Metropolitan Opera to Showcase More New Work Moving Forward; THE HOURS to Return Next Season

According to the New York Times, the Metropolitan Opera is set to reduce performances by 10% and withdraw $30 million from an endowment to help the company focus more on new work, which have been selling better than the classics. The company has been struggling with ticket sales post-pandemic.

Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, told the Times, "The challenges are greater than ever. The only path forward is reinvention."

This push will start next year with Jake Heggie's "Dead Man Walking" and 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."

The Met will also produce return engagements of "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" and "The Hours," with stars Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato and Kelli O'Hara.

The Metropolitan Opera is a vibrant home for the most creative and talented singers, conductors, composers, musicians, stage directors, designers, visual artists, choreographers, and dancers from around the world.

Since the summer of 2006, Peter Gelb has been the Met's general manager-the 16th in company history. Under his leadership, the Met has elevated its theatrical standards by significantly increasing the number of new productions, staged by the most imaginative directors working in theater and opera, and has launched a series of initiatives to broaden its reach internationally. These efforts to win new audiences prominently include the successful Live in HD series of high-definition performance transmissions to movie theaters around the world. To revitalize its repertoire, the Met regularly presents modern masterpieces alongside the classics. Starting with the 2018-19 season, Yannick Nézet-Séguin took the musical helm of the company as the Met's Jeannette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director.

Each season, the Met stages more than 200 opera performances in New York. More than 800,000 people attend the performances in the opera house during the season, and millions more experience the Met through new media distribution initiatives and state-of-the-art technology.

In 2006, the Met launched a groundbreaking commissioning program in partnership with New York's Lincoln Center Theater to provide renowned composers and playwrights the resources to create and develop new works at the Met and at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater. The first of these to reach the stage was Nico Muhly's Two Boys, with a libretto by Craig Lucas, which opened at the Met in the fall of 2013.

Other initiatives include annual holiday entertainment offerings; a Rush Ticket Program offering discounted orchestra seats for $25; expanded editorial offerings in Met publications, on the web, and through broadcasts; and new public programs that provide greater access to the Met.

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