Last week I read Jenny Erpenbeck’s excellent novel Kairos, set in East Germany around the fall of the Berlin Wall. I started Pamela Hansford Johnson’s The Unspeakable Skipton, out tomorrow from McNally Editions. Maybe you’d like to discuss it with me?
It is not any secret that the Metropolitan Opera has been having something of a cashflow issue. Moody’s downgraded the nonprofit’s credit for the second time this year and lowered its outlook from “stable” to “negative,” Crain’s Business reported on August 29. The performing arts organization has seen low ticket sales, which have improved since 2021 but still aren’t great; President Trump’s trade war, which has disinclined international visitors from attending, also had an impact. And then, of course, there was that $10 million gift that never came to fruition. The Met is expected to have a better operating deficit this year compared to the previous, but the outlook still isn’t very good.
That’s why general manager Peter Gelb said yes to a deal he quite simply could not refuse—and it’s a thoroughly contentious one. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the Met has reached a five-year deal with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which reportedly will bring it $10 million in revenue, resolving its financial needs till at least 2032, Gelb said. Of course, with Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses (including its criminalization of LGBTQ+ individuals and restricted rights for women), many are unhappy about this move.
The deal will see the Met become the winter resident company at the Royal Diriyah Opera House, which will open in 2028, staging operas during its winter recess from the New York City stage. It will also train Saudi performers, technicians, conductors, and more, and commission an opera set in the ancient Saudi city of Al-Ula, composed by Brit Jonathan Dove. Gelb said that artists can choose whether or not to participate in foreign tours, so none will be forced to perform in Diriyah. The American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing artists and stage managers at the Met, expressed its support for the deal, saying that it was “an important step toward the kind of financial stability” the Met needs to survive.
The Met is far from the only arts institution to work with the Saudi government, especially as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has used culture to shift his image. Back in 2018, the Paris Opera inked a deal to help the country set up its own national orchestra and opera. The following year, Milan’s La Scala had to return €3 million to the Saudi government following backlash to a €15 million-five year deal that would have made Saudi Arabia’s culture minister, Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, a La Scala board member.
Gelb, 72, whose contract just expanded to 2030, said that he hopes the deal will help the Met spread “human understanding and compassionate thinking” through art.
This is hardly a unique challenge: figuring out where to get millions when the über-rich simply don’t donate to the arts. And even when they do, that money often doesn’t come from a good place, either. Remember the climate protest at New York City Ballet over the naming of the Koch Theater (something, of course, that NYCB has no power over)? There is ample debate on the opera subreddit whether Gelb could have said no to this deal; while no one seems pleased with it, plenty of people consider it a survival-mode decision, though Gelb himself doesn’t go that far. Some are questioning the seemingly mixed politics and priorities of Gelb, who famously banned Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, from performing because of her support for Putin.
One person suggests: “The Met needs to stage Faust more often, clearly.”
Gelb is exploring additional fundraising means, like licensing the Met’s intellectual property and considering naming rights for the opera house, Agence France-Presse reported on Wednesday.
At least opera is still thriving in Salzburg, the Austrian city that draws 256,000 visitors annually for a major six-week festival, which I aspire to one day attend. By the numbers, according to the New York Times, it involves more than 200 performances (opera, theater, and concert), 3,500 artists, and a budget of around $88 million. Gelb, of course, attended as he has since the ’70s, calling it the “the Cannes of classical music.” Cheeky!
Museums, too, are struggling to shore up the cash they need to survive, as we discussed last week. Now, new ethics guidelines drafted by the Museums Association, the UK’s membership body for museums and galleries, say that these institutions must transition away from sponsorship from organizations “involved with environmental harm (including fossil fuels), human rights abuses,” and other practices that don’t align with their values, The Art Newspaper reported. Members of MA will vote on these proposed guidelines in October, though the British Museum, for one, already accepted a 10-year, £50 million donation from BP in 2023. The money has to come from somewhere—and rarely without drawbacks.
In a letter to Smithsonian staff, secretary Lonnie G. Bunch said that the museum itself will carry out the content review that the Trump administration said it would undertake. “Our own review of content to ensure our programming is nonpartisan and factual is ongoing, and it is consistent with our authority over our programming and content,” he wrote, the New York Times reported. The institution will keep the White House abreast of its findings. Four Democratic senators also sent a letter to Bunch expressing their support and urging the institution to resist political influence of the White House, NPR reported; they asked that the Smithsonian also share the findings of its review with the “appropriate congressional oversight committees,” as “Congress assigned the trust responsibility for this gift of private property to the United States and its ongoing mission to the Smithsonian Board of Regents, not to the executive branch.”
Artist Amy Sherald, who canceled her exhibition “American Sublime” at the National Portrait Gallery, will actually bring it to the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Washington Post reported. It will open on November 2 and remain on view through April 5, 2026.
Meanwhile, Kim Sajet—who stepped down from the National Portrait Gallery after Trump said he was firing her for being “highly partisan” (when he did not have the authority to do so)—has landed her new gig. She’ll lead the Milwaukee Art Museum starting September 22.
Are politics getting dumber because people aren’t reading? asks The Economist. I’ll let you figure that one out yourself, but I will call attention to an interesting bit of analysis the publication turned out: sentences in New York Times best-sellers have contracted by almost a third since the 1930s.
While Gustavo Dudamel makes his moves over at the NY Phil, Esa-Pekka Salonen has two cool new gigs: creative director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, starting fall 2026, and the Philharmonie de Paris’s inaugural creativity and innovation chair, starting in 2027. The LA Phil will sunset the “artistic director” role, which had been added for Dudamel, and it is reportedly still looking for a music director to replace him, the New York Times reported. What does this mean? Salonen, since leaving the San Francisco Symphony, will get to flex his creativity to think about how these orchestras can innovate and attract new audiences. I think we have a lot to look forward to seeing (and hearing).
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