I have been a member of the Metropolitan Opera for years, but it doesn’t mean I always get preferential treatment. Joining something usually means a level of expectation amounting to service, support or reward. In tough times, though, even a membership can result in no reward.
Over the years I have established myself as a regular participant in Richard Wagner’s classic four-part “Ring” cycle, having seen at least one performance a year (or all four) yearly until the popular 20-plus-year-old cycle imagined by Otto Schenk was retired. The newest interpretation of the fantasy epic is in the hands of Robert Lepage and the infamous “Machine” mentioned in worldwide newscasts and in previous entries in this blog.
Last week single ticket sales began for the Met’s new 2011-2012 season. I went out of my way to be ready when the online sales opened up at noon so I could purchase the ticket I wanted. However, pickings were slim this year, particularly for those of us Wagnerites anxious to see the second half of the “Ring” cycle for the first time. Deborah Voigt is scheduled to sing Brunnhilde for the love of the wild and heroic “Siegfried” and die for that same love at the climax of “Gotterdammerung” (“Twilight of the Gods”).
This year the Met has elected to offer only select performances for sale as individual pieces, and hold the spring series of all four (two cycles) for subscribers only. This ultimately meant that the fall performances sold out before the online sales even got off the ground. It also meant I was out of luck.
I’ve never had the experience of seeing the entire opera house sold out before I could even click a mouse, and it feels depressing to be shut out after so many years of feeling the great glass doors were open to me all season. Sure it’s nice to see that the season is a sell-out, and lots of people will fill the opera house daily for an experience that is best had live. The Met’s sales tactics have done that, and they are to be commended for original thinking. It will surely lose them the respect of some patrons and the disappointment of others like me, but they are, after all, in the business to boost executive profits and still have a few cents left to pay the rent at Lincoln Center and buy the cast and crew some coffee.
If I see any productions at all, it will be from one of the many movie theatres which will broadcast select performances live (and in encores) through the season. Not like being in the Met, but an incredible simulation.
I will be in New York City this fall for a Broadway show instead, far away from the familiar trappings at the Met, and I suppose I will likely think of them at least once before curtain time.
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