Thundering Silence at the Met

Deep shadows had fallen where angels and sponsors used to tread. The Metropolitan Opera's 1,100 doors were shut tight. The stage lights (total power: 6,000,000 watts) peered purblindly down on bare boards. In the pit a dirty dust rag lay limply on the conductor's stand, in place of a score.

The source of the gloom was not new. In the past eight years, labor disputes have four times brought the Met to the brink of disaster. In 1961 its opening was ensured at the last moment deus ex machina (when President Kennedy intervened). But this time, New Yorkers were realizing with shock, there might be no opening at all. Worried, tired and gaunt, Met General Manager Rudolf Bing told TIME, "We don't know where to go. It is now a matter of life and death."

Saber Rattling. On the surface it had all looked like part of a familiar cycle--labor v. management saber rattling over money, hours, work conditions --all capable of rational settlement. But the talks between the Met and eleven unions were hampered by past rancors and lack of trust. Bombay-born Zubin Mehta, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a regular conductor at the Met, last week scornfully characterized the negotiations as an "Oriental-bazaar style of bargaining." Bing speaks openly of the "sheer demagoguery" of his adversaries, and is furious that they don't take pity on the Met's general economic plight. They, in turn, blame management for locking them out of summer rehearsals and blocking their claims for unemployment benefits while contracts are being negotiated.

The most crucial dispute is with the members of the orchestra. Last year they were paid a minimum of $14,000 for 44 weeks of work and four weeks of vacation. Initially, they demanded half again as much by the third year of the new contract, but have since come down to a demand for $20,000. Bing's offer has been and is a three-year package that amounts to a 24% increase --or $17,370. "We are entitled to make as much as, if not more than plumbers,"*the legal spokesman, Herman Gray, asserts. "The community has no right to expect the artists to support the Met. It should pay adequate salaries or go out of business." In the view of many New Yorkers, Met salaries are not exactly inadequate. Met musicians make less than the $15,000 minimum paid players at the New York Philharmonic--though Bing's offered increase would at least put their pay in line with that.

For a city that only three years ago saw a rancorous strike senselessly deprive thousands of printers and journalists of jobs, and New York of a great newspaper, talk of the Met's going out of business was chilling indeed. Considerable damage has already been done. Two promising revivals--Puccini's Fanciulla del West and Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin--have already been lost even if the Met opens, as it still conceivably could, in a month. Herbert von Karajan's new Siegfried, which must be done in November or not at all, seems likely to be scratched too. Though a handful of the Met's leading stars are still being paid full fees to keep them available, some are obviously itching to drift away and perform elsewhere. As one of them observed ominously, "A singer must sing."

Hand to Mouth. Bing's aim, quite properly, is to save as much of the season as possible. He may succeed through a combination of Government mediation and a short-term agreement (18 months probably) that appears to be in the works. But the significance of the present confrontation goes far beyond local and temporary issues, claims of bad faith, and debates about whether the Met or its employees are really telling the truth about money. The Met's woes are linked to a nationwide crisis in funding for the arts, and the losing struggle of locally and privately supported institutions to survive the galloping inflation of the age. Just to stay afloat last year, the Met needed more than $17 million, of which around $13 million was raised mainly by tickets, subscriptions and rental fees. More than $4 million came from solicited gifts and contributions. This year, even if the unions settle for Bing's proposals, the Met will need $2,000,000 extra. "The sums we are raising now by just begging," Bing said last week, "are astronomic. We cannot go on living from hand to mouth as the Met has done for more than 80 years." What must come, clearly, is something which Bing has long been in favor of--government subsidies (federal, state and city) for the Met.

State support, which is unlikely to be easily agreed upon, would bring many changes at the Met, including a shift in the composition of the Met's board of directors--to include more people from the world of music. It might also affect Bing's autocratic methods which, if they have contributed to his labor problems, have also helped raise the Met to its current eminence. Yet for all its inherent risk, subsidy would be preferable to the present situation. A year's silence at the Met is almost unthinkable. A Met closed for good would be a cultural calamity.

*Some New York plumbers earn more than $15,000 a year, but most do not.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.