# Why do people hate Peter Gelb so much?



## Der Fliegende Amerikaner (Feb 26, 2011)

I'm a relatively new opera fan; I only started appreciating opera beginning in the mid-2000's. I'm not old enough to have lived through the "glory days" of Rudolph Bing or Joe Volpe.

I regularly visit a certain American based opera blog which shall remain nameless (the website is named after a certain expensive seating section of the Met and it's not www.grandtier.com). To me, the withering criticism on that blog of Mr. Gelb is perplexing, given all that he is doing to make opera accessible to a wider audience and viable for future generations. Once in a while, I'll strike up a conversation with a stranger during intermission and not infrequently some disparaging remark about him will slip out.

Opera lover veterans, what are your thoughts on the demonization of Mr. Gelb.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Volpe, Bing and other Met general managers have come in for an enormous amount of critical drubbing in their day .
Gelb is is position where he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't ,just like his predecessors .
He has an impossible and utterly thankless job . 
It makes no difference whom he and his associates choose to stage and design any production ; someone will
always complain . Take the recent Luc Bondy Tosca , which replaced the lavish realistic Zeffireli production
from the 80s ; many of the sme critics who castigated it for its drab look and allegedly gratuitous sex and violence
also blasted the Zeffirelli production for being too swanky and overblown .
Critics blast Gelb for alleged sub par casting and not getting the most distinguished conductors just s they did in the past with other Met
general managers . But the Met can only get the conductors who are available . The most distinguished tend to be very busy
conducting elsewhere ; they are either too busy elsewhere or just plain unwilling to conduct at the Met .
Yet in recent years, the Met has had the likes of Rattle, Salonen, Muti, Barenboim , Gergiev , Bychkov, Christie ,
and other eminent maestros . Not too shabby !


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

Ha, exactly that ^^^

There's an old saying among (American) football fans -- the most popular player on the team is the backup quarterback. Reason being, the starting quarterback takes all the blame for everything that goes wrong and people are just _certain_ his replacement could do better.

Gelb's done a lot of good things, chief among them being the Live in HD series. There's certainly room for criticism but it's an enormously difficult job that he is doing very well imo.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

That blog could get an Olympic medal in bitchiness without even trying. He's not the only one to be lambasted. 

As others said before me, he has a difficult job, trying to keep the general audiences, the donors and the die hard fans happy.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

What I think is that, like other art forms, opera has always had its traditionalists, purists, and even fanatics. I suspect I know which website the OP is referring to, and even from my couple of brief visits I can see it's mostly if not entirely made up of these type of people. The thing about a fanatic is that it's impossible to argue, let alone win an argument, with him or her. It's better just to stay as far away from them as possible and let them look more and more absurd. As for traditionalism (or purism) itself, I think it's one of those things that _sounds_ good -- as in "we want to keep opera as a pure and undefiled respite from the changing realities of the modern world" -- but in practice just leads to a reactionary close-mindedness that I find infantile. This is not to say that I only like "modern productions" of opera -- in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. While not opposed to updating, I generally much prefer traditional productions with little touches that show that the director and singers have really thought about the piece in question.

As for Gelb: I don't actually go to the Met (too far away/expensive at the moment), nor do I go frequently to the HD movie theater transmissions (on average I go once each season). I won't deny that I've seen a change in the kinds of productions being done since Gelb came in. Some of these I've liked very much (mostly the more traditional ones, like those by Bartlett Schear), and others I've had mixed feelings about (_Faust_, for example). I remember the first time I heard about the Met's HD transmissions, thinking the idea sounded almost surreal. But now I think it's a great idea. I just hope they can keep filling the house as well.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Whatever Gelb has done at the Met, he donned his bulls-eye for criticism while running Sony Classical. It was a relatively simple thing to bring along with him.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

moaners will moan and that site seems to be all about it. I visited once or twice and have no desire to return anytime soon. As for Gelb, don't know so I can't comment.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Initially? Too much baggage from turning Sony Classical into a pseudo-pop label. It made the NY natives restless.
Any errors made now will allow the same wolves to say "I told you so".

Two Boys flopped just like it did in London. _"I told you so""I told you so""I told you so""I told you so"_

Every GM in every opera house on Earth is under the same scrutiny. It's a mean business scrutinized by people with little or no accountability.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

*Why do people hate Peter Gelb so much?

*'Cause he has the same a-hole mind he had when he ran a good label (Sony) into the ground. :tiphat:


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

They hate him because he promoted Charlotte Church while he was at Sony and if the don't they jolly well should.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Let all those loosers who have no other choice than to attent Met in person worry about him. I live in my rural province, beaver is my neighbour, I stand up in the morning and go wash my face in the cold mountain stream... Peter Gelb! Ha! Why should I worry. The worldly life and issues trouble me not. Sometimes we use projector to have Met live in HD projected in the forest on our bearskin screen stretched between two oaks and we watch all those nice singers, like Anna Netrebko, we know her well - she is like us, deep from Russia, she hunts Siberian bears when she's not singing. All is fine here and Peter Gelb is no problem for us.


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

Aramis, sometimes I almost think you're making stuff up!


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Aramis said:


> Let all those loosers who have no other choice than to attent Met in person worry about him. I live in my rural province, beaver is my neighbour, I stand up in the morning and go wash my face in the cold mountain stream... Peter Gelb! Ha! Why should I worry. The worldly life and issues trouble me not. Sometimes we use projector to have Met live in HD projected in the forest on our bearskin screen stretched between two oaks and we watch all those nice singers, like Anna Netrebko, we know her well - she is like us, deep from Russia, she hunts Siberian bears when she's not singing. All is fine here and Peter Gelb is no problem for us.


I enjoy watching Netrebko up there on the _big bearskin_ as well. I wish she'd shave her legs though.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Couac Addict said:


> I wish she'd shave her legs though.


only cross-over singers do...


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

If you watch the documentary disc that comes with new MET Ring involving "the machine" production you will see why some dislike Gelb's complete disdain of traditional opera aesthetic, his insistence that opera must evolve and take chances with risky new productions or it will die and cease being relavant to modern audience.......

I think he is a bit misguided there, but he has wisely embraced new media delivery of opera (HD broacast etc) and smart promotion of singers......costs a fortune to run the MET opera each year


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

DarkAngel said:


> If you watch the documentary disc that comes with new MET Ring involving "the machine" production you will see why some dislike Gelb's complete disdain of traditional opera aesthetic, his insistence that opera must evolve and take chances with risky new productions or it will die and cease being relavant to modern audience.......
> 
> I think he is a bit misguided there, but he has wisely embraced new media delivery of opera (HD broacast etc) and smart promotion of singers......costs a fortune to run the MET each year


In the Ride of the Walkiries scene, that machine paddle looked like something to kill vermin with. They might as well have been singing "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit..."


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Revenant said:


> In the Ride of the Walkiries scene, that machine paddle looked like something to kill vermin with. They might as well have been singing "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit..."


I thought they looked like toddlers on a giant slide. The look of slight panic on their faces as they prepared to descend the paddles was priceless.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Revenant said:


> In the Ride of the Walkiries scene, that machine paddle looked like something to kill vermin with. They might as well have been singing "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit..."


Also from the documentary disc "the machine" might look modern and hi-tech but it is very labor intensive to operate, all those paddle movements are done individually by hand with old fashioned ropes and pulleys, there are an army of stagehands all over the place just out of sight from audience.

I can tell you the Rhinemaidens were petrified during rehersals dangling from ropes over edge of "the machine" Some scences have stunt doubles as in the rainbow bridge to Valhalla scence as characters slowly climb the rainbow


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