The Metropolitan Opera has been making headlines lately — for all the wrong reasons.
It’s not that the country’s oldest continuously operating opera company is seeing revived relevance and eager engagement. Quite the contrary.
The storied institution announced in the fall a deal with Saudi Arabia, said to be worth $200 million, to perform three weeks a year as the winter resident company at a $1.4 billion opera house opening in 2028.
It was a much-needed lifeline given that the Met has withdrawn $120 million from its endowment — more than a third of the fund — to cover costs since the COVID pandemic, but it also produced a brutal backlash in the cultural community, given the kingdom’s human-rights issues.
Then, as if to prove why the company’s having trouble raising money at home, audiences savaged its just-ended run of the Bizet classic “Carmen.”
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