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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for June 2016

This disease may be killing the Met

June 30, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I discuss the Metropolitan Opera’s current travails at the box office, and speculate on whether they’re soluble. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

The Metropolitan Opera, America’s biggest opera company, sold a lot of tickets last season—660,500, to be exact. But, then, it had no alternative, for it had a lot of tickets to sell. The Metropolitan Opera House is a 3,800-seat monster of an auditorium, vastly bigger than it needs to be. Bayreuth, by contrast, seats 1,925, La Scala 2,030 and the Vienna State Opera 2,200. To keep its doors open, the Met must fill those extra seats, and it’s no longer doing so. Two decades ago, the company earned 90% of its potential box-office revenue. That figure has been declining steadily in recent years and dropped to 66% last season, an all-time low that’s been the talk of the opera world ever since it was disclosed in May. As a result, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, has been forced to hike ticket prices to an average of $158.50 per head. On Broadway, the average price is $103.86.

UnknownSo what’s wrong at the Met? Mr. Gelb argued in 2014 that “the question is not whether I think I’m doing a good job or not in trying to keep the [Metropolitan Opera] alive. It’s whether I’m doing a good job or not in the face of a cultural and social rejection of opera as an art form.” He has a point: The National Endowment for the Arts reports that the percentage of U.S. adults who attend at least one operatic performance each year declined to 2.1% in 2012 from 3.2% in 2002. Yet many observers fiercely argue back that the real trouble with the Met is not the culture but Mr. Gelb himself….

You can wrangle on and on about what the Met should do to cut costs and sell more tickets, but you may be wasting your time and breath. For if you know anything at all about economics, you’ve probably already got a pretty good idea of what’s happening there. It sounds like a raging case of cost disease—one that could be fatal.

Cost disease is the term used by economists to describe the condition of a business in which wages go up without a corresponding increase in productivity, not because the workers are lazy but because the business itself is constituted in such a way as to preclude greater productivity….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

So you want to see a show?

June 30, 2016 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• An American in Paris (musical, G, too complex for small children, closes Jan. 1, reviewed here)
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fully Committed (comedy, PG-13, closes July 31, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, closes Sept. 10, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, closes Jan. 1, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, closes Sept. 4, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• Sense & Sensibility (serious romantic comedy, G, remounting of 2014 off-Broadway production, closes Oct. 2, original production reviewed here)

Fiorello-12-1024x681IN STOCKBRIDGE, MASS.:
• Fiorello! (musical, G, closes July 23, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• She Loves Me (musical, G, suitable for bright children capable of enjoying a love story, most performances sold out last week, closes July 10, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CAMBRIDGE, MASS.:
• Twelfth Night (Shakespeare, PG-13, two different stagings of the same play performed by the same cast in rotating repertory, closes July 10, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Confusions (five one-act comedies, PG-13, not suitable for children, Sunday, reviewed here)
• Hero’s Welcome (serious comedy, PG-13, not suitable for children, closes Saturday, reviewed here)

Almanac: John Ruskin on pride

June 30, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.”

John Ruskin, Modern Painters

Snapshot: Tony Bennett and Bill Evans perform in 1976

June 29, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERA“Together Again,” a 1976 CBC television special featuring Tony Bennett and Bill Evans:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Sherlock Holmes on theory

June 29, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia”

Ten years after: on writing a column in my childhood bedroom

June 28, 2016 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2006:

I got up this morning and wrote my Wall Street Journal drama column in a setting different from the office-bedroom where I normally pass my working hours….

In Smalltown I sit at a rickety, ink-stained card table that’s as old as I am, set up next to the bed in which I slept as a teenager. When I glance up from my iBook, I see a homemade bookshelf (my father built it) full of tattered paperbacks, a complete set of Reader’s Digest Best-Loved Books for Young Readers, and a short stack of dusty 45s by such artists as Ray Anthony, Rosemary Clooney, Billy Daniels, Vic Damone, Stan Kenton, the McGuire Sisters, and Jo Stafford. A chromolithograph of Abraham Lincoln hangs on the wall behind me. To my left is a telephone with a dial….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Friedrich Schiller on stupidity

June 28, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLEAgainst stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain.

(Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.)

Friedrich Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans (trans. Anna Swanwick)

P.P.C.

June 27, 2016 by Terry Teachout

13507132_10157148425425624_5100144326336946116_nIt’s already been a wildly busy year, and I just covered a back-to-back pair of out-of-town shows at Chicago’s Writers Theatre and the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Not wanting to burn out, I decided to pull the plug and take Mrs. T to Bridgeton House on the Delaware, one of our beloved summertime haunts, for a week of R-&-R. Thanks to my recent orgy of work, my next two Wall Street Journal columns are written and filed and I have no more shows to see until mid-July. My plan is to dine at some nice restaurants in Bucks County, read a couple of books about which I’m not writing, watch a few movies about which I’m not writing, watch the Delaware River flow, and revel in the companionship of my beloved spouse.

Memo to the world: if you want anything from me this week, you can’t have it. Ask somebody else.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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