Peter Gelb and His Met: No Booing Please

What occurs to me about the booing is that it might begin to color attitudes towards the Met under Peter Gelb for whom this 2009-10 season is the first with no vestigial ties to Joseph Volpe.
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Booing -- an honored tradition you might have thought had disappeared at the Metropolitan Opera as finally as the echoes of bravos past -- is back. Luc Bondy's new Tosca reaped sustained hoots when the director joined the opening night cast at the curtain call a few weeks ago. Mary Zimmerman was resoundingly catcalled as she stepped out to link arms with Natalie Dessay after unveiling last year's La Sonnambula mangling. Not to mention last week's yowling after Daniele Gatti's Aida conducting.

No, I'm not about to make a case for booing, though in theory I'm not against it. I sometimes think it's well deserved. What keeps me from supporting it as a response as worthy in certain situations as are applause and the epidemic standing ovation is that often those who've earned the boos -- directors or other members of the usually dispersed creative team -- aren't the ones who bear the brunt of the jeers. Cast members do, when often they've done fine jobs -- or have done as well as possible through insurmountable conditions.

What occurs to me about the booing is that it might begin -- perhaps has already begun -- to color attitudes towards the Met under Peter Gelb for whom this 2009-10 season is the first with no vestigial ties to Joseph Volpe. My guess is that some Gelb watchers are already keeping score. To the Tosca and Sonnambula treatments, they may have added the Peter Grimes for which debut director John Doyle did no favors two seasons back.

Those currently maintaining a tally could also be keeping a wary eye out for Zimmerman's return to the Met in April with a new Renee Fleming-anchored Armida production. It would be no surprise if they're convinced Gelb might have thought better of having Zimmerman return after last year's debacle -- no matter how much preliminary work had been completed or how binding contracts are.

If these notions are already bubbling under, I'd say they're not only premature, they're off-base. There's a context into which the Tosca booing can be placed and be termed unfair. The Bondy version follows one of the most popular productions the Met has had on its stage in the last few decades. Needless to remind any opera lover, it was Franco Zeffirelli's sumptuous 1985 version, replete with its apparent first-act replica of Sant'Andrea della Valle. And if anyone needed reminding, Zeffirelli has been handy of late, strenuously denouncing the replacement.

Anyone thinking about the challenge Bondy had could have instantly realized Bondy wasn't going to attempt one-upping Zeffirelli but pretty much had to march in another direction entirely. That's what he's done with the stark first act--and boldly, too. Okay, his second act set, looking like a style moderne waiting-room, isn't especially appealing (nor are the three floozies decorating it), and there isn't too much anyone can do to distinguish the third-act Castel Sant'Angelo, either. Nevertheless, the worst that can be said about Bondy's Tosca is that it's an unprepossessing (and not badly sung) incarnation following a classic one.

And if that reduces Gelb's large-scale gaffes from three to two, it means looking down one's nose at the still new, or new-ish, general manager is a premature posture to assume. Even three calamities is no great embarrassment when set against the progress Gelb has made in an atmosphere where opera has been in decline as popular entertainment and, worse, at a time when the body-punches the economy has taken requires heavy across-the-board Met budget cuts.

Considered from this vantage point, Gelb has pulled off a couple of masterful tricks. His high-definition screenings of operas in movie houses across the country and beyond is not only a success, but the strategy is now being widely copied. One of his reasons for launching the campaign has been to lure younger audiences to bolster the thinning ranks of older opera lovers. Indications are strong that the undertaking is, uh, taking.

Possibly, there are those attributing Gelb's few missteps to bringing theater artists into his house -- as if opera is not theater, which it absolutely is, of course. It always was. Yes, Doyle and Zimmerman won their reputations as theater directors -- musicals in Doyle's case. But so has, for instance, Bartlett Sher, whose Barber of Seville is a Met click.

And why shouldn't Gelb have deep respect for theater? His parents, Arthur and Barbara, wrote the definitive Eugene O'Neill biography. By his own admission, he went to the theater regularly before being introduced to opera as a teen-ager. And contemporary opera, many will insist, can profit from acquiring more of theater's strengths -- like consistent first-rate acting.

So far Gelb -- always declaring music his top priority -- has had his perhaps less in-your-face achievements outweigh the inevitable productions disappointments. For that compelling reason, he should get the benefit of any doubts now being raised.

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