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      The Metropolitan Opera Hires Its First Chief Diversity Officer

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Metropolitan Opera Hires Its First Chief Diversity OfficerMarcia Sells has been brought on to rethink equity and inclusion at the largest performing arts institution in the United States.Marcia Sells, who has been hired as the first chief diversity officer in the Metropolitan Opera’s history.Credit…Eileen BarassoJan. 25, 2021Updated 1:32 p.m. ETMarcia Sells — a former dancer who became an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn and the dean of students at Harvard Law School — has been hired as the first chief diversity officer of the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts institution in the United States.Her appointment, which the Met announced on Monday, is something of a corrective to the company’s nearly 140-year history and a response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd in 2020. It’s also a conscious step toward inclusivity by a major player in an industry in which some Black singers, including Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman, have found stardom, but diversity has lagged in orchestras, staff and leadership.Since last summer, cultural institutions across the country have made changes as the Black Lives Matter movement drew scrutiny to racial inequities in virtually every corner of the arts world. The Met was no exception: The company announced plans to open next season with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first opera by a Black composer, directed by James Robinson and Camille A. Brown, who will become the first Black director to lead a production on the Met’s main stage. It also named three composers of color — Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery and Joel Thompson — to its commissioning program.But to make broader changes at the Met, an institution with a long payroll and a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the Met is turning to Ms. Sells. As a member of the senior management team, she will report to Peter Gelb, the general manager. The human resources department will be brought under her direction, and her purview will be broad: the Met in its entirety, including the board.“Sometimes horrible events like the killing of George Floyd catalyze people, and they realize this is something we need to do — at the Met and across the arts,” Ms. Sells said in an interview about her plans to make the Met a more inclusive company that values the diversity of its staff and the audiences it serves.Mr. Gelb described Ms. Sells as an “ideal” candidate. “Not only does she have a history of accomplishment, but she also has a knowledge of the performing arts, having been involved in them herself,” he said in an interview. “And she loves opera, which is definitely a plus.”Ms. Sells began dancing as a 4-year-old in Cincinnati, an arts-rich city where she found herself both onstage and in the audience of the storied Music Hall, and where she saw a young Kathleen Battle sing as a student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.“It had been part of my growing up to experience art,” she said.She later joined Arthur Mitchell’s company, Dance Theater of Harlem, then remained in New York to attend Barnard College and Columbia Law School. Ms. Sells described herself as “an affirmative action baby,” and said that as both a dancer and a law student she had encountered racism, both overt and insidious, that made her feel unwelcome.Ms. Sells recalled, for instance, a judge in the mid-1980s who told her that witnesses had to wait outside the courtroom. She said that she was actually an assistant district attorney, and he replied, “Wow, things have changed.”Diversity has been at the fore of her work as an administrator — at places including Columbia, the N.B.A. and eventually Harvard Law, where she has been the dean of students since 2015. Her mandate at the Met won’t be too far from that of Harvard, another institute often perceived as elite to the point of exclusivity.“It’s not just that you want to get it right,” Ms. Sells said. “There are a lot of eyes on you, but it’s a huge opportunity to show the way, as well as learn from other organizations that don’t have as big a name, are not as well known, and help shine a light on that work and on them.”She plans to start at the Met in late February. Among her early tasks will be to conceive a diversity, equity and inclusion plan that could be implemented across hiring, artistic planning and engagement; she will also examine structural inequities at the Met, and work with the marketing and development departments to broaden the company’s audience and donor base.The Met has been shut down because of the pandemic since last March, and most of its workers have been furloughed without pay since April. It is facing a major labor dispute with its unions, as well as more than $150 million in lost revenue from the theater’s closure. But Mr. Gelb said that the company hopes to receive assistance for diversity-related costs from foundations.What those costs are will become clearer as Ms. Sells settles into her new job. She said that she was ready, and motivated by the company’s recent recognition “of how structurally or historically the Met has not felt welcoming to people of color” and the range of possibilities for change.“I truly believe,” Ms. Sells said, “that this is the Met’s moment.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Elijah Moshinsky, Met Opera Director With Fanciful Touch, Dies at 75

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and Cases13,000 Approaches to TeachingVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storythose we’ve lostElijah Moshinsky, Met Opera Director With Fanciful Touch, Dies at 75Mr. Moshinsky, known for mixing traditional staging ideas with modern flourishes, also created productions for the Royal Opera and Opera Australia. He died of Covid-19.The director Elijah Moshinsky in 2015. Joseph Volpe, the Metropolitan Opera’s former general manager, said Mr. Moshinsky was “the closest thing the Met had to a house director.” He also worked in theater.Credit…Jeff BusbyJan. 21, 2021Updated 6:53 p.m. ETElijah Moshinsky, an Australian theater, television and opera director known for his productions at the Royal Opera in London, Opera Australia and especially the Metropolitan Opera, died on Jan. 14 at a hospital in London. He was 75.The cause was Covid-19, his family said.The best Moshinsky productions combined traditional staging ideas with modern, striking, sometimes fanciful touches, as in his 1993 version of Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” for the Met, which is slated for revival in the 2021-22 season.That production reached the essence of Strauss’s opera, a delicate mix of grandeur and farce, providing “the thrill of beauty encased in irony, of sincerity at the end of self-consciousness,” Edward Rothstein of The New York Times wrote in a review.Mr. Moshinsky’s version featured an exaggeratedly bustling depiction of backstage preparations for an entertainment at the home of a Viennese gentleman, as well as a trio of eerily gigantic nymphs, their colorful dresses falling to the ground.“Ariadne” was one of nine new productions Mr. Moshinsky presented at the Met from 1980 to 2001, making him “the closest thing the Met had to a house director,” Joseph Volpe, the company’s general manager for much of that period, wrote in his 2006 memoir, “The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera.”Along with “Ariadne,” four are still in the Met’s active repertory, including a boldly stylized 1995 version of Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” that had a film-noir feel, and a bleak, eerily contemporary, almost Expressionist 1996 staging of Janacek’s mysterious “The Makropulos Case.” Mr. Moshinsky’s last Met production was Verdi’s “Luisa Miller.”Mr. Moshinsky’s Met career began inauspiciously with a roundly criticized production of Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera,” a clumsily updated and poorly executed production starring Luciano Pavarotti. He returned in 1986 for Handel’s oratorio “Samson,” starring the tenor Jon Vickers in the title role, a stiff production that originated at the Royal Opera. But with that 1993 “Ariadne,” he announced himself anew.In attempting to bring a contemporary edge to his productions, Mr. Moshinsky was sometimes criticized for forcing what seemed quasi-modern elements and stark monumentality onto an otherwise traditional staging.His 1994 production of Verdi’s “Otello,” mounted for the tenor Plácido Domingo, was full of grandly operatic spectacle, yet some felt it seemed heavy-handed. It was dominated by “soaring columns and towering facades” that “alternately embrace and smother a great opera,” the critic Bernard Holland wrote in The Times.When Mr. Moshinsky followed his instincts to keep things traditional, the results were often effective. The critic Peter G. Davis, in a review for Classical Music, called the director’s 2001 production of “Luisa Miller” the Met’s “most satisfying Verdi effort in years.” Working within a “sensible but atmospheric setting,” Mr. Davis wrote, Mr. Moshinsky directed his characters “with skill, flexibility, and a sure understanding of who these people are.”He was also content, unlike some directors who come to opera from the world of theater, to work with singers who bring “outsized emotions” and “huge egos” onstage, as he put it in an interview with the BBC in 1993. Opera, he said, needed “people who can fill those emotional roles,” and part of his job was to engage with a performer’s temperament “to enable the best performance to occur.”Plácido Domingo as the title character and Renee Fleming as Desdemona during a dress rehearsal for a Moshinsky production of Verdi’s “Otello” at the Metropolitan Opera in 2002.Credit…Jack Vartoogian/Getty ImagesElijah Moshinsky was born on Jan. 8, 1946, in the French Concession in Shanghai, to which his Russian Jewish parents, Abraham and Eva (Krasavitsky) Moshinsky, had fled. He was the youngest of the couple’s three sons. Even though the family left Shanghai for Australia when Elijah was 5, he retained vivid memories of his early childhood, fortified by family stories and memorabilia, he said in the BBC interview.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Even When the Music Returns, Pandemic Pay Cuts Will Linger

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEven When the Music Returns, Pandemic Pay Cuts Will LingerThe coronavirus crisis is leading many performing arts unions to agree to concessions, but some fear it could change the balance of power between labor and management.The Metropolitan Opera says that it will need long-term pay cuts if it is to survive after the pandemic, but its workers, many of whom have gone unpaid since April, are resisting.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesDec. 17, 2020Updated 7:22 p.m. ETWhen the coronavirus outbreak brought performances across the United States to a screeching halt, many of the nation’s leading orchestras, dance companies and opera houses temporarily cut the pay of their workers, and some stopped paying them at all.Now, hopes that vaccines will allow performances to resume next fall are being tempered by fears that it could take years for hibernating box offices to rebound, and many battered institutions are turning to their unions to negotiate longer-term cuts that they say are necessary to survive.The crisis is posing a major challenge to performing arts unions, which in recent decades have been among the strongest in the nation. While musicians at some major ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, have agreed to steep cuts that would have been unthinkable in normal times, others are resisting. Some unions fear that the concessions being sought could outlast the pandemic, and reset the balance of power between management and labor.“Historically, labor agreements in the performing arts have been moving toward more money and better conditions,” said Thomas W. Morris, who led major orchestras in the United States for more than three decades. “And all of a sudden that isn’t an option. It’s a fundamental change in the pattern.”Nowhere is the tension between labor and management more acute than at the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts organization in the nation. Its artists and other workers, many of whom have been furloughed without pay since April, are resisting an offer by management to begin receiving reduced wages of up to $1,500 a week again in exchange for long-term pay cuts and changes in work rules. After failing to reach an agreement with its stagehands, the company locked them out last week, shortly before more were scheduled to return to work to begin building sets for next season.But musicians in a growing number of orchestras are agreeing to long-term cuts, recognizing that it could take years for audiences and philanthropy to bounce back after this extended period of darkened concert halls and theaters.The New York Philharmonic announced a new contract last week that will cut the base pay of musicians by 25 percent through mid-2023, to $115,128 a year from $153,504. Then some pay will be restored, but the players will still earn less than they did before the pandemic struck when the contract expires in 2024. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, one of the richest ensembles in the nation, agreed to a new three-year contract reducing pay by an average of 37 percent in the first year, gradually increasing in the following years but only recovering fully if the orchestra meets at least one of three financial benchmarks. The San Francisco Opera agreed to a new deal that halves the orchestra’s salary this season, but later makes up some ground.Unions play a major role behind the scenes at many arts organizations. The contracts they negotiate not only set pay, but also help establish a wide range of working conditions, from how many permanent members an orchestra should have to how many stagehands are needed backstage for each performance to whether Sunday performances require extra pay. It is not uncommon to see major orchestras abruptly end rehearsals mid-phrase — even when a famous maestro is conducting — when the digital rehearsal clock shows that they are about to go into overtime.Workers and artists say that many of these rules have improved health and safety and raised the quality of performances; management has often chafed at the expense.Many nonprofit performing arts organizations, including the Met, faced real financial challenges even before the pandemic struck. Now, they say, they are fighting for their survival, furloughing or laying off administrative staff and seeking relief from unions.After stagehands at the Metropolitan Opera rejected calls for a new contract with long-term cuts, management locked them out.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York Times“Unions are very reluctant to make concessions; it goes against everything trade union strategy has told them for 100-plus years,” said Susan J. Schurman, a professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University. “But clearly they understand that this is an unprecedented situation.”But at some institutions, including at the Met and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, workers are accusing management of trying to take advantage of the crisis to push for changes to their union contracts that they have long sought.Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, wants to cut the pay of workers by 30 percent, and restore only half of those cuts when box office revenues recover. He hopes to achieve most of the cuts by changing work rules. In a letter last month to the union representing the Met’s roughly 300 stagehands, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, he wrote that “the health crisis has compounded the Met’s previous financial fragility, threatening our very existence.” He also wrote that the average full-time stagehand cost the Met $260,000 last year, including benefits.“For the Met to get back on its feet, we’re all going to have to make financial concessions and sacrifices,” Mr. Gelb told employees in a video call last month.There are 15 unions at the Met, and while the leaders of several of the biggest have said that they are willing to agree to some cuts, they are pushing back on changes that would outlast the pandemic and redefine work rules that they have long fought for — especially after so many workers, including the orchestra, chorus and legions of backstage workers, have endured many months without pay. The Met’s orchestra, which is represented by Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, said in a statement that management was “exploiting this temporary situation to permanently gut contracts of the very workers who create the performances on their global stage.”Leonard Egert, the national executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents members of the chorus, soloists, dancers, stage managers and others at the Met, said that unions recognized the difficult reality and were willing to compromise. “It’s just that no one wants to sell out the future,” he said.Musicians at the New York Philharmonic, and at other orchestras, have agreed to lasting pay cuts to help their institutions recover after the pandemic. Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesIn Washington, the stagehands at the Kennedy Center are fighting a similar battle. David McIntyre, president of Local 22 of the alliance, said he had been in contentious negotiations with the Kennedy Center for months over its demand for a 25 percent pay cut, something that is hard for the union members to stomach after many of them have gone without pay since March.Management is also asking for concessions such as an elimination of time-and-a-half pay on Sundays, he said, a change that would be permanent rather than limited to the pandemic. The union stagehands are particularly indignant because the Kennedy Center received $25 million from the federal stimulus bill passed in March.“They’re just trying to get concessions out of us by leveraging a pandemic when none of us are working,” Mr. McIntyre said.A spokeswoman for the Kennedy Center, Eileen Andrews, said that several of the unions that it works with already accepted pay cuts, including the musicians with the National Symphony Orchestra, and that the recovery from the pandemic needed to be accomplished through “shared sacrifices.”Organizations have lost tens of millions of dollars in ticket revenue, and the outlook for the philanthropy that they rely on for their survival remains uncertain. As union negotiations proceed within the grids of video calls rather than around the typical stuffy board room tables, both sides recognize the financial fragility.In some respects the pandemic has altered the negotiating landscape. Unions, which normally have tremendous leverage because strikes halt performances, have less at the moment, when there are no performances to halt. Management’s leverage has changed as well. While the Met’s threat that it would lock out its stagehands unless they agreed to cuts carried less menace at a moment when most employees were not working anyway, its offer to begin paying workers who have gone without paychecks since April in exchange for long-term agreements may be hard to resist.At some institutions, memories of the destructiveness of recent labor disputes have helped foster cooperation during this crisis. At the Minnesota Orchestra, where a bitter lockout kept the concert hall dark for 16 months starting in 2012, management and the musicians agreed on a 25 percent pay cut through August. Some orchestras that have recently experienced labor strife, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, where the players were locked out in 2019, came together during the pandemic.Credit…Shawn Hubbard for The New York TimesAnd the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which had its own hard-fought labor dispute last year, managed to reach agreement on a five-year contract this summer, cutting the pay of players sharply at first before gradually increasing it again.The last time a national crisis of this magnitude affected every performing arts organization in the country was during the Great Recession, when organizations sought cuts to offset the decline in philanthropy and ticket sales, triggering strikes, lockouts and bitter disputes.Meredith Snow, the chair of International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, which represents players, said that labor and management mostly appeared to be working together more amicably than they did then — at least for now.“There is more of a recognition that we need to be a unified face to the community,” said Ms. Snow, a violist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, “and that we can’t be squabbling or we’re both going to go down.”“You come together,” she said, “or you sink.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Bryn Terfel Returns to the Metropolitan Opera. (Sort Of.)

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBryn Terfel Returns to the Metropolitan Opera. (Sort Of.)A holiday recital, streamed live from Wales, will be this star singer’s first headlining performance for the Met since 2012.The bass-baritone Bryn Terfel near his home in Wales.Credit…Clementine Schneidermann for The New York TimesDec. 11, 2020The airy studio where Bryn Terfel practices is set a good few yards from the house in Penarth, Wales, that he shares with his wife and two young children. Given his thunderous bass-baritone voice, which has roared through the great roles of Mozart, Puccini, Verdi and Wagner at opera houses around the world over the past 30 years, this is probably essential to family sanity.A few days before a holiday recital that will be streamed live by the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday from Brecon Cathedral, about 40 miles north of here, Mr. Terfel, 55, was seated at his piano in the room for a video call. Visible behind him was an antique poster advertising a Paris-Wales train route, and another for a production of Verdi’s “Falstaff” in Milan, in which he played the jovial title role.But the opposite wall, he indicated as he turned the camera, is dominated by his achievements in America: posters for a “Sweeney Todd” opposite Emma Thompson at the New York Philharmonic; his 1996 Carnegie Hall recital debut; and, signed by its cast, Wagner’s “Ring” at the Met.Mr. Terfel’s most recent performance in New York, opposite Emma Thompson in “Sweeney Todd” with the New York Philharmonic in 2014.Credit…Chris LeeThis wall of New Yorkiana was particularly poignant to see, since Mr. Terfel has not appeared in the city since that “Sweeney” in 2014. In a review in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood wrote that Mr. Terfel “may be the most richly gifted singer ever to undertake the title role.”His recent Met history has been a dark comedy of errors. Shortly after arriving to start rehearsals for a much-anticipated new production of Puccini’s “Tosca” in 2017, he knew something was wrong with his singing, and dropped out to have a polyp removed from his vocal cords. Then, earlier this year, he fractured his ankle and couldn’t appear in another new staging, this time Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer.”“These are things that you never expect to stop you in your tracks,” Mr. Terfel said.The takeaway: He has not appeared at the Met since 2012, so this holiday recital is a return — even if it’s from some 3,000 miles away. He remains well-loved by the company’s audience for his rich, warm voice, his imposing characterizations — and commanding height — and his relish for the words he sings. Memories are still strong of his barreling through the title role in “The Marriage of Figaro,” sneering as Scarpia in “Tosca” and appearing as both the lecherous Don Giovanni and his manservant, Leporello, in Mozart’s opera. If his star turn as Wotan in Wagner’s “Ring” in 2010-12 felt stunted by the physical limitations on the performers in Robert Lepage’s staging, he still exerted a magnetic presence.Deborah Voigt, left, as Brünnhilde and Mr. Terfel as Wotan in Wagner’s “Ring” at the Met. Because of two last-minute cancellations, Mr. Terfel has not appeared there since singing Wotan in 2012.Credit…Ken Howard/Metropolitan OperaHe spoke in the interview about his pandemic year and his plans for the Met recital. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Do you currently have Met engagements beyond this recital?In New York I’ve performed nearly all the operas I do on a new scale, a new production. Of course it’s such a tremendous strain on your family life to be away that long. That’s something that is always difficult in this career, about signing a contract in New York. So I don’t currently have any contracts, not really. I’m just booking two years in advance, maybe.I have certain interesting things with the Royal Opera House in London. And Welsh National Opera, too. I like Vienna and Munich, where you can rehearse two days and do three performances; a week and a half, and you’re home. And in a run of “Tosca,” you sing opposite maybe three different Toscas, each exceptional.How did this holiday concert, which is part of the Met’s series of livestreamed recitals, come about?In the summer, Peter Gelb [the Met’s general manager] rang me at home and offered me a chance to be a part of this series, which I’m incredibly grateful for. It’s a wonderful way to finish off your year, knowing a vaccine is being rolled out as we speak. He immediately said I should be doing a kind of Christmas program, so I’ve had plenty of time to think about it. I wanted something of the birth of Jesus, which comes in “El Nacimiento,” a Spanish carol I’m singing. There are a couple of songs by Robat Arwyn, a friend I was in school with. There’s “Silent Night,” “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” “In the Bleak Midwinter” and the Welsh song “Ar Hyd y Nos” (“All Through the Night”).A bard here in Wales, Mererid Hopwood, has written these short texts for me to read between the pieces. The arts is all about teams and collaboration, and I’ve tried to assemble a very strong team. My wife, Hannah Stone, will be accompanying me on the harp. It’s a perfect instrument anywhere, but in the cathedral it really feels like it’s come home. I’m so happy to be able to include some young singers, the soprano Natalya Romaniw and the tenor Trystan Llyr Griffiths. And the pianist Jeff Howard, and the folk group Calan. And everyone comes together at the end to start the Christmas spirit.Silence, serenity and peace — that is what I’m going to try and convey. But what will be on my mind will be the frontline workers, and the losses we have all encountered in every country.What was the process of picking Brecon Cathedral?The Met people had this vision they wanted a castle. But in Wales, the castles are either in ruins or the rooms inside are too small. There was the idea of Cardiff Castle, but there’s a wedding there this weekend.“Silence, serenity and peace — that is what I’m going to try and convey,” Mr. Terfel said of his holiday recital, which will be livestreamed by the Met.Credit…Clementine Schneidermann for The New York TimesHave you been able to perform this year?There have been some terrific moments. I did a new “Fidelio” in Graz; I did a “Tosca” in Munich. The arts in Germany is a whole different kettle of fish. It’s not just the federal government; it’s the city, it’s the state of Bavaria. It was important for the opera house in Munich that they brought back audiences very quickly, even if it was just 500 people. It was still bringing the arts to the people who needed nourishment in some musical form.I’ve just recorded “Chestnuts Roasting” for a music festival here close to me. (And maybe in a couple of weeks Santa might bring something that might resemble a microphone.) I did a concert in the Barbican [in London], a 50-minute online concert that had to be devised around a set amount of musicians. I did Bach cantatas and English songs.And I did a little concert to thank the vaccine team in Oxford, with a new carol by John Rutter. The three words at the end: “The angels sing.” And that’s the hope I think. For our profession now, to bring people back, everyone has to have that confidence. And hopefully by next summer we should have some sense of normality.What are some of your future plans?I had been supposed to do my first Bluebeard in Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” in June, and I hadn’t even begun with a coach or language coach. In lockdown I’ve been looking at one-act operas a little bit, with a thought what might help opera houses: Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi” and “Il Tabarro”; “The Bear” by William Walton; Donizetti has many wonderful one-act operas; “Bluebeard,” of course.And my constant friend, here on the piano, is Schubert’s “Winterreise,” which I hope to be recording for Deutsche Grammophon. I’ve never performed it; the first time I opened the score was during Covid. I was invited many times to hear Jonas Kaufmann sing it, Simon Keenlyside sing it, but I didn’t want to hear it until I did it myself.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      When Opera Entered the Chat

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Best Worst YearWhen Opera Entered the ChatThe pandemic urged a classical music critic to pull out his phone — and find unexpected community.Credit…Hanna BarczykBy More

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      Metropolitan Opera to Lock Out Stagehands as Contract Talks Stall

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMetropolitan Opera to Lock Out Stagehands as Contract Talks StallAfter reaching a bargaining impasse, the shuttered opera company said it would lock out the workers needed to build sets for next season’s productions.The Metropolitan Opera, which has been shut by the pandemic since March, says that it needs to cut labor costs significantly if it is to survive until and after it reopens.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesBy More