Met Opera Start Date Pushed Back to September 2021; Streams Will Continue
The Metropolitan Opera’s 2020-2021 season has been fully cancelled “based on the advice of health officials who advise the Met and Lincoln Center,” the opera said in an email this week.
“Because of the many hundreds of performers who are required to rehearse and perform in close quarters and because of the company’s large audience, it was determined that it would not be safe for the Met to resume until a vaccine is widely in use, herd immunity is established, and the wearing of masks and social distancing is no longer a medical requirement,” the message said. “We want nothing more than to get back to creating operatic magic as only the Met can, but the safety of our company and the audience we serve must come first.”
But The Met is already well into planning for the 2021-2022 season, and even has a premiere date and show: on September 27, Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones will bring opera back to the stage.
In the meantime, The Met will continue to stream opera on a nightly basis. Already, some locals have watched nearly 200 operas in a row.
The Met continues its commitment to bringing opera to our loyal audience even while the stage is dark, and the free Nightly Opera Streams will continue through the entire closure. Also, we hope you’ll join us for the remainder of the groundbreaking Met Stars Live in Concert series, featuring opera’s greatest stars performing live from striking locations around the globe, transmitted via satellite in state-of-the-art HD quality.
An absolute tragedy for our many neighbors who work at the Metropolitan Opera.
We might as well cancel Christmas, New Year and all holidays for the next 1-3 years and then cancel ourselves.
If we don’t at least try to get back to normal we’ll be doing a slow suicide.
And schools should be open by 2025 – if we’re lucky.
“Trying to get back to normal” is a wonderful idea. The only problem is: how do you try? By opening everything up? Take a look at the midwest if you want to see how that works. Maybe is we had tried to have someone leading the country who took this seriously back in March, we’d be getting back to normal … without trying.
Zoom zi: I couldn’t agree more with you. A tragedy indeed. Unbelievable.
I’m cool with canceling x-mas. New Year will happen either way.
Suicide? Suicide would be pigheadedly piling back in to close-quarter venues at Lincoln Center, and magically believing that you and/or others won’t die of COVID. Hard pass, thanks.
As for canceling ourselves? You first.
Thank you to the Met for the nightly streaming! It’s a treat, and it certainly has elevated our Roku channel menu 🙂
The pandemic ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
Yes, but the days of Rita Hunter and Rita Orlandi-Malaspina are long gone.
Ever since they put on the grossly anti Jewish “Death of Klinghoffer” opera 6 years ago, this inveterate opera goer has not set foot in the Met, and have warned the Board that they have sold their soul for money, and should expect bankruptcy in the not distant future. The future is here.
I’ll bet that you never actually saw Klinghoffer.
Like so many people who are desperate to be offended, it’s helpful to see/read/hear things for yourself.
I am Jewish. I saw the opera. I didn’t like it for a variety of reasons, but I didn’t think it was anti-Semitic.
But go ahead. Deny yourself of beautiful things because one choice was made that offended you.
Sounds like a miserable life. Glad I’m not living it.
Not only did I see the opera I also saw the redacted opening portion of the opera that ridiculed complacent suburban Jewish American families. You should read the libretto and familiarize yourself with it. It was so racist and antisemitic that the Met actually felt obliged to cut it out of the final production. So I did watch it, and you can hide your head in the sand from the coming wave of Nazism engulfing our country step by step.
The Met made cuts due to pressure, not because of content.
Not everyone would agree with you that all art must be sanitized and must only portray certain groups of people in a positive light in all circumstances.
Not everyone agrees with you that the portrayal you saw was meant as an indictment of Jews.
Not everyone agrees with you that that we must only permit censored, sanitized portrayals in art.
Perhaps NYC isn’t for you. Surely there’s a lovely opera company somewhere in South Dakota.
True NYC is no longer for me. I would rather live virtually anywhere else. Just sold my condo there and so happy.