ensuing labor disputes further complicated the reopening: The company did not reach a deal with its stagehands until July, delaying summer technical rehearsals, and only settled another, with its orchestra, late last month, removing the last major barrier to reopening.Riyo Mitsui, one of the Met’s wigmakers, at work.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSo now the company is gearing up quickly, preparing to marshal the forces of roughly 1,000 singers, orchestra players, conductors, dancers and actors scheduled to perform this season. It started with two free performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” outdoors at Lincoln Center last weekend; will perform Verdi’s Requiem on Saturday, its first performance back inside the opera house, a concert that will be broadcast on PBS; and it will finally open the opera season on Sept. 27 with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first opera by a Black composer. The company is hoping that “Fire” and another contemporary opera — “Eurydice,” by Matthew Aucoin — will draw new audiences. The whole organization is getting ready to reopen. Keith Narkon, a ticket seller, was with his colleagues behind the Met’s box-office windows, stuffing tickets into envelopes — and happy to be back after the virus had taken away their jobs for more than a year.In the box office, employees are getting the tickets ready for opening night.Krista Schlueter for The New York Times“It was just this numbness,” Mr. Narkon, a self-described opera fanatic, said of the long shutdown. As the opera house buzzes with preseason anticipation, there are still bruised feelings from the labor battles, but there is also a palpable sense of relief to finally be back in the building together and working again after so many months of unemployment checks and uncertainty.“You don’t realize how much you respect the job until you don’t have it,” said Phillip D. Smith, a stagehand who has worked at the Met for over 20 years, as he ripped the worn velvet off a seat cushion.“You don’t realize how much you respect the job until you don’t have it,” Phillip D. Smith, a stagehand who has worked at the Met for over 20 years, said as he reupholstered a chair.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesThe doors to the auditorium got a fresh coat of paint.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBut life backstage is still far from normal, as company officials keep a close eye on the Delta variant, and the steps they must take to keep the company and the audience safe..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The company’s vaccination mandate is so strict that an unvaccinated telecom worker who arrived for a job was turned away. A special patron’s entrance area has been turned into a testing center where people in rehearsals must get nasal-swab tests twice a week. And to keep audience members apart from the performers, the first two rows of seats in the auditorium will be blocked off through the end of the year.“On one hand, it’s frightening and frustrating to see the rate of infection,” said Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met. “But it’s so thrilling to see the possibility within grasp of actually opening performances.”Workers cleaned one of the stairways at the opera house.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSome bitterness lingers over the labor disputes, which were resolved when the company’s three biggest unions agreed to new contracts that cut their pay modestly, saving the company money by moving some workers to a different health care plan and reducing the number of guaranteed full-time members of the orchestra and chorus.In the props department, where scenic artists were working to create corn on the cob and a pat of butter for a Thanksgiving dinner in the upcoming production of “Fire,” Ryan Hixenbaugh, an artist, lamented that some of the work had been finished in California, where Met management outsourced work after locking out its stagehands in December in the fight over pay cuts. “We had the capability of making all the scenery for all of these operas here,” Mr. Hixenbaugh said.With the opera house empty for more than a year, there was sprucing up to do: Keishla Nieves cleaned a brass railing.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesWith no audiences and no crowds for a year and a half, there was no need for stanchions to direct people to the Box Office. But they will soon be put in service again.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSome stagehands made ends meet during the shutdown, and the lockout, by building outdoor shelters for the city’s new al fresco dining spots. Others got work in television production, which rebounded before live performance.When they returned to the Met in July, the stagehands found an enormous amount of work. For more than a year, the opera house had sat still, as if frozen in time. The decades-old machinery that makes the Met’s stage run was not built for such dormancy.Two scenic backdrops that had been hanging for months had fallen to the ground earlier in the year. The wheels on the Met’s wagon system — which is powerful enough to quickly shuttle its mammoth sets of Ancient Egypt, Imperial China or Fin-de-Siècle Paris on and offstage — were flattened by the weight of the sets that had been left on top of them. And parts of the fly system, made up of wire rope lines and riggings, had rusted.“To leave it sitting still for that length of time was terrifying,” said David Feheley, the Met’s technical director. “So many of these systems have lasted as long as they have because of constant attention.”Stagehands built sets backstage. When they returned to the opera house, they found that the stage machinery needed a great deal of maintenance work.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesTo accommodate all the urgent maintenance work, the Met’s technical rehearsals were pushed from the beginning of August to the end of the month. One opera, Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride,” was canceled.The orchestra saw 11 of its 96 regular full-time members retire or leave their jobs during the pandemic, according to the orchestra committee, which negotiates labor issues on behalf of the musicians. A number of veteran stagehands retired too.The company hopes the excitement of working together again will outweigh any residual resentment.“The Met is maybe slightly fractured,” Mr. Gelb said, “but it is a family.”The Met is planning 196 performances of 22 different operas this season, which means a lot of ironing.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesPaul Tazewell, the costume designer for “Fire,” said that it was odd not to be able to see the faces of performers, who have been staying largely masked.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAt this stage of the pandemic, it’s a family that can’t have any members under the age of 12, and not just in the audience. The Met’s performers cannot be young, either. In “Boris Godunov,” which is scheduled to open on Sept. 28, a part that is often sung by a boy soprano will be given to an adult mezzo-soprano. And in “Fire” — which is based on a memoir by Charles Blow, an Opinion columnist for The New York Times — a 13-year-old, Walter Russell III, will play the role of young Charles, who is supposed to be 7.“I have been trying to get into the mind of a 7-year-old kid,” Mr. Russell said.In the props department, scenic artists prepared a Thanksgiving dinner for the upcoming production of “Fire.”Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesTo reopen smoothly, the Met’s staff members still have numerous battles to wage.Everything from fabrics for costumes to machinery for stage lights to basic materials like plywood and steel are proving difficult to obtain because of pandemic supply-chain problems. And booking the international performers opera relies on has become a mess of unpredictable red tape, between visa troubles and virus-related travel restrictions.One of the few times performers can take their masks off these days is when they are being fitted in the costume shop, for photos that are taken to help designers take in the effect of each costume.“If there’s an unspoken feeling, normally I would be able to see that on a performer’s face, but I can’t access that,” said Paul Tazewell, the Tony-winning costume designer for “Fire.”A model of the “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” set.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBut, come Sept. 27 — if all goes as planned — the masks will come off, the Sputnik chandeliers will ascend, the curtain will go up and live opera will be back onstage.Zachary Woolfe contributed reporting. More

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      Met Opera Strikes Deal With Stagehands Over Pandemic Pay

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      The company now has agreements with two of its three largest unions, opening a path to reopening on schedule in September.The Metropolitan Opera has reached a tentative agreement for a new contract with the union that represents its stagehands, increasing the likelihood that the company will return to the stage in September after its longest-ever shutdown.The deal was reached early Saturday morning, and the union is planning to brief its leaders and members after the Fourth of July holiday, said a spokesman for the union, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The union and the company declined to share details of the deal, which must be voted on by the union’s members.The company’s roughly 300 stagehands were locked out late last year because of a disagreement over how long and lasting pandemic pay cuts would be. But the opera house is in desperate need of workers to ready its complex operations if it is to reopen in less than three months. The pressure on the talks increased as the two sides negotiated for nearly four weeks.The Met, which has said that it has lost more than $150 million in earned revenues since the pandemic forced it to close in March 2020, has asked for significant cuts to the take-home pay of the members of its unions. Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, has said that in order to survive the pandemic and prosper beyond it, the company must cut payroll costs for those unions by 30 percent, effectively cutting take-home pay by around 20 percent. Union leaders have resisted the proposed cuts, arguing that many of its members already went many months without pay.A spokeswoman for the Met declined to comment on the deal.Because of the Local One lockout, the Met outsourced some of its set-building work to Wales and California, a move that angered union members who struggled during the pandemic. Those sets have been shipped to New York City, where many hours of labor are still needed to get productions up and running.Of the other two major Met unions, one, which represents the orchestra, is still in negotiations. The contract with the other, the American Guild of Musical Artists, which includes chorus members, soloists and stage managers, saved money by modestly cutting pay, moving members from the Met’s health insurance plan to the union’s, and reducing the size of the regular chorus. The projected savings fall short of Mr. Gelb’s demand for a 30 percent payroll cut. More

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      Met Opera Protest: Union Rallies Against Proposed Pay Cuts

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      The Metropolitan Opera hopes to reopen in September after its long pandemic closure, but simmering labor tensions have called that date into question.As New York prepares for the long-awaited reopening of its performing arts sector, with several Broadway shows putting tickets on sale for the fall, it is still unclear whether the Metropolitan Opera will be able to reach the labor agreements it needs to bring up its heavy golden curtain for the gala opening night it hopes to hold in September.There have been contrasting scenes playing out at the opera house in recent days.On the hopeful side, the Met is preparing for two concerts in Queens on Sunday — the company’s first live, in-person performances featuring members of its orchestra and chorus and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, since the start of the pandemic. And it recently reached a deal on a new contract with the union that represents its chorus, soloists, dancers and stage managers, among others.But the serious tensions that remain with the company’s other unions were put on vivid display outside Lincoln Center on Thursday, as hundreds of union members rallied in opposition to the Met’s lockout of its stagehands and management’s demands for deep and lasting pay cuts it says are needed to survive the pandemic. The workers’ message was clear: their labor makes the Met what it is, and without them, the opera can’t reopen.The Met’s stagehands have been locked out since December. James J. Claffey Jr., president of their union, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, said that the season cannot open without them.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“That’s not the Met Opera,” said James J. Claffey Jr., president of Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents Met stagehands, pointing over to the opera house. “The greatest stage, the largest stage — it’s empty. It’s nothing without the people that are right in front of me right now.”Masked stagehands, musicians, ticket sellers, wardrobe workers and scenic artists packed the designated rally space, greeting each other with elbow bumps after more than a year of separation. They wore union T-shirts and carried signs with messages like, “We Paint the Met” and “We Dress the Met.” The same chant — “We are the Met!” — was repeated over and over throughout the rally.The protest made clear the significant labor challenges that the Met must overcome to successfully return in the fall.Although the opera season is not scheduled to begin until September, the company will need to reach agreements with Local One, which represents its stagehands, much sooner to load in sets and hold technical rehearsals over the summer. The Met has been hoping to bring a significant number of stagehands back to work beginning in June, but Claffey said union members were holding out for a labor agreement.The Met locked out its stagehands in December after contract negotiations stalled. The union has been fiercely opposed to the Met’s assertion that it needs to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent, with an intention to restore half of those cuts when ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels (the Met has said the plan would cut the take-home pay of those workers by about 20 percent).“Regardless of the Met’s plans, Local One is not going to work without a contract,” Claffey said in an interview. “There’s a lockout when you didn’t need us, but when you really need us, it’s going to transition from a lockout to a strike.”Although the Met recently struck a deal with the union representing its chorus, tensions remain high with the unions representing its orchestra and stagehands.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Met said in a statement on Thursday that it had “no desire to undermine” the unions it works with but that it had lost more than $150 million in earned revenues since the pandemic forced it to close, and that it needs to cut costs to survive. The statement said the Met had “repeatedly” invited the stagehands’ union to return to the bargaining table.“In order for the Met to reopen in the fall, as scheduled,” the statement said, “the stagehands and the other highest paid Met union members need to accept the reality of these extraordinarily challenging times.”The rally was organized by Local One, which represents the Met’s roughly 300 stagehands. Speaking outside the David H. Koch Theater because metal barriers blocked the path to the Metropolitan Opera House, union leaders railed against the monthslong lockout that has prevented its workers from returning to the Met in full force.“A lot of us stagehands have had to pivot or leave the industry entirely,” said Gillian Koch, a Local One member at the rally. “And we are showing up to say that is not OK, and we all deserve to have our careers after this pandemic.”Tensions rose even higher when the stagehands learned that the Met had outsourced some of its set construction to nonunion shops elsewhere in this country and overseas. (In a letter to the union last year, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, wrote that the average full-time stagehand cost the Met $260,000 in 2019, including benefits; the union disputes that number, saying that when the steady extra stagehands who work at the Met regularly, and sometimes full-time, are factored in, the average pay is far lower.)The stagehand lockout has not been absolute. Claffey said that at the Met’s request, he has allowed several Local One members to work at the Met under the terms of the previous contract, particularly to help the union wardrobe staff who are on duty.But although the Met has now reached a deal with the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents its chorus, it has yet to reach one with Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the orchestra. Both groups were furloughed without pay for nearly a year after the opera house closed before they were brought back to the bargaining table with the promise of partial pay of up to $1,543 per week.Adam Krauthamer, the president of Local 802, pointed out that because of the Met’s labor divisions, other performing arts institutions were ahead of the Met in reopening.“Broadway is selling tickets; the Philharmonic is doing performances; they’re building stages right before our eyes,” Krauthamer said in a speech at the rally. “The Met is the only place that continues to try to destroy its workers’ contracts.”The rally had the backing of several local politicians who spoke, including Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, and the New York State Senators Jessica Ramos and Brad Hoylman, who had a message for the Met’s general manager: “Mr. Gelb, could you leave the drama on the stage, please?” More

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      Met Opera’s Music Director Decries Musicians’ Unpaid Furlough

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      Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s letter to the company’s leaders urges them to “find a solution to compensate our artists appropriately.”Urging the Metropolitan Opera to compensate its artists “appropriately,” the company’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, sent a letter to leaders at the Met on Thursday saying that the many months its orchestra and chorus had gone without pay during the pandemic had become “increasingly unacceptable.”He sent the letter as the Met’s musicians were scheduled to receive their first partial paychecks since they were furloughed in April. Before this week, they had been the last major ensemble in the country without a deal for at least some pay during the pandemic. In addressing the players’ nearly yearlong furlough — and hinting at the tough negotiations ahead, in which the Met is seeking long-term pay cuts from its unionized employees — Nézet-Séguin was doing something rare for a music director: weighing in on labor matters.“Of course, I understand this is a complex situation,” Nézet-Séguin wrote, “but as the public face of the Met on a musical level, I am finding it increasingly hard to justify what has happened.”The letter was obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by its recipients, which included Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager; the leaders of the negotiating committees representing the chorus and orchestra; and members of the opera’s board of directors.“We risk losing talent permanently,” Nézet-Séguin warned in the letter. “The orchestra and chorus are our crown jewels, and they must be protected. Their talent is the Met. The artists of the Met are the institution.”The orchestra committee has said that 10 out of 97 members have retired during the pandemic as the ensemble has gone unpaid, a stark increase from the two to three who retire in an average year.“Protecting the long-term future of the Met is inextricably linked with retaining these musicians, and with respecting their livelihoods, their income and their well-being,” Nézet-Séguin wrote.The Met said in a statement that “we share Yannick’s frustration over the lengthy closure and the impact it has had on our employees,” and added that the company was pleased that its orchestra and chorus and others were now receiving bridge pay. The Met said all involved were “working together for new agreements that will ensure the sustainability of the Met into the future.”The Met, the nation’s largest performing arts organization, has said that since the pandemic forced it to shut its doors it has lost an estimated $150 million in earned revenue, and that it was seeking pay cuts from its workers, as many arts institutions have. The Met has been trying to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent — the change in take-home pay would be more like 20 percent, it has said — and has offered to restore half the cuts when ticket revenue and core donations return to prepandemic levels.Months into the furlough, the Met offered partial paychecks to its workers if they agreed to those cuts, but the unions resisted. At the end of the year, the Met offered partial paychecks on a temporary basis for simply returning to the bargaining table. Members of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents chorus members, dancers and others, accepted at the end of January and have been receiving paychecks for more than a month. The orchestra musicians voted to accept the offer this week. (The Met has locked out its stagehands, whose contract expired last year.)Nézet-Séguin wrote in his letter that he was relieved that both the musicians and the chorus members are now being paid, but added that “this is just a start.” The deal allows for temporary payments of up to $1,543 a week, less than half of what the musicians are typically paid.Nézet-Séguin was named the Met’s music director in 2016, when he was tapped to succeed James Levine, who led the company for four decades (Mr. Levine, who stepped down to an emeritus position because of health problems and was then fired two years later after an investigation into sexual abuse allegations, died earlier this month.)“I implore the fiduciaries of this incredible house to urgently help to find a solution to compensate our artists appropriately,” Nézet-Séguin wrote. “We all realize the challenges, economic and otherwise, that the Met is facing, and therefore I ask for empathy, honesty and open communication throughout this process.” More

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      The Met Opera’s Musicians, Unpaid Since April, Are Struggling

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      About 40 percent of the players have left the New York area, and a tenth have retired. Now the Met is seeking long-term pay cuts, and offering them partial pay if they come to the bargaining table.As the months without a paycheck wore on, Joel Noyes, a 41-year-old cellist with the Metropolitan Opera, realized that in order to keep making his mortgage payments he would have to sell one of his most valuable possessions: his 19th-century Russian bow. He reluctantly switched back to the inferior one he had used as a child.“It’s kind of like if you were a racecar driver and you drove Ferraris on the Formula One circuit,” Mr. Noyes said, “and suddenly you had to get on the track in a Toyota Camry.”The Metropolitan Opera House has been dark for a year, and its musicians have gone unpaid for almost as long. The players in one of the finest orchestras in the world suddenly found themselves relying on unemployment benefits, scrambling for virtual teaching gigs, selling the tools of their trade and looking for cheaper housing. About 40 percent left the New York area. More than a tenth retired.After the musicians had been furloughed for months, the Met offered them reduced pay in the short term if they agreed to long-term cuts that the company, which estimates that it has lost $150 million in earned revenues, says it will need to survive. When the musicians resisted, the Met offered to begin temporarily paying them up to $1,534 a week — less than half their old pay, but something — if they simply returned to the bargaining table, a proposal the musicians are weighing.Now the Met’s increasingly rancorous labor battles — it has locked out its stagehands, and outsourced some set construction to Wales — are adding more uncertainty to the question of when the opera house can reopen after its long pandemic shutdown.Joel Noyes, a cellist in the orchestra, reluctantly sold his treasured 19th-century bow so he could continue to make his mortgage payments. Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesThe toll on the players has been steep.Benjamin Bowman, 41, is one of the orchestra’s two concertmasters — a leader of the first violin section who serves as a conduit between players and maestros. He and his family moved to Stuttgart, Germany, where he took a temporary job with the state orchestra. Daniel Khalikov, 37, a violinist, has been struggling to make the $2,600-a-month loan payments for his two fine violins. Angela Qianwen Shen, 30, a violinist who is not able to collect unemployment because she is in the United States on a visa, picked up some translation work to make ends meet.And Evan Epifanio, 32, the orchestra’s principal bassoonist, put his belongings in storage in June and left the city for the Midwest, where he said he and his husband have been dividing their time between the homes of his parents and his in-laws.“I’m living in my in-laws’ basement at the peak of my career,” Mr. Epifanio said. “I’m a one-trick pony, and now I can’t even do that.”Over the past year, 10 of the orchestra’s 97 members have retired, a stark increase from the two to three who retire in an average year, said Brad Gemeinhardt, the chairman of the orchestra committee, which negotiates labor issues on behalf of the musicians. Prominent figures in the music world are sounding warnings about the peril the orchestra faces: Riccardo Muti, the revered conductor, said in a statement earlier this year that the “artistic world is in disbelief that the very existence of a great orchestra like the Met’s could be in danger and even at risk of disappearing.”The Met, which was financially fragile even before the virus, was forced to shut its doors on March 12, 2020, and it furloughed most of its workers, including those in its orchestra and chorus, in April. (It continued to pay for their health coverage.) In the fall, the Met presented an offer to its employees: it would resume partial payments in exchange for significant long-term pay cuts and concessions. The unions resisted. By the end of the year the Met orchestra was the only major ensemble without a deal to receive pandemic pay, according to the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians.Then, in December, the company locked out its roughly 300 stagehands after their union, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, rejected the Met’s proposed pay cuts. (In a letter to the union last year, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, wrote that the average full-time stagehand cost the Met $260,000 in 2019, including benefits; the union disputes that number, saying that when the steady extra stage hands who work at the Met regularly, and sometimes full-time, are factored in, the average pay is far lower.)Mr. Gelb said that the company had no choice but to seek cuts when the pandemic left it in a perilous financial situation.“Suddenly we had no revenue, we had shut our doors and we had to do immediate triage so that the company would not fall apart and fold,” Mr. Gelb said. “We are doing the best we can in terms of keeping the company viable so that they will have jobs to return to.”At the end of last year, the Met offered the unions that represent the orchestra and chorus an olive branch: reduced paychecks for simply coming to the bargaining table. The American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents choristers, dancers and others, accepted the arrangement in January, and its members are receiving paychecks. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians has not yet accepted the offer, Adam Krauthamer, the union’s president, said, but it is in the final stages of reaching a deal that the orchestra is voting on.Jeremy McCoy, who rose to assistant principal double bass while playing in the orchestra for 35 years, retired in May. Mr. McCoy, 57, said that he had been contemplating an early retirement, but not quite this early. When he realized that the Met’s furlough could last a long time, he said, he put in his papers, a decision that would allow him to begin collecting his pension rather than having his expenses eat into his savings indefinitely.Mr. McCoy said he was repelled by the idea of returning to an adversarial relationship between the musicians and management.“I don’t want to go back to big concessions and to a toxic environment,” he said.The opera house has been closed for more than a year, and the orchestra pit empty. Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe Met said it was seeking to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent — the change in take-home pay would be approximately 20 percent, it said — and that when ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels, it would restore half of what had been cut. The Met declined to disclose the current average pay of its musicians, but during the run-up to contentious labor negotiations in 2014, officials said that the players had been paid an average of around $202,000 the prior year.Lincoln Center, with the Met in the middle, has been eerily empty. Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesMany orchestras have reached agreements for substantial, lasting pay cuts, including the New York Philharmonic, whose musicians agreed to 25 percent cuts to their base pay through August 2023. Mr. Krauthamer said that the Met Orchestra’s union had put forward its own proposal, which would cut pay but preserve work rules that the Met was seeking to change.Some orchestra members have said that they felt betrayed that the opera was not using its musicians in “Met Stars Live in Concert,” the pay-per-view recitals it has been producing from opulent settings in Europe. Most feature only piano accompaniment. A Met official with knowledge of the situation said that for the other performances, members of the company’s orchestra were not included because of the difficulties of travel during the pandemic and because of ongoing labor negotiations.The Met Orchestra has started staging its own virtual concerts and collecting donations to distribute to musicians in need. The most recent, starring the soprano Angela Gheorghiu, singing from Romania, began by clarifying that the performance was “not affiliated with the Metropolitan Opera.”Tanya Thompson, a carpenter who has worked at the Met for 15 years, says she will be back, but during the pandemic she has become an overnight home health aide. Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesBetween stagehands and management, the temperature is even higher.Since the lockout, the work of preparing sets for the coming season has gone to nonunion shops elsewhere in this country and overseas. The Met regularly commissions set-building outside the institution, but these jobs had been slated to be done internally.Sets for two operas scheduled to premiere at the Met next winter, “Rigoletto” and “Don Carlos,” are being built by Bay Productions, a company in Cardiff, Wales; the set for “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” will be built in California. With the sets being built elsewhere, the Met’s scenic painters are losing work even though they have not been locked out because there is nothing for them to paint, so they remain on furlough, said Cecilia Friederichs, a national business agent for the United Scenic Artists union.But the company will still need stagehands if it wants the show to go on this fall, said James J. Claffey Jr., the president of Local One.“You don’t even get to an opening night without us,” he said.The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees has launched a lobbying effort urging lawmakers to support a measure that would block stimulus funds from going to arts organizations that, like the Met, have locked out union employees.Mr. Gelb said that the effort seemed “self destructive” and that “any attempt to damage the institution will only make it harder for the employees once we return.”Tanya Thompson, a union carpenter who has worked at the Met for 15 years, had planned to return to work there in December. When Local One was locked out, she decided to continue in the new job she had taken over the summer to make ends meet: as an overnight home health aide for elderly patients.Ms. Thompson, 52, said she plans to go back to the opera house as soon as there’s a deal.“I’m a lifer,” she said. “We care about what we do and we want the Met to succeed.” More

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      Met Opera Musicians Accept Deal to Receive First Paycheck Since April

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      The Metropolitan Opera offered its orchestra temporary payments of up to $1,543 a week in exchange for simply coming to the bargaining table.The musicians of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra have voted to accept a deal that will provide them with paychecks for the first time in nearly a year in exchange for returning to the bargaining table, where the company is seeking lasting pay cuts that it says are needed to survive the pandemic.The musicians, and most of the Met’s workers, were furloughed in April, shortly after the pandemic forced the opera house to close. Months later, the Met offered the musicians partial pay in exchange for significant long-term cuts, but their union objected. Then the Met softened its position: Since the end of December, it has been offering to pay the musicians up to $1,543 a week on a temporary basis if they agreed to start negotiations. While the union representing the chorus agreed to the deal more than a month ago, the orchestra’s union took longer to accept the deal.On Tuesday, the musicians in the orchestra, which became the last major ensemble in the United States without a deal to receive pandemic pay, agreed to take the offer, according to an email sent by the Met orchestra committee to its members.“We’re very pleased that our agreement with the orchestra has been ratified and that they will begin receiving bridge pay this week,” the Met said in a statement, “along with the start of meaningful discussions towards reaching a new agreement.”The orchestra committee, which represents the players in negotiations, declined to comment. The Met’s relationship with its musicians has been contentious during the pandemic months. Musicians have been frustrated by the extended period without pay, and worried that even when they returned to the opera house, their pay would be significantly reduced.The Met has insisted that economic sacrifices need to be made because of the financial impact of the pandemic, which it says has cost the company $150 million in earned revenues. For its highest-paid unions, the company is seeking 30 percent cuts — the change in take-home pay would be approximately 20 percent, it said — with a promise to restore half when ticket revenues and core donations return to prepandemic levels.Under the deal, musicians will receive up to $1,543 for eight weeks; money they get from unemployment or stimulus payments is deducted from that total. If, after eight weeks, the musicians and the Met have not reached an agreement but the negotiations are productive, the partial paychecks will be extended, according to an email from the Met to the orchestra explaining the offer. The musicians’ labor contract expires at the end of July.The Met offered the same deal to its choristers, dancers, stage managers and other employees who are represented by a different union, the American Guild of Musical Artists. That union accepted the deal at the end of January, and its members have been receiving paychecks for roughly five weeks.The opera company is hopeful that it can start performing for the public in the fall, but opening night will be determined by where the virus and vaccination rates stand, as well as the outcome of the Met’s labor disputes. The company locked out its stagehands in December after their union rejected a proposal for substantial pay cuts.In a note to Met employees sent on Friday, one year after the Met shut its doors, the company’s general manger, Peter Gelb, wrote that there was a “light at the end of the tunnel” because of the accelerated pace of vaccinations that President Biden had announced. Still, Mr. Gelb wrote, the Met needed to “come to terms with the economic necessities” that the pandemic has demanded.“Even before the pandemic, the economics of the Met were extremely challenging and in need of a reset,” Mr. Gelb wrote. “With the pandemic, we have had to fight for our economic survival.” More