Grand Opera: The Story of the Met (45 page)

As to the mercurial couple of Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna, although Volpe made it clear he was “not banning them from the Met, like Kathleen Battle,” when they temporized over signing a joint contract for Zeffirelli’s 1998
La Traviata,
he admonished them sternly, leaving no doubt that their demand for approval of sets and staging was laughable. In the end,
the new production was given over to Patricia Racette and Marcelo Álvarez, making his debut. And when Gheorghiu announced in earshot of all that she would absolutely not wear Micaela’s blond braids in the
Carmen
of the 1997 Japan tour, Volpe promptly replaced her with her cover. At the next performance, Gheorghiu gave in, letting her dark tresses peek out from under the detested wig.
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Back again as president of the Association, Bruce Crawford took the occasion of the 1995 annual meeting to review the accomplishments of the past decade. The Met was now a nearly $150 million-a-year operation, and average capacity was projected at 92.5 percent, with revenues covering 60 percent of expenses, leaving $60 million to be raised from private and public sources, a goal no other opera house could begin to contemplate. Crawford cited the years of balanced budgets, a reward for the tight lid kept on expenses. He pointed to the orchestra and its tours, the visits of the company to Japan, Germany, and Spain, the resumption of recordings, and the expansion of telecasts. Then, of course, there were the first commissions in twenty-five years,
The Ghosts of Versailles
and
The Voyage,
fund-raising successes, and fifteen years of labor peace. Finally, Crawford congratulated Volpe and Joseph Clark, technical director, for the design and imminent introduction of Met Titles.

After a decade of indecision, the titles were up and running for the opening night 1995
Otello
. Volpe was triumphant: “When Plácido Domingo made his entrance . . . shouting, ‘Esultate!’ . . . four thousand . . . patrons instantly understood that the storm was over, and they got goose bumps.” Beginning in 1984, a variety of systems had been considered, including handheld devices and the supertitles already functional at City Opera and elsewhere (
Times,
Sept. 12). Levine had sworn, “Over my dead body will they show those things at this house. I cannot imagine not wanting the audience riveted on the performers at every moment” (
Times,
Sept. 22, 1985). Volpe’s objections were more practical: he could not fathom supertitles above a proscenium as high as that of the Met stage. Surely those seated in the orchestra would exit the theater with stiff necks. When in 1992 the Kirov Opera (newly rechristened the Mariinsky, although the company continues to be the Kirov outside of Russia) visited New York and asked to bring along its own supertitles, the
answer was no. The turndown was blamed on technical difficulties. But suspicion persisted that the management had wanted to avoid the pressure that was sure to follow on a supertitle success (
Times,
Aug. 20, 1993). In fall 1993, Crawford was finally able to tell prospective donors that the board was committed to individual screens attached to the backs of seats as the least obtrusive option. The solution had been suggested to Clark by an in-flight entertainment system; within six months, his shop had fabricated a viable prototype. Crawford argued that the innovation would build audience capacity, particularly for lesser-known works. By then, major opera houses everywhere had installed titles of some sort. Volpe was conciliatory: “Jimmy and I agreed that if a system could be produced that enhances the experience without distracting those who do not want to use it, we would install it.” By and large, the critics were impressed. But as always, there were qualifications. For one thing, the pricetag, originally estimated at $1.25 million, shot up to $2.7 million. Then there was the issue of distraction. While filters prevented light from flowing left and right, screens in the row in front were visible from behind. And as one critic put it, “it is much harder to keep track of these titles than to read ordinary supertitles. Along with large head movements, drastic changes in eye focus are required every few seconds, a wearying ping-pong of the eyes and mind.” Levine, it appeared, was satisfied.
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At the end of the 1990s, Volpe was the darling of the hard-to-please press. Tributes to his management emanated from Europe, where reversals in government subsidies had destabilized many of the great houses. La Scala and Covent Garden, for example, were in dire straits. The select committee charged with looking into the Royal Opera published the provocative view that it “would prefer to see the house run by a Philistine with the requisite financial acumen than by the succession of opera and ballet lovers who have brought a great and valuable institution to its knees.” The
Telegraph
responded testily to the “false alternative,” citing “lucky New York, where the Metropolitan Opera has as general manager Joseph Volpe, a man who not only likes and understands ‘the product,’ but has worked his way up the institution, over a period of thirty-five years, from humble beginning as a stage carpenter.” New York took up the comparison to theaters abroad: “The Met continues a practice of self-sufficiency and free enterprise that is largely
unfamiliar to the international opera world. . . . European houses once looked down on the Met as a business operation bent on staying in business. Things have changed. . . . Seven times a week, more than 200 times a year, the Met puts forth seamlessly managed theater. Its backstage is the envy of the world. Things work; people work.” But trouble was around the corner, and it came from three directions: the uncertain status of Levine, a clamorous incident of philanthropy gone rogue, and the cataclysm of September 11.
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Rumors of Levine’s declining health and growing wanderlust began to circulate in 1997. He had long distrusted reporters, wary that his remarks would be taken out of context, and resisted probes into his personal life. The cause of the unmistakable tremor in his left arm and leg had become a matter of widespread conjecture. Levine sought to quash the more drastic hypotheses in a rare interview during which he explained that the problem was caused by a pinched nerve, the result of the habit of holding a towel on his left shoulder. There was no pathology; the condition ran in his family (
Times,
Sept. 15, 1997). That same month, word was out that Levine had been offered the position of music director at the Munich Philharmonic. For five seasons, from 1999–00 through 2003–04, he led both the Metropolitan and the Munich orchestras.

The construction of a narrative of unmatched cultural generosity revolved around the figure of Alberto W. Vilar. It was timed to coincide with the Met’s September 1998 announcement of the most ambitious campaign in its history. The goal was to double the $200 million endowment. Half had already been raised—or pledged, and therein would lie the problem. Of especial note was the commitment of the largest gift ever: thanks to the munificence of Mr. Vilar, the Met was slated to receive $20 million over five years, an additional $5 million in challenge grants, and other more modest sums. In recognition of his benefaction, the Grand Tier would henceforth be the Alberto Vilar Grand Tier; its elegant restaurant would likewise bear the patron’s name. To that point, Vilar had sponsored three productions valued at $9 million. All told, he had turned over, or pledged, $40 million, surpassing Sybil Harrington, the leader of the philanthropic pack, deceased that very month.

Profiles of Vilar began to appear here and there. The basic biographical elements were these: Born in Newark (later revised to East Orange), New Jersey, in 1940, Vilar was the son of Cuban-Americans (revised to a Cuban-American father and Irish-American mother); he grew up in Cuba and Puerto Rico (revised to Puerto Rico when it was discovered that he had never
lived in Cuba, let alone fled Fidel Castro, as he claimed). After college in the United States, he started at Citibank, and then went to Wall Street as a money manager. By that time, he had become his father’s worst nightmare, if not exactly a “longhair,” “one of those crazy music people” (
Times,
Sept. 29, 1998). In the 1970s, he started his own firm, Amerindo Investment Advisers, and quickly made a fortune in hi-tech growth stocks while toggling between New York and London to attend both to business and to his passion for the opera. His extravagant lifestyle made the news: the thirty-room duplex next door to the United Nations, its fifty-five-hundred-square-foot living room outfitted with three chandeliers simulating those of the Met, they too rising and falling, and an ornate wall that replicated one that had caught his eye at the Mozarteum in Salzburg; the front row seat at the opera, A101, from which he held court at intermission; the one hundred opera performances he attended each year, putting aside the fifty concerts and recitals, a tally even his close associates admitted might be something of an exaggeration. Vilar became fond of crowing, “I think anyone will tell you that I am the largest supporter of classical music, opera and ballet in the world” (
Times,
Oct. 8, 2000). In exchange for his liberality, he demanded unprecedented recognition, both of kind and of degree: his name in the program on a par with that of the composer, curtain calls at the end of first performances. When Volpe balked, Vilar complained, “I don’t understand why I should be treated like a second-class citizen. What makes me less important than Plácido Domingo?” Typical of the board was the response of Paul M. Montrone, president of the Association succeeding Bruce Crawford in 1999, “The Met has to do everything it can to make [Vilar] feel appreciated. The donors must be treated as well as possible.” But by 2000, the allegation that Vilar deployed his wealth to “manipulate world opera” began to make the rounds in the United States and Europe. Volpe had to tread diplomatically. He drew the comparison of Vilar with Cynthia Wood, on the one hand, and Sybil Harrington, on the other. Wood, an assistant stage director and major contributor, would come into his office, say she wanted to cover the costs of a new production, ask the price, and return the next day check in hand. Vilar emulated neither Wood’s unconditional giving nor Harrington’s coercive largesse: “Sybil would say I’ll give my money if you hire this director or that director. I won’t give you my money if you hire so and so” (
Times,
Oct. 8, 2000).
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Then came September 11. The Met responded with a benefit that previewed the upcoming opening night Verdi gala, with the addition at the top of the program of
Nabucco
’s strirring chorus “Va pensiero.” The performance
was transmitted simultaneously to the giant screen of Lincoln Center Plaza, a stone’s throw from the flower-covered sidewalk in front of Fire Engine 40/Ladder 35 at Amsterdam Avenue and 66th Street, a company unit that had suffered devastating losses. On September 18, when trading resumed on the New York Stock Exchange with the biggest one-day drop ever, Volpe informed the board that “the box office is soft overall, and given the current situation between the box office and fundraising for the year, we have major budget concerns and must look at many areas to see what we can do in terms of savings.” At that same dramatic meeting, Volpe announced that Levine was on the point of accepting an offer from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The next month, it was official that Levine would take up his duties in Boston beginning with the 2004–05 season. He would quit the Munich Philharmonic and the Three Tenors roadshow, and step down as the Met’s artistic director to resume his old rank of music director. That his sights were also fixed on Boston in 2004–05 did not deter him from leading fifty-six, or 23 percent, of the Met’s 243 performances.

To add to the tensions of the painful 9/11 season, with the implosion of the dot-com bubble, the Vilar house of cards began to collapse. Vilar had made good on pledges for
Così fan tutte, Le Nozze di Figaro,
and
La Cenerentola
(he was an avid Cecilia Bartoli groupie), and on half the cost of the new
Fidelio
. He was dragging his feet on the second half of the Beethoven bill. Volpe, as he later wrote, was beginning “to get nervous.” The Met was also awaiting Vilar’s annual contribution of $250,000, an amount expected from each of the thirty-seven managing directors, and the funding stipulated for the Met/Kirov coproduction of
War and Peace,
not to mention the $20 million pledged to the endowment campaign. Eroding confidence turned into the very real fear that Vilar would default on pledges of $225 million to classical music internationally. He had already failed to come up with payments due the New York Philharmonic, the Washington Opera, among other organizations. The Metropolitan executive committee felt it was the better part of wisdom to take down the foot-high metal letters on the Grand Tier wall that spelled his name, and to discard the piles of menu covers that telegraphed his wealth and influence in smaller type. Volpe remarked, “Some board members thought it was a cruel and foolhardy gesture.” Where he stood he did not say.
¹⁶

In May 2002, Volpe reported to the board that the season just past was “the most difficult year of my career as general manager.” In the face of tightened security and half-empty houses, “it was important [to him] to bring the
company together.” The 2002–03 season proved equally trying. The Association was confronted with another potential donor debacle. Sybil Harrington had left precise instructions that proceeds from the Harrington trust were “to underwrite traditional productions of standard operatic fare.” The suit filed against the Met accused the administration of misusing $5 million in its 2001 telecast of a nontraditional
Tristan und Isolde
and contended that $34 million had gone toward costs unrelated to traditional opera, “the result of a willful and calculated intent to disregard and evade Mrs. Harrington’s wishes.” The matter was settled in a court-ordered mediation, terms of the settlement undisclosed. Also that year, ChevronTexaco announced it would cease its support for the Saturday broadcasts at the end of 2003–04. Rifts in the historic relationship had opened as early as 1999 when Boston’s WCRB-FM dropped the matinees, ostensibly because of the multiple mentions of the sponsor, more probably because of the decline in listenership (
Times
May 21, 2003). In Volpe’s report to the board of May 21, 2003, the Met’s financial troubles were again front and center: the box office had lost $7.5 million in 2001–02 and $8.2 million in 2002–03. Savings had been effected through the cancellation of telecasts that had had an uninterrupted run of twenty-five years, Carnegie Hall programming that excluded the chorus, the freezing of administrative salaries, and layoffs. Subscriptions had held up reasonably well, but the drop of 50 percent in tourist ticket sales had been disastrous. Prior to September 11, foreign visitors had accounted for 14 percent of box office; in 2001–02, the percentage had decreased by half. In November 2003, Volpe announced a two-week recess for January 2005, a slow period in any case.
¹⁷

The stories that had made headlines at the turn of the millennium had their denouements a few years into the new century. In 2004, it was clear that Levine’s time as the Met’s artistic czar was over. Volpe had predicted years earlier that Levine’s “level of involvement” would change: “By 2005–2006 it might be time to consider younger conductors and focus on strengthening our conducting staff.” In March 2004, Beverly Sills, chair of the board since 2002, made a public appeal for $150 million to endow the radio matinees for the next five years. Toll Brothers came to the rescue, guaranteeing a minimum of four years of support for broadcasts that cost $6 million per season. As to Vilar, although disgrace began with the 2002 revelations of his unsavory machinations, in the end the worst of his miseries was only indirectly related to his obsessive philanthropy. In May 2005, a month before his term on the Met board elapsed, he was jailed, accused of defrauding a client of
$5 million. He had apparently spent some of his ill-gotten gains on overdue charitable commitments. Kirov music director Valery Gergiev put up $500,000 toward his friend’s $10 million bail, despite the unmet pledge of $14 million to the St. Petersburg company. In November 2008, the compulsive benefactor, on whose sumptuous apartment the IRS by now had a $23 million lien, was convicted on twelve counts related to securities fraud and money laundering. In 2010, he was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for his white-collar crimes, and in 2012 freed on $10 million bail pending appeal. In 2006, the Metropolitan once again announced receipt, this time actual receipt, of the largest individual gift in its history, $25 million. These unrestricted monies would fill the hole left by Vilar. In gratitude, and as if to expunge the past, on September 25, 2006, the Grand Tier was named the Mercedes T. Bass Grand Tier.
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