Grand Opera: The Story of the Met

by Affron, Charles

  With Domingo well into the fourth decade of his Met career and going strong, the company subscribed to two vanity projects at his behest, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s Sly and Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Wolf-Ferrari’s comic operas deserve a hearing, to be sure; Sly is a product of his less satisfying verismo manner. As general director of the Washington National Opera, Domingo had programmed the work in 1999 for his compatriot José Carreras, with staging by Marta Domingo; three years later, he took the role, his wife, and Michael Scott’s sets and costumes up the Northeast corridor to Lincoln Center. Nine performances, Domingo or not, made Volpe’s point: that unfamiliar operas should be scheduled for few repeats. Given only three times in 2004–05, Cyrano de Bergerac, based on Edmond Rostand’s evergreen play, sold out. The opera had an age-appropriate role for Domingo and a sympathetic part for the Met’s up-and-coming lirico-spinto, Sondra Radvanovsky. The critics thought the score not “especially good,” griped that “Mr. Domingo gets what he wants,” and argued that as many as “fifty works . . . should have been introduced into the Metropolitan repertory in advance of [this] mediocrity.” Domingo was also on hand to add luster to Fedora (Oct. 5, 1996) and The Merry Widow, farewell productions for Mirella Freni and Frederica von Stade. The rich title role of Fedora goes to the soprano; Loris gets to sing the one popular melody, “Amor ti vieta.” In the April 26, 1997, telecast, filmed late in the run, Domingo pressures the brief aria unduly. Billed as “the last prima donna,” Freni was cheered by adoring fans undeterred by her now too often hollow sound. In the Met’s first The Merry Widow, Domingo was Danilo to von Stade’s Hanna, the role befitting the beloved mezzo whose charm helped redeem a lackluster production. Antony McDonald’s “allusions to old cut-out and painted scenery [spoke] . . . of prudence and economy.”11

  Kathleen Battle and Others

  If Volpe was wont to indulge the whim of Pavarotti and the will of Domingo, he stopped short at the caprices of other stars, most famously at those of Kathleen Battle. Her outbursts were legend from New York to San Francisco and beyond. In 1983, Battle had an angry brush with Kiri Te Kanawa as the two prepared for Arabella. She incited a messy contretemps during the 1985 Le Nozze di Figaro: defying precedent, she was adamant that the principal soprano’s dressing room was rightfully Susanna’s, not the Contessa’s, and threw Carol Vaness’s costumes out the door. During rehearsals of the 1993 Der Rosenkavalier, she had differences with the conductor, Christian Thielemann. She left the stage demanding that Volpe meet her on the spot. When he failed to appear, Battle walked out of the theater—and out of the production (Times, Jan. 30). The curtain finally came down on the erratic soprano in February 1994. She had insisted that rehearsals for La Fille du régiment be scheduled at her convenience, arrived late or not at all, left early, and ordered that colleagues divert their gaze when she sang. As the Marquise, Rosalind Elias was called upon to accompany Battle’s Marie in the act 2 lesson scene. Battle found Elias’s pianistic skills wanting and proceeded to humiliate the veteran mezzo in front of cast and crew. This time, neither the clout that came with aggressive media exposure nor the support of Levine could save her. Volpe’s statement to the press read: “Kathleen Battle’s unprofessional actions . . . were profoundly detrimental to the artistic collaboration among all the cast members. . . . I have taken this step to insure that everyone involved in the production will be able to rehearse and perform in an atmosphere that makes it possible for them to perform at their best.” The cast greeted her firing with applause and Volpe was hailed as a hero by fellow intendants on both sides of the Atlantic (Times, Feb. 8, Feb. 21, 1994). Battle never again sang at the Met. Volpe’s regret over his handling of the affair came only years later as he looked back on his career. But at the time, or shortly thereafter, his take on the subject fell somewhere between a crack and a boast: “Bing will be remembered for firing Maria Callas; I’ll be remembered for firing Battle. Mine will be the bigger funeral.”

  As to the mercurial couple of Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna, although Volpe made it clear he was “not banning them from the Met, like Kathleen Battle,” when they temporized over signing a joint contract for Zeffirelli’s 1998 La Traviata, he admonished them sternly, leaving no doubt that their demand for approval of sets and staging was laughable. In the end, the new production was given over to Patricia Racette and Marcelo Álvarez, making his debut. And when Gheorghiu announced in earshot of all that she would absolutely not wear Micaela’s blond braids in the Carmen of the 1997 Japan tour, Volpe promptly replaced her with her cover. At the next performance, Gheorghiu gave in, letting her dark tresses peek out from under the detested wig.12

  MET TITLES

  Back again as president of the Association, Bruce Crawford took the occasion of the 1995 annual meeting to review the accomplishments of the past decade. The Met was now a nearly $150 million-a-year operation, and average capacity was projected at 92.5 percent, with revenues covering 60 percent of expenses, leaving $60 million to be raised from private and public sources, a goal no other opera house could begin to contemplate. Crawford cited the years of balanced budgets, a reward for the tight lid kept on expenses. He pointed to the orchestra and its tours, the visits of the company to Japan, Germany, and Spain, the resumption of recordings, and the expansion of telecasts. Then, of course, there were the first commissions in twenty-five years, The Ghosts of Versailles and The Voyage, fund-raising successes, and fifteen years of labor peace. Finally, Crawford congratulated Volpe and Joseph Clark, technical director, for the design and imminent introduction of Met Titles.

  After a decade of indecision, the titles were up and running for the opening night 1995 Otello. Volpe was triumphant: “When Plácido Domingo made his entrance . . . shouting, ‘Esultate!’ . . . four thousand . . . patrons instantly understood that the storm was over, and they got goose bumps.” Beginning in 1984, a variety of systems had been considered, including handheld devices and the supertitles already functional at City Opera and elsewhere (Times, Sept. 12). Levine had sworn, “Over my dead body will they show those things at this house. I cannot imagine not wanting the audience riveted on the performers at every moment” (Times, Sept. 22, 1985). Volpe’s objections were more practical: he could not fathom supertitles above a proscenium as high as that of the Met stage. Surely those seated in the orchestra would exit the theater with stiff necks. When in 1992 the Kirov Opera (newly rechristened the Mariinsky, although the company continues to be the Kirov outside of Russia) visited New York and asked to bring along its own supertitles, the answer was no. The turndown was blamed on technical difficulties. But suspicion persisted that the management had wanted to avoid the pressure that was sure to follow on a supertitle success (Times, Aug. 20, 1993). In fall 1993, Crawford was finally able to tell prospective donors that the board was committed to individual screens attached to the backs of seats as the least obtrusive option. The solution had been suggested to Clark by an in-flight entertainment system; within six months, his shop had fabricated a viable prototype. Crawford argued that the innovation would build audience capacity, particularly for lesser-known works. By then, major opera houses everywhere had installed titles of some sort. Volpe was conciliatory: “Jimmy and I agreed that if a system could be produced that enhances the experience without distracting those who do not want to use it, we would install it.” By and large, the critics were impressed. But as always, there were qualifications. For one thing, the pricetag, originally estimated at $1.25 million, shot up to $2.7 million. Then there was the issue of distraction. While filters prevented light from flowing left and right, screens in the row in front were visible from behind. And as one critic put it, “it is much harder to keep track of these titles than to read ordinary supertitles. Along with large head movements, drastic changes in eye focus are required every few seconds, a wearying ping-pong of the eyes and mind.” Levine, it appeared, was satisfied.13

  ERRANT PATRONAGE

  At the end of the 1990s, Volpe was the darling of the hard-to-please press
. Tributes to his management emanated from Europe, where reversals in government subsidies had destabilized many of the great houses. La Scala and Covent Garden, for example, were in dire straits. The select committee charged with looking into the Royal Opera published the provocative view that it “would prefer to see the house run by a Philistine with the requisite financial acumen than by the succession of opera and ballet lovers who have brought a great and valuable institution to its knees.” The Telegraph responded testily to the “false alternative,” citing “lucky New York, where the Metropolitan Opera has as general manager Joseph Volpe, a man who not only likes and understands ‘the product,’ but has worked his way up the institution, over a period of thirty-five years, from humble beginning as a stage carpenter.” New York took up the comparison to theaters abroad: “The Met continues a practice of self-sufficiency and free enterprise that is largely unfamiliar to the international opera world. . . . European houses once looked down on the Met as a business operation bent on staying in business. Things have changed. . . . Seven times a week, more than 200 times a year, the Met puts forth seamlessly managed theater. Its backstage is the envy of the world. Things work; people work.” But trouble was around the corner, and it came from three directions: the uncertain status of Levine, a clamorous incident of philanthropy gone rogue, and the cataclysm of September 11.14

  Rumors of Levine’s declining health and growing wanderlust began to circulate in 1997. He had long distrusted reporters, wary that his remarks would be taken out of context, and resisted probes into his personal life. The cause of the unmistakable tremor in his left arm and leg had become a matter of widespread conjecture. Levine sought to quash the more drastic hypotheses in a rare interview during which he explained that the problem was caused by a pinched nerve, the result of the habit of holding a towel on his left shoulder. There was no pathology; the condition ran in his family (Times, Sept. 15, 1997). That same month, word was out that Levine had been offered the position of music director at the Munich Philharmonic. For five seasons, from 1999–00 through 2003–04, he led both the Metropolitan and the Munich orchestras.

  The construction of a narrative of unmatched cultural generosity revolved around the figure of Alberto W. Vilar. It was timed to coincide with the Met’s September 1998 announcement of the most ambitious campaign in its history. The goal was to double the $200 million endowment. Half had already been raised—or pledged, and therein would lie the problem. Of especial note was the commitment of the largest gift ever: thanks to the munificence of Mr. Vilar, the Met was slated to receive $20 million over five years, an additional $5 million in challenge grants, and other more modest sums. In recognition of his benefaction, the Grand Tier would henceforth be the Alberto Vilar Grand Tier; its elegant restaurant would likewise bear the patron’s name. To that point, Vilar had sponsored three productions valued at $9 million. All told, he had turned over, or pledged, $40 million, surpassing Sybil Harrington, the leader of the philanthropic pack, deceased that very month.

  Profiles of Vilar began to appear here and there. The basic biographical elements were these: Born in Newark (later revised to East Orange), New Jersey, in 1940, Vilar was the son of Cuban-Americans (revised to a Cuban-American father and Irish-American mother); he grew up in Cuba and Puerto Rico (revised to Puerto Rico when it was discovered that he had never lived in Cuba, let alone fled Fidel Castro, as he claimed). After college in the United States, he started at Citibank, and then went to Wall Street as a money manager. By that time, he had become his father’s worst nightmare, if not exactly a “longhair,” “one of those crazy music people” (Times, Sept. 29, 1998). In the 1970s, he started his own firm, Amerindo Investment Advisers, and quickly made a fortune in hi-tech growth stocks while toggling between New York and London to attend both to business and to his passion for the opera. His extravagant lifestyle made the news: the thirty-room duplex next door to the United Nations, its fifty-five-hundred-square-foot living room outfitted with three chandeliers simulating those of the Met, they too rising and falling, and an ornate wall that replicated one that had caught his eye at the Mozarteum in Salzburg; the front row seat at the opera, A101, from which he held court at intermission; the one hundred opera performances he attended each year, putting aside the fifty concerts and recitals, a tally even his close associates admitted might be something of an exaggeration. Vilar became fond of crowing, “I think anyone will tell you that I am the largest supporter of classical music, opera and ballet in the world” (Times, Oct. 8, 2000). In exchange for his liberality, he demanded unprecedented recognition, both of kind and of degree: his name in the program on a par with that of the composer, curtain calls at the end of first performances. When Volpe balked, Vilar complained, “I don’t understand why I should be treated like a second-class citizen. What makes me less important than Plácido Domingo?” Typical of the board was the response of Paul M. Montrone, president of the Association succeeding Bruce Crawford in 1999, “The Met has to do everything it can to make [Vilar] feel appreciated. The donors must be treated as well as possible.” But by 2000, the allegation that Vilar deployed his wealth to “manipulate world opera” began to make the rounds in the United States and Europe. Volpe had to tread diplomatically. He drew the comparison of Vilar with Cynthia Wood, on the one hand, and Sybil Harrington, on the other. Wood, an assistant stage director and major contributor, would come into his office, say she wanted to cover the costs of a new production, ask the price, and return the next day check in hand. Vilar emulated neither Wood’s unconditional giving nor Harrington’s coercive largesse: “Sybil would say I’ll give my money if you hire this director or that director. I won’t give you my money if you hire so and so” (Times, Oct. 8, 2000).15

  Then came September 11. The Met responded with a benefit that previewed the upcoming opening night Verdi gala, with the addition at the top of the program of Nabucco’s strirring chorus “Va pensiero.” The performance was transmitted simultaneously to the giant screen of Lincoln Center Plaza, a stone’s throw from the flower-covered sidewalk in front of Fire Engine 40/Ladder 35 at Amsterdam Avenue and 66th Street, a company unit that had suffered devastating losses. On September 18, when trading resumed on the New York Stock Exchange with the biggest one-day drop ever, Volpe informed the board that “the box office is soft overall, and given the current situation between the box office and fundraising for the year, we have major budget concerns and must look at many areas to see what we can do in terms of savings.” At that same dramatic meeting, Volpe announced that Levine was on the point of accepting an offer from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The next month, it was official that Levine would take up his duties in Boston beginning with the 2004–05 season. He would quit the Munich Philharmonic and the Three Tenors roadshow, and step down as the Met’s artistic director to resume his old rank of music director. That his sights were also fixed on Boston in 2004–05 did not deter him from leading fifty-six, or 23 percent, of the Met’s 243 performances.

  To add to the tensions of the painful 9/11 season, with the implosion of the dot-com bubble, the Vilar house of cards began to collapse. Vilar had made good on pledges for Così fan tutte, Le Nozze di Figaro, and La Cenerentola (he was an avid Cecilia Bartoli groupie), and on half the cost of the new Fidelio. He was dragging his feet on the second half of the Beethoven bill. Volpe, as he later wrote, was beginning “to get nervous.” The Met was also awaiting Vilar’s annual contribution of $250,000, an amount expected from each of the thirty-seven managing directors, and the funding stipulated for the Met/Kirov coproduction of War and Peace, not to mention the $20 million pledged to the endowment campaign. Eroding confidence turned into the very real fear that Vilar would default on pledges of $225 million to classical music internationally. He had already failed to come up with payments due the New York Philharmonic, the Washington Opera, among other organizations. The Metropolitan executive committee felt it was the better part of wisdom to take down the foot-high metal letters on the Grand Tier wall that spelled his
name, and to discard the piles of menu covers that telegraphed his wealth and influence in smaller type. Volpe remarked, “Some board members thought it was a cruel and foolhardy gesture.” Where he stood he did not say.16

  In May 2002, Volpe reported to the board that the season just past was “the most difficult year of my career as general manager.” In the face of tightened security and half-empty houses, “it was important [to him] to bring the company together.” The 2002–03 season proved equally trying. The Association was confronted with another potential donor debacle. Sybil Harrington had left precise instructions that proceeds from the Harrington trust were “to underwrite traditional productions of standard operatic fare.” The suit filed against the Met accused the administration of misusing $5 million in its 2001 telecast of a nontraditional Tristan und Isolde and contended that $34 million had gone toward costs unrelated to traditional opera, “the result of a willful and calculated intent to disregard and evade Mrs. Harrington’s wishes.” The matter was settled in a court-ordered mediation, terms of the settlement undisclosed. Also that year, ChevronTexaco announced it would cease its support for the Saturday broadcasts at the end of 2003–04. Rifts in the historic relationship had opened as early as 1999 when Boston’s WCRB-FM dropped the matinees, ostensibly because of the multiple mentions of the sponsor, more probably because of the decline in listenership (Times May 21, 2003). In Volpe’s report to the board of May 21, 2003, the Met’s financial troubles were again front and center: the box office had lost $7.5 million in 2001–02 and $8.2 million in 2002–03. Savings had been effected through the cancellation of telecasts that had had an uninterrupted run of twenty-five years, Carnegie Hall programming that excluded the chorus, the freezing of administrative salaries, and layoffs. Subscriptions had held up reasonably well, but the drop of 50 percent in tourist ticket sales had been disastrous. Prior to September 11, foreign visitors had accounted for 14 percent of box office; in 2001–02, the percentage had decreased by half. In November 2003, Volpe announced a two-week recess for January 2005, a slow period in any case.17