Peter Gelb’s tyranny gets struck down by Met Opera fans

After the Met­ro­pol­itan Opera chief Peter Gelb had for­bid­den his house magazine, Opera News, to review Met per­form­ances in the future (because an edit­or­ial had the cheek to com­ment neg­at­ively on some Met decisions) the man­age­ment has done an abrupt about face, and issued the fol­low­ing statement:

In view of the out­pour­ing of reac­tion from opera fans about the recent decision to dis­con­tinue Met per­form­ance reviews in Opera News, the Met has decided to reverse this new edit­or­ial policy. From their post­ings on the inter­net, it is abund­antly clear that opera fans would miss read­ing reviews about the Met in Opera News. Ulti­mately, the Met is here to serve the opera-loving pub­lic and has changed its decision because of the pas­sion­ate response of the fans.

The Met and the Met Opera Guild, the pub­lisher of Opera News, have been in dis­cus­sions about the role of the Guild and how its pro­grams and activ­it­ies can best ful­fill its mis­sion of sup­port­ing the Met­ro­pol­itan Opera. These dis­cus­sions have included the role of reviews in Opera News, and whether they served that mis­sion.  While the Met believed it did not make sense for a house organ that is pub­lished by the Guild and fin­anced by the Met to con­tinue to review Met pro­duc­tions, it has become clear that the reviews gen­er­ate tre­mend­ous excite­ment and interest and will con­tinue to have a place in Opera News.

The change of heart, com­ing only a day after Gelb’s ban, will surely come as an embar­rass­ment to the organ­isa­tion as a whole, and Gelb above all. As the son of former New York Times man­aging editor, Gelb should know some­thing about free expres­sion, and he obvi­ously doesn’t like it!

His hys­ter­ical reac­tion cer­tainly hasn’t done him any PR favours. Justin Dav­id­son for the New York Magazine’s Vul­ture, writes,

Gelb is per­fectly within his rights to defend him­self against jabs by spin­ning hard and fast. He once invited me to his office to try and per­suade me that I was being unfair in my reviews. On that occa­sion, he was will­ing to con­cede prob­lems with cer­tain pro­duc­tions. But now he has hunkered down. Instead of bat­ting away a bad review or hos­tile com­ment as one person’s opin­ion, he has taken to bul­ly­ing the very people who care most about the art form he is ostens­ibly there to advance.

Nath­alie Wag­ner, pres­id­ent of the Wag­ner Soci­ety of New York, said,

It is irra­tional and inter­feres with the busi­ness of present­ing artistic events. Cen­sor­ship doesn’t work in other coun­tries, and it should not exist here. We think Opera News does an excel­lent and a vital job in cov­er­ing opera.

A com­ment on the New York Times music blog is typ­ical of the reac­tion from thou­sands of opera lovers:

Cri­ti­cism should always be wel­come by any arts organ­iz­a­tion so long as it is respons­ible. Respons­ib­il­ity means that the critic must always give reas­ons for an opin­ion. It is not enough to say, “This pro­duc­tion is awful.” It must be, “This pro­duc­tion is awful because.…..” Any­one (includ­ing Mr. Gelb, of course) can dis­agree with a review, but we too should always say why we dis­agree. And the reason needs to be more than “…because Joe Blow, the dir­ector, is a recog­nized genius.” Recog­nized geni­uses make mis­takes just like every­one else.

Arrog­ant dic­tat­or­ship of the kind Peter Gelb seems to be exer­cising has no place in any well-run organ­iz­a­tion. He has no busi­ness intim­id­at­ing WXQR into delet­ing a blog with a neg­at­ive review of the Met or demand­ing that someone else stop post­ing inform­a­tion about forth­com­ing per­form­ances that is pub­licly avail­able, even if not yet in a Met press release. - Wal­ter Pierce, Wash­ing­ton, DC

Or as another com­ment puts it,

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