They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center Read Online Free PDF

same time, the New York City Opera fought hard to leave what it described as a deficient New York State Theater in favor of becoming one of the resident artistic organizations at the 9/11 site, but without success. Twelve years later and counting, it remains a mystery as to which artistic organizations will occupy a piece of that hallowed ground.
    As the New York City Opera searched for another home, there was an air of desperation about its odyssey. In a sense, the search was nothing more than an exercise in futility and escapism. There was simply never an adequate audience or fund-raising base to build a new opera house from the ground up on the island of Manhattan.
    But once Paul Kellogg, the artistic director, declared the New York State Theater artistically unfit for the New York City Opera, the die was cast. Although the company had for more than forty years somehow been able to work reasonably well notwithstanding the venue’s purported acoustic deficiencies, for unfathomable reasons Paul believed it could no longer do so. The audience, in effect, was told that staying away was entirely understandable.
    Its members heeded that advice—in droves—with deleterious consequences for the company’s finances, its morale, and its very future.
    The entire board of directors and staff of the Opera were badly distracted by edifice wanderlust and allowed themselves not to notice as attendance eroded, seasons were contracted and curtailed, and the endowment became a piggy bank to finance consistent and alarmingly high operating deficits.
    These were the years when Beverly Sills left the chair of Lincoln Center, sworn to retire, only to emerge ninety days later as the president of the Metropolitan Opera.
    When the mayor, Mike Bloomberg, read me the riot act over an anonymous disclosure to the New York Times of a $15 million gift he had pledged to Lincoln Center two years before to launch redevelopment.
    When Joe Volpe, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera for sixteen years, did all within his power to stop the physical redevelopment of Lincoln Center. He often behaved boorishly, just as his reputation would lead one to expect. Volpe, joined by a small but powerfulgroup of naysayers, failed to halt what would ultimately be a $1.2 billion-plus physical transformation of Lincoln Center, but not for want of trying. For many and varied reasons, Volpe’s retirement was welcomed, and everyone looked forward eagerly to his successor.
    Peter Gelb was greeted in 2006 by an inbox overflowing with challenges. His marketing innovations were lauded. The live transmission of opera to several thousand movie theaters in the United States and around the world was widely praised. His management of the challenge of music director James Levine’s frequent illnesses and convalescence was much admired.
    But his artistic direction of the Met was deemed highly uneven. It received very mixed reviews. In any event, whatever appeared on the Met’s stage never wanted for attention.
    For me, many of Gelb’s artistic choices were brave and the results often memorable. However, there was far less to debate about the Met’s economic fortunes under Gelb’s leadership. They continued a decline that was well under way during Volpe’s last years in office. During Gelb’s tenure, the Met’s annual budget, already in very shaky condition, climbed from roughly $215 to $330 million. Deficits also grew, or were closed by invading the corpus of a badly eroding endowment.
    What was wrong with the Met’s business plan? How could its operating statement and balance sheet have eroded so badly since 2006, even as record fund-raising occurred? Was anyone pressing Peter Gelb for a major course correction?
    It was frustrating to run the risk of being held accountable for the travails of resident organizations like the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Opera, or the Metropolitan Opera, over which Lincoln Center had little control. In the case of the New