The Metropolitan Opera Is Furloughing Its Orchestra, Chorus, and Trades
By
Sarah Jones and
Justin Davidson
Nobody’s there. Photo: Jonathan Tishler/Met Opera
The dismantling of America’s cultural infrastructure has begun. The Metropolitan Opera will furlough all its union employees—musicians, chorus members, stagehands, carpenters, and other trades—starting April 1. In internal communications obtained by Vulture, the company told employees that it plans to reopen on schedule in September, and until then union members will receive health insurance but no paychecks. During the months they won’t be paid, the Met will waive the weekly contributions employees otherwise make for healthcare. Non-union staff, including members of management, aren’t being furloughed, but senior staff will take pay cuts. General manager Peter Gelb will give up his salary for the duration of the disruption, the company said.
“As devastating as it is to have to close the Met, this was the rare instance where the show simply couldn’t go on,” Gelb said in a statement. “We send our thanks to our loyal audiences and we’re doing our best to support our employees during this extraordinarily difficult time. We look forward to being reunited in the fall with a new season.”
The Met employs 3,000 people, and most of them belong to Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, the American Guild of Musical Artists, and several locals of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. On Wednesday evening, the unions scrambled to reassure members that they would not be left destitute during the furlough.
According to an email sent by Local 802’s Metropolitan Orchestra Committee to union musicians, the Met will continue to provide instrument insurance. Paid sick leave and accrued vacation can’t be used during the furlough, but union members can use it later. Crucially for the union, the committee said that “it is understood” that the terms of the collective bargaining agreements will be reinstated in September when the Met re-opens, and that the settlement setting forth the terms of the furlough period will not establish a precedent for future negotiations. Members of the committee will also meet with Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, throughout the month of April, to discuss the company’s fundraising and the closure’s financial impact on workers.
Members of IATSE received a similar email on Thursday morning. In it, James Claffey, the president of IATSE’s Local One, said that further news about the details of the union’s specific agreement with the Met would be forthcoming, but reminded members that the local’s Annuity Hardship Distribution Option could provide up to $30,000 worth of assistance to individuals.
The relationship between the Met and its unions has occasionally turned hostile. Union members accepted significant pay cuts in 2015. The company has been in tough financial straits for years, often struggling to fill the 3,800-seat house and relying ever more heavily on donations rather than box-office income. Gelb sounded alarm bells in 2014 when he said that
the Met could go bankrupt within a couple of years. Labor negotiations, the rising costs of producing a hugely expensive art form, and a series of bitter divisions over sexual improprieties by two of its marquee names—
former music director James Levine and
tenor Plácido Domingo—have all taken a toll. A decade ago, New York City Opera faced a similar but more drastic decline,
which ultimately wound up shuttering the company. In recent years, it’s been clear that even a mammoth artistic enterprise like the Met doesn’t have a guaranteed future. “The Met has been financially mismanaged for a decade, and there was always going to be a reckoning,” said one orchestra member. “It’s plausible to me that Peter [Gelb] will use this crisis to declare bankruptcy or get out from under pension obligations. This was always my biggest fear: that the Met was going to be skating on thin ice for years and there was going to be some big shock.”
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While the company is casting this as a temporary measure, reassembling an enormous institution after nearly six months off—assuming conditions have eased even then—will not be easy. Many employees will have few options: the orchestra world is on hold everywhere, and the Met chorus is the only full-time professional ensemble in the country. But as the months drag on, some artists and backstage personnel may drift to other careers and other parts of the country. Meanwhile, the Met will draw on its old glories, offering a free live stream of a different opera every night, while the house stays dark.
He goes on to say our services are essential during times of crisis. Foh 
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