Music|Triumph, Tragedy and 50,000 Hats: The Met Opera by the Numbers
By MICHAEL COOPER MAY 5, 2017
When the Metropolitan Opera moved to Lincoln Center from Broadway at 39th Street in 1966, a subway token cost 20 cents, the Supremes’s “You Can’t Hurry Love” was at the top of the Billboard charts, and the (pre-miracle) Mets were wrapping up their fifth season. Since then, a lot of sopranos have gone on to meet tragic but beautiful-sounding ends. As the Met prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary at Lincoln Center with an all-star gala on Sunday, May 7, here is a look at its first half-century in its new home — by the numbers.
251 New Productions
To date, 251 productions have been mounted in the Lincoln Center opera house, which has staged 164 different operas and given more than 11,000 performances.
2,583 for James Levine ...
James Levine, the longtime music director (now emeritus) who shaped the company more than anyone else since making his Met debut in 1971, has conducted in the new opera house 2,583 times more often than any other featured performer.
... and 2,296 for Charles Anthony
The runner-up, the tenor Charles Anthony, sang in the new house 2,296 times, mostly in comprimario, or supporting, roles. But when his performances at the old Met are factored in, he holds the record for all-time Met performances: 2,928.
645 of ‘La Bohème’
With 645 performances, “La Bohème” has been the opera staged most frequently in the new house. Sixty-four sopranos have taken turns as Mimì, a select club of heartbreaking consumptives that has included Teresa Stratas, Renata Tebaldi, Mirella Freni, Renata Scotto, Anna Netrebko and Sonya Yoncheva. (These last two are scheduled to appear at the gala.)
3 Operas Cut Short by Death
Tragedies or mishaps cut three performances short. A 1988, “Macbeth” was canceled after the second act, when a member of the audience leaped to his death during intermission. A 1996 “Makropulos Case” was canceled soon after it began when the tenor Richard Versalle suffered a fatal heart attack onstage (just after singing the line “Too bad, you can only live so long”). And earlier this season, a matinee of Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell” was canceled after the second intermission, after an audience member was spotted sprinkling white powder into the orchestra pit, prompting fears of an anthrax attack. (In fact, he was scattering the ashes of an opera-loving friend in what he later called “a sweet gesture to a dying friend that went completely and utterly wrong in ways that I could never have imagined.”)
7 There From the Start
Seven Met employees have worked at the new house since it opened: José Burgos, a ticket taker; Loretta Di Franco, a soprano who is now a diction coach; Gildo Di Nunzio, an assistant conductor; Arthur Griffenkranz, in the props department; Richard Holmes, who is in charge of nonsinging supernumeraries; Susan Jolles, a harpist in the orchestra; and Marilyn Stroh, a violist.
$294 Million a Year
The Met had a $294 million budget in the 2016 fiscal year, making it the nation’s largest performing arts organization. But as staging operas has grown more expensive over the years, and selling tickets has become more of a struggle, the Met has had to rely more than ever on donors — and has also had to cut costs in recent seasons.
1,298 for One of the 3 Tenors
Before they became a touring act and a recording sensation, the artists formerly known as the Three Tenors were Met regulars — and they have racked up 1,298 performances between them. That includes Luciano Pavarotti’s 378, José Carreras’s 72 and Plácido Domingo’s 848 performances through the end of this season — a number he keeps adding to with new, lower baritone roles and conducting engagements.
3,975 Tickets to Sell a Night
The new Met has 3,800 seats and 175 standing-room places — giving it more capacity than the old Met, which had 3,625 seats and 224 standing room places.
1,931 Live Broadcasts
The Met has broadcast 1,931 operas on the radio from the new house, including its long-running Saturday matinee series and its more recent forays on Sirius XM. There have also been 198 television broadcasts, and, by the end of this season, 109 movie theater transmissions in the Met Live in HD series.
67 Operas Added
The Met has performed 67 operas for the first time since its move to Lincoln Center — including Strauss’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten,” Berlioz’s “Les Troyens,” Berg’s “Lulu,” Mozart’s “Idomeneo,” Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron,” John Adams’s “Nixon in China” and, this season, Kaija Saariaho’s “L’Amour de Loin.”
8 World Premieres
The company has staged eight world premieres at Lincoln Center: Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” which opened the new house in 1966, Marvin David Levy’s “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1967), John Corigliano’s “The Ghosts of Versailles” (1991), Philip Glass’s “The Voyage” (1992), John Harbison’s “The Great Gatsby” (1999), Tobias Picker’s “An American Tragedy” (2005), Tan Dun’s “The First Emperor” (2006) and “The Enchanted Island,” a pastiche set to Baroque music (2011).
50,000 Hats and Headpieces
The Met’s costume shop estimates it has produced some 50,000 millinery pieces — Valkyrie helmets, doomed monarch crowns, wacky Turandot headdresses, and other assorted headgear — since moving to Lincoln Center. That is a lot of hathead.
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