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      The Metropolitan Opera Guild Will Wind Down Amid Financial Woes

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      The organization, founded in 1935 to support the opera house, will lay off 20 employees and stop publishing Opera News as a stand-alone monthly magazine.The Metropolitan Opera Guild, a nonprofit that supports the storied opera house and publishes the magazine Opera News, will wind down its operations and lay off its staff this fall in the face of financial troubles, the organization announced on Tuesday.The guild, which was founded by Eleanor Robson Belmont in 1935 to help the Met survive a funding shortfall caused by the Great Depression, has supported the company and its education programs ever since, bringing thousands of schoolchildren to dress rehearsals each year and working to promote interest in opera through the publication of Opera News, which became one of the leading classical music publications in the United States.Opera News will end its run as a stand-alone monthly magazine. The Met and the guild said it would continue in a different format, under new editorial direction, as part of a new section in Opera magazine, a British publication, focused on the United States that will bear the Opera News logo. The magazine will be sent to guild members and Opera News subscribers in the United States.Opera News, which became one of the leading classical music magazines in the United States, will cease publication as a stand-alone magazine. The British publication Opera magazine will increase its coverage of the Met and opera in the United States, and will be sent to Guild members and Opera News subscribers.Opera News“We greatly appreciate the valuable efforts of our employees over the years, but it is no longer economically viable for us to continue in our current form,” Winthrop Rutherfurd Jr., the Guild’s chairman, and Richard J. Miller Jr., its president, said in a statement.The guild will be reclassified as a supporting organization under the Met; it will no longer operate as an independent nonprofit. The guild said that it would provide severance to its 20 employees, and that it expects the Met to hire some of them. Its board members will be offered positions on the Met’s board.Under the guild’s membership program, patrons pay $85 or more per year for benefits including subscriptions to Opera News, access to dress rehearsals and advance ticket sales.The guild, like the broader opera industry, has faced serious financial pressures in recent years. It draws much of its revenue from its roughly 28,000 members. But contributions and grants have fallen in recent years: they totaled $8.1 million in 2021, compared with $9.1 million a decade earlier. And to some extent the Met and the guild found themselves competing for support from the same opera lovers.The Met, grappling with its own financial woes as it works to recover from the pandemic, said it would continue some of the guild’s offerings, including the program that brings schoolchildren into the opera house to watch dress rehearsals.Guild events including the annual Opera News awards and luncheons at the Waldorf Astoria, such as this one in 2006, will be discontinued. Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesUnder Peter Gelb, who became the Met’s general manager in 2006, the company has expanded its oversight of the guild. Gelb said in an interview that the changes came after several months of discussions. He said the problems facing the guild reflected the “difficulties for nonprofit performing arts companies,” including the Met.“It’s the same pressure that, on a large scale, the Met feels,” he said. “We tried to find a way forward that would enable some of the programs of the guild to continue, even if the guild in its current structure would not continue.”The partnership with Opera magazine that will replace Opera News — which began publication in 1936 and has a circulation of about 43,000 — will start in December. The Met will not have editorial input but will provide a share of fees paid by guild members to help offset the magazine’s production costs, as it did with Opera News. Opera magazine named Rebecca Paller its U.S. editor; since 2003, Opera News has been led by F. Paul Driscoll.John Allison, the editor and publisher of Opera, vowed in a statement to preserve the “rich editorial history” of Opera News. He said in an interview that he hoped to engage former Opera News writers when possible.“Coverage of opera at the Met and throughout the United States will continue to be just as comprehensive as guild members and Opera News subscribers have grown accustomed to over the years,” he said.Opera fans reacted with concern to news of the guild’s demise on Tuesday, saying that it was another sign that the art form was struggling.Posy Ryan, a guild member, said that she was “very surprised and deeply saddened” by the changes, including the end of the stand-alone Opera News.“It’s an institution that will be missed,” she said. “For me, it was an introduction to so many young American singers. I’d see a feature, a review and then research them on YouTube. I’ll miss that.” More

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      Nonprofit Theaters Are in Crisis. A Times Reporter Spoke With 72 of Them

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      Michael Paulson spoke with producers and artistic directors at nonprofit theaters across the country about the crisis their industry is facing.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Michael Paulson, who has covered theater for The New York Times for eight years, knew the situation was bad at the country’s nonprofit regional theaters, which had yet to regain their prepandemic audiences.But in recent months, the shock waves have gotten bigger: One of the nation’s largest companies, Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, said it would pause production on one of its three stages and lay off 10 percent of its staff. The Lookingglass, an anchor of Chicago’s theater scene, halted production for the rest of the year. Then this month, New York’s prestigious Public Theater cut nearly one in five of its jobs.“We’ve seen an increase in the number of closings, and it felt like this is real and serious and important for readers to know about,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview.That observation formed the basis for an article by Mr. Paulson that appeared on the front page of Monday’s newspaper. To document the crisis at America’s regional theaters, he spoke with the leaders of 72 top-tier companies across the country.Here, Mr. Paulson reflects on the reasons for the upheaval, on the most promising solutions being proposed and on the balancing act he juggles between the demands of daily news reporting and investigative projects. This conversation has been edited.How many of the issues that challenge nonprofit theaters stem from the pandemic?The pandemic was an accelerant. But the issues at the heart of this crisis — the aging of the audience, the growing role of streaming media in people’s entertainment diets, the decline in subscriptions as the way consumers plan their theatergoing — were underway before it. The economic situation combined with this inflationary moment proved unsurvivable for a number of theaters and damaging for many more.Are these challenges unique to theaters, or are they true of the nonprofit arts sector in general?Theater has some particular vulnerabilities — it’s a niche art form, and a lot of nonprofits pride themselves on developing new work, which means a show sometimes has a title or is by an artist that audiences don’t yet know. A bunch of people told me audiences want to be sure they’re going to have a good time before they set aside the time and the money, and that often means going to something that’s already established, versus something that is just being introduced to the world.Seventy-two interviews is a lot for one article. Do you envision this piece being the first in a series?I do have a tendency to be an overreporter, but I wanted to be confident that what we were reporting reflected a national pattern and wasn’t just an extrapolation from a handful of worst-case scenarios. I expect that a lot of my time this year is going to be spent thinking and writing about the economic challenges facing theaters in America.How do you balance the demands of daily news reporting with bigger-picture projects?I’m probably going to be doing fewer features about individual shows, while I focus on more of these stories about the health of the field, but I still want to write occasional pieces about artists and works of art. I think a mix of stories is what keeps a reporter sane.Do you anticipate doing a lot of that reporting in person?I hope so. A couple of days ago, I went to see “Evita” at American Repertory Theater outside of Boston, and over the weekend I went to see a play called “tiny father” at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires. On Thursday, I saw a production of “Fun Home” at the Studio Theater in Washington, D.C. I’m trying, to the extent I can, to see things outside New York. We need to pay more attention to nonprofit theaters and theaters outside New York — because there are real challenges in those places we need to be telling our readers about.What was the most surprising thing you learned while reporting this article?I was struck by how many theaters are now doing coproductions. It’s pretty dramatic: The Shakespeare Theater Company in D.C. had one coproduction out of six shows before the pandemic, and now at least five out of six will be coproductions this coming season. There’s also a lot of experimentation with collaboration, which is heartening. Theaters that once saw themselves either as competitors or just strangers are much more interested in finding ways to help one another.Your article touches on a number of potential solutions. Which seem most promising?There’s a coalition forming of theaters in Connecticut that is talking about whether the theaters might be able to share set-building functions. Those kinds of approaches might have promise. A lot of theaters are talking about the possibility of either more government assistance or for more foundations to take seriously the challenges facing this field. There’s a shared sense that box-office revenue, which has never been enough to sustain these organizations, is not going to be a primary part of the solution.How will we see an effect on Broadway, which depends on nonprofit theaters to develop material and support artists?The situation means less work for artists, actors, writers, directors and designers. Fewer shows are being staged, and those shows are often smaller and have shorter runs, which is a challenge both for the people who are already established in the field and the people who are seeking to enter it. There’s just less work to go around. More

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      It’s the Perelman Performing Arts Center, But Bloomberg Gave More

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      It looked like it was never going to happen.Year after year, plans to build a cultural institution on the World Trade Center site percolated, only to then fizzle out. The International Freedom Center, the Joyce Theater, the Drawing Center, the Signature Theater, New York City Opera, a design by Frank Gehry — all were discussed as possibilities, but none went anywhere.Now, two decades after the 2003 master plan for ground zero called for a cultural component, a performing arts center is finally preparing to open there in September. And though it bears the name of Ronald O. Perelman, the billionaire businessman who jump-started the moribund project in 2016 by announcing a $75 million donation, the person who finally got the project over the finish line, and who ended up giving more money than Mr. Perelman, is Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor.Mr. Bloomberg has given $130 million to the arts center, a gift that has not been previously revealed, and stepped up as chairman of the board in 2020 (replacing Barbra Streisand, who had been appointed chair in 2016) when the organization needed a strong fund-raiser. The center, which will ultimately cost $500 million — more than twice what was projected in 2016 — is now on track to have a ribbon cutting on Sept. 13.“I can afford it,” Mr. Bloomberg said of his largess during a recent hard hat tour of the center. “And they need the money.”The center continues to be called the Perelman Performing Arts Center, but the Perelman name gets less emphasis these days. While the center’s promotional materials once called it “the Perelman” for short, they now tend to call it “PAC NYC,” with PAC standing for Performing Arts Center. Its website, once theperelman.org, is now pacnyc.org, a change officials said that they made in order to tighten its URL.The new performing arts center at the World Trade Center site, which is opening after years of delays, is a 138-foot-tall cube sheathed in marble.Victor Llorente for The New York TimesMr. Perelman, the cosmetics mogul, has had recent financial woes, prompting some to wonder if he made good on his pledges. But Mr. Bloomberg said Mr. Perelman had come through. “He’s paid in advance — never had to ask him for a check,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “They were always there before the schedule.”Mr. Perelman said in a statement that the arts center will “bring the renewal and community the arts have always represented.”“Mike and many others had the vision, and through a real shared commitment, it’s now being realized,” Perelman continued. “I’m thrilled I could play a part in making it happen.”The new center is opening at a moment when many arts organizations are struggling to come back in the wake of the pandemic, and as New York arts institutions find themselves competing for philanthropic support, talent and audiences. The Shed, another expensive, architecturally striking arts space, opened in Hudson Yards a year before the pandemic struck, and has struggled somewhat to find its footing.Mr. Bloomberg has been intimately involved with both the Shed and the Perelman — as mayor and as a philanthropist — and has given equally to both: his donations to the Shed have now reached $130 million as well.As mayor, Mr. Bloomberg initially ceded the World Trade Center site to Gov. George E. Pataki and instead focused on the Far West Side, where his early attempts to build a football stadium and lure the Olympics foundered, but which led to the creation of the Hudson Yards development and the Shed. Over time, though, Mr. Bloomberg turned his attention back to Lower Manhattan, becoming chairman of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in 2006 and then taking a role in the performing arts center.Mr. Bloomberg said he was a firm believer in the idea that the World Trade Center site should be about renewal as well as loss. “There is so much tragedy,” he said. “The families have to go on and the deceased would have wanted, I think, their relatives to have a life.”The building is on track to have a ribbon cutting on Sept. 13. Victor Llorente for The New York TimesWhile he readily concedes that he is no culture vulture himself, Bloomberg sees the arts as an important driver of economic development, which guided his approach to cultural capital projects as mayor. “Culture attracts capital a lot more than capital attracts culture,” he said. “That’s why New York and London are the two cities that will survive almost anything — because they have commerce and culture.”To be sure, both of Mr. Bloomberg’s pet projects face challenges. Commercial real estate is suffering in Lower Manhattan and at Hudson Yards. And it’s difficult to build a constituency for a new cultural center by starting with a building rather than a program, as the Shed has found. But Bloomberg said he is unconcerned.“It’s a different business model,” he said, likening it to the Serpentine Galleries in London, a museum without a permanent collection where he serves as chairman.The Perelman center’s artistic plans — it promises to showcase theater, dance, music, chamber opera and film — should come into focus on June 14 when it announces its first season. Recent audition announcements suggest that its plans include the New York premiere of the opera “An American Soldier,” by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang, and mounting a production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Cats” set in the contemporary ballroom scene, with roles that “may have flexibility with gender.”The building, a 138-foot-tall cube, is sheathed in marble that glows at night, and has a flexible interior with three theater spaces that can be combined to provide multiple configurations. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation committed $100 million to the project.The building is sheathed in marble that is designed to appear to glow at night. Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe center has already had some bumpy leadership changes. David Lan, who led the Young Vic theater in London, was initially its temporary artistic director. In 2018, Bill Rauch was appointed artistic director. In 2019, Leslie Koch replaced Maggie Boepple as the center’s president (Ms. Koch in March 2022 segued to president of construction and will step down when the building is complete). And last October, Khady Kamara, the former executive director of Second Stage Theater, was named executive director.During his recent tour, Mr. Bloomberg was most animated when talking about the flexibility of the new building design — by REX architects — and how the walls and floors can move to accommodate different events.The theaters are designed to be flexible, with different seating configurations possible.Victor Llorente for The New York Times“I’m a big Broadway fan — I love musicals, and comedies,” he said. As for his taste in visual art, Mr. Bloomberg said he lacked a discerning eye. “I’m not as knowledgeable about culture as I should be,” he said. “I was an engineer in college. Did I take a lot of art courses? No. I know what I like. I’m not sure I could explain to you why.”And spoke of its commercial value. “It satisfies the need down here of different venues of different sizes,” he said. “Lots of companies are going to want to rent this space. It’s a great place to have a breakfast meeting with your clients. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, confirmations, graduations.”Mr. Bloomberg said he was a firm believer in the idea that the World Trade Center site should be about renewal as well as loss. Victor Llorente for The New York TimesMr. Bloomberg sounded bullish on New York as a city that always bounces back, and said that the center is “what downtown needs.”“Downtown doesn’t have as much culture as other parts of the city,” he said. “This is going to pull the whole thing together. The economics are going to work. Lots of people are going to want to use this location.” More

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      Forests, Band from Singapore, Played On After U.S. Robbery

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      Forests, a band from Singapore, ended its tour in New York in high spirits, two weeks after being robbed in California.The band, Forests, did not miss a show.ForestsAn international rock band’s first U.S. tour is a moment to be celebrated, a sign that years of hard work have paid off. But just a few days into their American debut, the members of Forests, an emo rock band from Singapore, endured another rite of passage for some musicians traveling the United States when they stopped for the night at a California hotel.When they returned to their rental van a few hours later, they realized they’d been robbed.“In Singapore I kind of made a joke about it, like, oh, you know, your band is only legit if your stuff got stolen,” said Darell Laser, 36, the bassist. “Then it really happened.”Forests and the Oklahoma band they were touring with, Ben Quad, are hardly the first musicians to be robbed while on tour in America. (In 1999, Sonic Youth famously lost an entire truck’s worth of gear to a thief, also in California.) But the experience was still a shock for a band from a country as safe as Singapore.“It was the worst luck ever,” said Chris Martinez, 29, a Forests fan from San Diego who discovered the band years ago on a business trip to Singapore.The robbery prompted an outpouring of concern from both bands’ fans, and more than $9,000 in donations allowed them to buy replacement instruments. They did not miss a show, and they ended their tour in high spirits with a sold-out concert at a bar in Queens on Tuesday.“They seem to have moved past it,” said Mr. Martinez, who donated $200 to the bands’ crowdfunding campaign after learning of the robbery. “Keeping a positive attitude and trying not to let it bring them down.”Forests and Ben Quad had some instruments, along with other goods, stolen from their parked rental van while they were sleeping in a hotel after a show. ForestsThe May 1 robbery made for a surreal early leg of a cross-country tour — entitled “Get in losers, we’re going to Walmart” — that Forests had spent months planning and years looking forward to. It happened a few days after their tour began in Seattle and a few hours after their gig in Oakland.When the tired musicians from the two bands straggled into a Hampton Inn in Hayward, Calif., at about 1:30 a.m., they left their gear in the 15-passenger rental van they were sharing for the tour. They parked next to a security camera as a precaution, but it didn’t help: When they returned to the parking lot after 11 a.m., they noticed that some of their guitars, a bass, pedals, clothing and a box with cash from merchandise sales had been stolen.The theft was the latest in an area of California where property crimes like shoplifting and car break-ins are on the rise. The hotel management told the bands that its security footage did not show a theft. A location tag on one instrument appeared to show that the stolen gear had been taken to an Oakland apartment building, but the police said there was no easy way to get it back.“The cops told us, ‘Hey, there’s nothing we can do unless it ends up in a pawnshop,’” said Edgar Viveros, 27, Ben Quad’s lead guitarist. The pawnshops they called said that it had not.Instead of canceling the tour, the bands decided to play on with borrowed gear. They also set up a crowdfunding page and were surprised to see how quickly donations rolled in — $6,000 in about four hours.The robbery was “kinda heartbreaking,” Imre Griga, 23, a fan in Columbia, Mo., who attended three of the bands’ tour dates this month, said in an email. “I think the entire community felt Forests deserved much better for their first tour in America.”Within a few days, members of both bands were playing with new instruments. They went a little longer without the pedal board that Ben Quad typically uses to play samples, like the theme from an “Austin Powers” movie, between sets. But a replacement for that, too, was eventually found.Forests first played with borrowed instruments after the theft, then bought replacements after fans donated more than $9,000.ForestsBack home in Singapore, the story of the robbery, and the fan support, made headlines. Some readers commented about their own experiences of getting robbed in the United States. Others wondered how the three members of Forests, who all have day jobs and tour on their vacations, could have been so naïve.For Forests, it was not their first international tour: They have performed across the Asia-Pacific region over the years. But on their first tour of America, they loved watching the landscape — deserts, trees, snowy mountains — whip past the van’s windows.They also kept a list of “crazy things” they had seen, like people fighting in convenience stores, or the woman in Seattle who threw her luggage down three flights of stairs in a subway station. The band’s drummer, Niki Koh, 31, said he particularly enjoyed visiting a store that sold guns, knives and hunting gear — “ everything that we won’t find in Singapore.”“It’s culture shock,” he said, speaking in a video interview from Kansas City. “But at the same time, it’s very interesting.” More

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      Born of Grief, a Couple’s Off Broadway Incubator Marks 20 Years

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      Even as it celebrates with a gala, the Ars Nova family now faces another challenge as one of its founders confronts A.L.S.In 2002, Jenny and Jon Steingart founded the Off Broadway incubator Ars Nova as a way of honoring Jenny’s brother, Gabriel Wiener, who in 1997 died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 26. Now, as the nonprofit theater is marking its 20th anniversary, the couple is facing another wrenching struggle: Jon has A.L.S., the severe neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.“Every painful experience in my life — if I have to live through it, I am going to come out on the other side with a lesson and a way to give back in some way,” Jenny Steingart said in a recent interview at their home on the Upper West Side. “Because a loss without some meaning behind it is really hard to live with.”So this anniversary, to be celebrated with a gala on Monday, also finds the Steingarts feeling great satisfaction, having created an institution that — in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — has played a crucial role in the professional development of so many artists.Among those who have worked at Ars Nova are Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, Christopher Jackson and Phillipa Soo of “Hamilton” fame; Bridget Everett, the actress and cabaret performer of the acclaimed HBO series “Somebody Somewhere”; and Dave Malloy, who created “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” at Ars Nova.More recently, Ars Nova presented Heather Christian’s widely-praised music-theater piece “Oratorio for Living Things,” after being delayed by the pandemic shutdown.“This theater has done the good work of incubating extraordinary artists,” said the “Hamilton” producer Jeffrey Seller, adding that Mimi Lien, the scenic designer for his current Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd” — who won a Tony for “Great Comet” — came out of Ars Nova. “Many people make things,” he added, “but few of them are vital 20 years later.”When Ars Nova offered Everett a creative home, she was performing in karaoke bars. With its support, she developed her brash 2007 solo show, “At Least It’s Pink” at Ars Nova. “I was taken aback by their enthusiasm for me because I wasn’t getting anything anywhere,” Everett said. “I would not have a career if it wasn’t for them seeing something in me.”The improvised rap evening “Freestyle Love Supreme” had its beginning at Ars Nova, which also helped birth the musical “KPOP.”The director Alex Timbers (“Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”) got his start at Ars Nova, with Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s doomsday comedy “Boom.” “It was the first time I’d been hired professionally to direct and given access to designers I would never have gotten to work with on my own,” he said. “It was not only a gift, but a leap of faith.”The cast of the 2017 Off Broadway production of “KPOP,” which occupied two floors of a building in Hell’s Kitchen.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesLucas Steele, left, and Denée Benton in the 2016 Broadway production of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” at the Imperial Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt the gala, Ars Nova will announce a financial pledge from the Steingarts that will enable a more consistent presentation of comedy in addition to its current variety show, “Showgasm.” Citing, for example, Ars Nova’s “Creation Nation,” a popular live variety program that featured the comedian Billy Eichner, Jon Steingart said comedy — as well as music — taps into “where youth culture is right now.”Jenny Steingart, 55, a Manhattan native, said her parents — Michael A. Wiener, who helped found the Infinity Broadcasting chain of radio stations, and Zena, a music teacher and singer — encouraged her to follow her passion. “‘What are you aligned with?’” she recalled them asking. “‘What is the thing that sparks you?’”Jon, now 55, grew up in Southern California and was a producer of the Broadway show “Julia Sweeney’s ‘God Said “Ha!.”’” They married in 2002 and now have three children, ages 19, 16 and 13.After the death of her brother, who produced recordings of early music, Jenny said she and Jon “let his legacy inspire the creation of new art.”Jenny Steingart and Anthony Veneziale accepted a special Tony Award for “Freestyle Love Supreme” in 2021. Theo Wargo/Getty Images For Tony Awards ProIn the early years, the Steingarts, together with the theater’s founding artistic director, Jason Eagan, were out every night trolling for talent, an approach that continues to this day. “We’re looking at artists with potential,” Eagan said, “rather than artists with résumés.”Ars Nova, which planted its flag on West 54th Street, quickly established itself as a space where artists could take big chances, where “you can say, I want to make an electro pop opera about a slice of ‘War and Peace,’” said Renee Blinkwolt, the company’s producing executive director, referring to “Great Comet,” which won Tony Awards for lighting as well as scenic design. (In 2016, the show’s commercial producers agreed to revise how it credited Ars Nova’s contributions to “Great Comet” in Playbill.)Despite having cemented its status as a staple of the New York theatrical landscape, Ars Nova, which in 2019 opened a second theater at Greenwich House in the Village, remains relatively scrappy, with an annual operating budget of about $4 million and a staff of 14. A ticket subsidy program keeps prices low and this season offered pay-what-you-wish.During the pandemic, no employees were furloughed, thanks in part to the Paycheck Protection Program, which covered about 10 percent of the funds required to keep paying artists and staff.These days, the Steingarts are less involved in running the organization, but they continue to play a strong supporting role. Jon spends most of his time researching his disease — “I don’t quit,” he said — recognizing that he is fortunate to be alive five years after his diagnosis. Sitting in a wheelchair at his kitchen table, Jon also described himself as “pretty even keel about acceptance.”“I’m not a person who, win or lose, spends a lot of time asking why me,” he said.Jenny, however, is a little less accepting, although she is doing her best to keep it together.“I don’t want to be Debbie Downer, and I also don’t want to be Pollyanna,” she said. “It’s really important to me to lean into the gratitude I have and the blessings that have come from even the worst stuff.”Though Ars Nova’s close-knit extended family has had to adjust to the prospect of a future without one of its parents, the artists are trying to do what they’ve always done: stay positive and persevere.“The tragedy of losing her brother and what Jon is going through — it’s the brutality of life,” Everett said. “But I’m really glad that what Ars Nova has given does sustain. Putting people on course and giving them a chance — what better gift is that?” More

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      Laura Pels, Devoted Supporter of Nonprofit Theater, Dies at 92

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      She led a foundation that underwrote productions for numerous theater groups, as well as playwrights like Harold Pinter and Arthur Miller.Laura Pels, a leading benefactor of nonprofit theater through the Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater, which has helped a multitude of companies stage plays in New York City and beyond, died on Wednesday at a hospital near her home in Manhattan. She was 92.The cause was complications of Covid-19, her daughter Juliette J. Meeus said.Ms. Pels took control of the foundation that now bears her name in a divorce settlement with the media executive Donald A. Pels.“I decided that I was going to do exactly what I wanted with it: help the theater,” she told Playbill in 1995.She did just that, diligently guiding the foundation from the 1990s until recently.“She was incredibly involved and ‘hands on,’” Hal Witt, the foundation’s former executive director and a member of the board, wrote in an email, adding that Ms. Pels had “read all of the scripts that were submitted for funding.”There were rules: Productions had to be run by accredited nonprofit theaters; a full script, along with a 500-word statement, had to be submitted; and musicals need not apply.Ms. Pels forged relationships with leading playwrights like Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and Harold Pinter, Mr. Witt said, and with artistic directors like André Bishop at Lincoln Center Theater, James Houghton at Signature Theater and Todd Haimes at the Roundabout Theater Company.Mr. Haimes, who saved the Roundabout from bankruptcy (and who died last month at 66), said in 1995 that “as traditional sources of funding are drying up, a person like Laura who will sponsor productions makes a huge difference to nonprofit theaters like ours.”He added, “The fact that Laura is a creative person who can come up with her own projects and yet doesn’t tell us how to run the company is the nicest combination one could ask for in a supporter.”Jack Brister, the foundation’s treasurer, said in an email that during his 20 years with the foundation it had granted more than $5 million to nonprofit theaters in the United States.Josette Jeanne Bernard was born on May 1, 1931, in Saint-Vivien-de-Monségur, a village near Bordeaux, France. Her parents, Raymond and Jeanne Yvette (Dauvignac) Bernard, were schoolteachers.She grew up near Bordeaux and then studied mime and acting in Paris, before she decided that the stage was not for her. (Her daughter Juliette said her mother changed her name to Laura in her 20s because she disliked Josette.)At 25, she moved to London to study English and met Adolphe Meeus, a translator for the United Nations. They married in 1956.After living for a time in Ethiopia, the couple moved to New York City and divorced in the mid-1960s.She married Mr. Pels in 1965. A communications executive, he took control of Lin Broadcasting in 1969 and served as its chairman and president for the next 20 years.Starting in the early 1980s, Mr. Pels invested heavily in cellular communications, buying up licenses from the Federal Communications Commission that became increasingly valuable as cellphone use spread. In 1989, McCaw Cellular bought a controlling interest in Lin in a deal valued at more than $3 billion. Mr. Pels’s personal profit was estimated at nearly $175 million (more than $420 million in today’s money).Not long after, The New Yorker reported that Ms. Pels and her husband had donated more than $1 million to help the actor Tony Randall start the National Actors Theater, originally out of the Belasco Theater on Broadway, to present affordable shows by playwrights like Ibsen, Chekhov and Miller.The Pelses filed for divorce in 1993, and Ms. Pels became the foundation’s leader. (Mr. Pels died in 2014.)The foundation also funded Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. And it provided educational grants to up-and-coming artists at institutions like the Juilliard School and the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.For many years Ms. Pels owned an apartment in Paris and Le Théâtre de L’Atelier in the city’s Montmartre neighborhood, which she ran with her daughter Juliette. In New York, she endowed an annual $10,000 cash prize for midcareer American playwrights for PEN America.In addition to Juliette, she is survived by another daughter, Valerie A. Pels; a son, Laurence, who is on the foundation’s board; and four grandchildren.In 1995, Roundabout staged a production of Mr. Pinter’s “Moonlight” at a newly opened 399-seat venue on West 46th Street, the Laura Pels Theater.“I thought it was an honor I didn’t deserve,” Ms. Pels said at the time. “But I realized that giving up a little anonymity could have a positive impact on the work I want to do.” More

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      ‘Wild Life’ Review: Their Land Is Our Land

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      This documentary looks at the efforts of Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and Douglas Tompkins to preserve stretches of land in Argentina and Chile.“Wild Life,” the latest eco-conscious documentary from the filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (“Free Solo,” “Meru”) is a rickety helicopter tour of a fascinating marriage; nearly every scene makes you want to stop and explore in more detail. Things move fast with barely a beat of introduction. Those unfamiliar with the American philanthropists Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and her husband, Douglas Tompkins, may feel in the film’s opening minutes as disoriented as if they’ve been dropped in the wilderness. One catches on that the Tompkins purchased a lot of it: more than one million acres in Argentina and Chile, with the goal of gifting the land back as recognized national parks. The scale of the couple’s ambition teeters on the surreal. Asked in archival footage about a massive snow-flocked volcano on the horizon, Doug casually replies, “Yeah, that came with it.”The film doesn’t do much besides pair snippets of the Tompkins’ biographies with staggeringly beautiful shots of Patagonia’s natural splendors. An early effort to structure the running time around Kris’s first summit of a mountain named in her honor by her husband, who died in 2015, unspools clumsily and is eventually set aside. Chin, a climber himself, joined Kris on the trek and must have decided the footage was less interesting than the story that brought her and Doug to Chile in the first place — an unusual adventure in 20th-century capitalism that begins in 1968 with Doug and his friend Yvon Chouinard embarking on a nine-month van expedition through South America and returning home to each start apparel companies: one would found Esprit; the other, Patagonia.These two mountaineers on the precipice of great wealth were also free-spirited “dirtbags,” a word Chin uses with reverence. Yvon doesn’t disagree, explaining, “If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent.” Yvon would soon hire a teenage Kris to work at Patagonia as an assistant packer; she rose to become chief executive. In her 40s, Kris met and married Doug, completing the loop.Chin and Vasarhelyi, married themselves, understand the unity and isolation couples experience when spurred by a shared goal. The details of negotiating this staggering land donation with Chile’s former president Michelle Bachelet include a moment of suspense that’s hard to follow. (The filmmakers seem too shy to ask questions about costs and legal clauses.) But what is clear is the Tompkins’ twin passions for nature and romance, which merge in the metaphors Kris uses to describe her husband’s effect on her life: “You get hit by lightning,” she beams, adding later, “Once, I was a pebble in a stream. Not anymore.”Kris and Doug’s moving love story should be the emotional foundation of the documentary, but it’s edited in a bit too late. Paradoxically, however, we also crave more scenes of their individual transitions from bohemians to business titans. We’re tantalized by a glimpse of Patagonia meetings held barefoot and cross-legged on the corporate carpet, an allusion to Yvon and Doug’s competition to run the most ethical company (though there’s no need for the klutzy needle-drop of the Tears for Fears hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”), and a hasty mention of Doug’s efforts to course-correct the environmentally destructive fast-fashion industry with a 1990 Esprit advertisement asking mall rat teenagers whether their clothes are “something you really need.” I’d watch a real-time documentary on just that next board meeting.Wild LifeRated PG-13 for brief strong language. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Music

      Pandemic Woes Lead Met Opera to Tap Endowment and Embrace New Work

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      Facing tepid ticket sales, the company will withdraw up to $30 million from its endowment and stage more operas by living composers, which have been outselling the classics.Hit hard by a cash shortfall and lackluster ticket sales as it tries to lure audiences back amid the pandemic, the Metropolitan Opera said Monday that it would withdraw up to $30 million from its endowment, give fewer performances next season and accelerate its embrace of contemporary works, which, in a shift, have been outselling the classics.The dramatic financial and artistic moves show the extent to which the pandemic and its aftermath continue to roil the Met, the premier opera company in the United States, and come as many other performing arts institutions face similar pressures.“The challenges are greater than ever,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “The only path forward is reinvention.”Nonprofit organizations try to dip into their endowments only as a last resort, since the funds are meant to grow over time while producing a steady source of investment income. The Met’s endowment, which was valued at $306 million, was already considered small for an institution of its size. This season it is turning to the endowment to cover operating expenses, to help offset weak ticket sales and a cash shortfall that emerged as some donors were reluctant to accelerate pledged gifts amid the stock market downturn. As more cash gifts materialize, the company hopes to replenish the endowment.To further cut costs, the company, which is giving 215 performances this season, is planning to reduce the number of performances next season by close to 10 percent.The Met’s decision to stage significantly more contemporary operas is a remarkable turnabout for the company, which largely avoided newer works for many decades because its conservative audience base seemed to prefer war horses like Puccini’s “La Bohème,” Verdi’s “Aida” and Bizet’s “Carmen.”But as the Met staged more new work in recent years that dynamic has begun to shift, a change that has grown more pronounced since the pandemic: While attendance has been generally anemic, contemporary works including Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” last season and Kevin Puts’s “The Hours” this season drew sellout crowds. (Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” by contrast, ended its run this month with 40 percent attendance.)Read More on the Coronavirus PandemicBoosters: Americans who received updated shots for Covid-19 saw their risk of hospitalization reduced by roughly 50 percent this fall compared with certain groups inoculated with the original vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.Seniors Forgo Boosters: Nearly all Americans over 65 got their initial Covid vaccines. But only 36 percent have received the bivalent booster, according to C.D.C. data.Free at-Home Tests: With cases on the rise, the Biden administration restarted a program that has provided hundreds of millions of tests through the Postal Service.Contagion: Like a zombie in a horror film, the coronavirus can persist in the bodies of infected patients well after death, even spreading to others, according to two startling studies.From now on, Mr. Gelb said, the Met will open each season with a new production of a contemporary work.It will begin next year with the company premiere of Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” and the season will feature its first performances of Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X”; Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas” and a staged production of John Adams’s “El Niño.” And Mr. Gelb said that the Met was rearranging next season to bring back “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and “The Hours,” with its three divas, Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato and Kelli O’Hara, reprising their roles.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, left, said that the company would embrace more contemporary works. He spoke with the composer Philip Glass in 2019. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Opera should reflect the times we’re in,” said Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director. “It’s our responsibility to generate new works so that people can recognize themselves and their realities on our stage.”Mr. Gelb said that the company’s change in strategy was possible in part because major stars are increasingly interested in performing music by living composers. “It’s a big shift in terms of opera singers themselves, embracing new work and understanding that this is the future,” he said.The Met has drawn many of the most illustrious singers of the day since Enrico Caruso ruled its stage, and it gave the world premiere of several Puccini operas and the American premiere of works by Richard Strauss and Wagner. It returned triumphantly last year after the long pandemic shutdown, which cost it $150 million in anticipated revenues. Audiences were back, though still lagging. Donations were up. And the determination of the whole company, including its artists and stagehands and ushers, was on full display: even as Omicron shut down many theaters last season, the Met never missed a curtain.By summer, however, the company, which has an annual budget of $312 million, making it the largest performing arts organization in the United States, began to feel the strains of the pandemic more acutely.Ticket revenues last season from in-person performances and the Met’s Live in HD cinema presentations were down by more than $40 million compared with before the pandemic. Paid attendance in the opera house has fallen to 61 percent of capacity, down from 73 percent. Donors have stepped in to fill much of the shortfall: During the pandemic, they have pledged more than $150 million in extra emergency funds. But amid the market downturn, some were hesitant to quickly deliver those gifts.“When the economy shudders, major donors shudder along with it,” Mr. Gelb said.The company had avoided dipping into its endowment in the early days of the pandemic, even as many other struggling opera companies and orchestras did, partly because it had taken the painful step of furloughing workers, including its orchestra and chorus, without pay. But now it has withdrawn $23 million from its endowment and can draw another seven million.A recent cyberattack that left the Met website and box office unable to sell new tickets for nine days has added to the company’s woes.But as more private donations come in — in the beginning of the new year the company expects to take in an additional $36 million in cash above its normal contributions — it hopes to replenish the endowment before the end of the fiscal year, at the end of July. It is unclear if that will be possible.“The Hours,” the new Kevin Puts opera starring Renée Fleming and Kyle Ketelsen, was such a strong seller this year that the company will bring it back next season. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Met’s decision to turn to its endowment undoes some of the work it has undertaken in recent years to build it back up. A few years ago the company announced a fund-raising drive to double the endowment, and took steps to lower the amount its draws from it each year down to 5 percent of its value, from 8 percent.The Met is not alone in finding it difficult to emerge from the pandemic.Portland Opera in Oregon, which is struggling with a prolonged decline in ticket sales, has reduced its staff and cut in half the number of operas it stages each season to three from six before the pandemic. “The situation currently facing Portland Opera is not unique, but it is still a crisis,” said Sue Dixon, the company’s general director, who said that the cuts were necessary in the short term but would hurt the company’s ability to grow back.The Philadelphia Orchestra has seen paid attendance hovering at around 47 percent this fall, down from about 66 percent before the pandemic, though a recent uptick in sales has provided some optimism. “Many people are not back in the habit,” said Matías Tarnopolsky, the president and chief executive of the orchestra and the Kimmel Center. “We need to remind them that it’s not only a beautiful and extraordinary and special experience, but it’s also easy and inexpensive.”Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, a troupe in Ohio, canceled its holiday shows this month because of tepid demand and rising production costs. And the Philly Pops, a 43-year-old orchestra, has announced plans to dissolve next year, citing mounting debt and a sharp decline in subscriptions during the pandemic.Verdi’s “Don Carlo” ended its run this fall with only 40 percent paid attendance.Ken Howard/Met OperaThe prospect of a recession next year is further rattling arts groups and raising fears that weak attendance could extend into next season and beyond. Federal assistance, which helped many companies survive the pandemic shutdown, has now largely dried up.“We’re still in this period of great uncertainty and anxiety,” said Simon Woods, the president and chief executive of the League of American Orchestras. “The need to build new audiences is more urgent than ever.”For many opera companies and orchestras, the pandemic has accelerated the decline of the subscription model for selling tickets, which was once a major source of revenue.At the Met, subscriptions are expected to fall to 19 percent of total box office revenues this season, compared with 45 percent two decades ago. As single tickets become more popular, and some older subscribers stay at home because of virus fears, the average age of the Met’s audience has dropped to 52, from 57 in 2020.Mr. Nézet-Séguin, who became the Met’s music director in 2018, succeeding James Levine, who led the company for four decades, said the company would remain committed to the classics even as it embraced innovation. And he said that the company could try to appeal to different audiences with an array of works, both old and new.“I want everyone to feel welcome at the Met,” he said. “Will they fall in love with every opera we do? Of course not. But I don’t want anyone to say, ‘The Met is not for me.’” More