New York’s Metropolitan Opera went woke and is now struggling financially, with the once formidable company repeatedly dipping into its endowment and staging the lowest number of productions since its historic strike during the 1980-81 season.
The Met — which is regarded as the largest performing arts organization in the United States — announced this week it will present 18 productions in 2024-25. The number matches the current season and pandemic-shortened 2019-20 for the fewest since 14 in 80-81, according to an AP report.
As recently as 2007-8, the Met staged 28 works.
The Met’s decision to keep the number of productions at 18 is an indication that it still has a long way to go in pulling itself out of financial difficulty.
Met general manager Peter Gelb revealed earlier this year the company recently withdrew $40 million from its endowment, reducing it to about $255 million, according to a report from the New York Times. Taking money out of an endowment is often seen as a measure of last resort for a non-profit arts company, usually when it is unable to cover costs through donations and ticket sales.
“Under the extraordinary financial challenges and circumstances that we’re facing we believed it was the prudent thing to do,” he said. “The alternative would be not to perform.”
The decision came after the Met took $30 million from its endowment fund last season to help cover operating expenses amid weak ticket sales and a cash shortfall, the Times said. Ticket sales last season from in-person performances and cinema broadcasts are still down by about $25 million from before the pandemic.
Last year, the company closed the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the group founded in 1935 to support the opera house. It also shut down the Opera News publication.
Met leaders embraced wokeness following the 2020 race riots that decimated cities around the country, putting racial “equity” at the center of its creative mission. As a result, it has sought to program more operas featuring non-white characters as well as those written by women.
“As the world reacts to the senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, the Met is taking a long, hard look at how our organization functions and what we can do to combat racism, increase diversity among our ranks, and be a more racially equitable institution,” the organization said in a statement posted to its official site that year.
Among the actions the Met took was to hire a chief diversity officer and implement “anti-racism” training for employees.
The company recently staged composer Anthony Davis’ 1985 opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.
As Breitbart News reported, woke performing arts institutions around the country are struggling financially.
Among the major non-profit organizations going through financial turmoil are The Public Theater in New York, which staged the assassination of President Donald Trump; the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles; and the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.
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