In June we learned that undocumented migrants were big customers for the Metropolitan Opera (AP):
Metropolitan Opera season attendance dropped slightly following the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that coincided with a decrease in tourists to New York.
The solution to a migration-related problem is always… more migration. September: “The Met Opera Turns to Saudi Arabia to Help Solve Its Financial Woes” (New York Times).
The Metropolitan Opera, one of the world’s most renowned performing arts companies, is turning to Saudi Arabia to help it solve some of the most severe financial problems in its 142-year history.
The company has reached a lucrative agreement with the kingdom that calls for it to perform there for three weeks each winter. While neither the Met nor the Saudis disclosed financial terms when they announced a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday, the deal is expected to bring the Met more than $100 million.
The Met hopes the agreement will help it emerge from a period of acute financial woes. Since the coronavirus pandemic, the company has withdrawn more than a third of the money in its endowment fund to help it cover operating costs — about $120 million overall, including $50 million to help pay for the season that ended in June. The withdrawals have raised questions about the viability of staging live opera on a grand scale in the 21st century.
As we prepare for Bisexual Awareness Week (Sept 16-23) and LGBT History Month (October) and Trans Awareness Month (November), it will be interesting to think about how the Met’s LGBTQ+-themed lighting will be used in Saudi Arabia:
Here’s what the new opera house in suburban Riyadh will look like when it opens in 2028, but before the Met’s rainbow lighting scheme is applied:
The Met began spending in a whole new direction in 2021 (NYT):
“The Met Opera Has a Gay Conductor. Yes, That Matters.” (NYT, 2019):
Mr. Nézet-Séguin — who has been openly gay for his entire professional career and nonchalant enough about it to post a smiling partners’ beach selfie on Instagram — is impossible to miss.
“The fact that he’s so comfortable with who he is is part of what makes him a powerful, effective artistic leader,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in an interview. “Because he is proud of who he is, and that’s very important.”
ChatGPT:
In Saudi Arabia, engaging in same-sex sexual activity—whether between two men or two women—is illegal under the country’s interpretation of Islamic (Sharia) law. The legal consequences are extremely severe and can vary depending on the specifics of the case and judicial discretion. Same-sex acts are considered sodomy or illicit sexual intercourse (zina) and are punishable by death under traditional Wahhabi interpretations of Sharia law. Even when the death penalty is not applied, those convicted may face indefinite prison sentences, flogging, financial penalties, or deportation in the case of foreign nationals. … Saudi Arabia enforces some of the strictest laws against same-sex relations in the world. Punishments include—but are not limited to—execution, flogging, prolonged imprisonment, hefty fines, and deportation.
> Here’s what the new opera house in suburban Riyadh
Looks like Vader’s vacation home on Tatooine. If you look closely you can see him in the crowd on the sidewalk with Princess Leia.
Obligatory “this is just to crazy to process without medicinal weed.”
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Money talks, B.S. walks. — Traditional American saying
I like going to Met Opera, and try to go whenever I’m in NYC on business. It’s always nearly full, and ticket prices are ridiculously high, how in the world it can be in the financial difficulties?
> how in the world it can be in the financial difficulties?
They are not struggling. It is a game to squeeze more money out of the rest of us. Take Harvard and other wealthy private institutions sitting on billions in endowments. Yet they cry in disbelief, claiming they will be “ruined” because the Trump administration is holding back funds. The same narrative plays out across countless so-called nonprofit institutions whenever funding cuts are made.
Social justice is expensive! Also, they pay their stagehands $500,000+/year in pre-Biden dollars.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/arts/hey-stars-be-nice-to-the-stagehands-you-might-need-a-loan.html
> they pay their stagehands $500,000
My nieces want to be actresses. I should give them the same advice I gave my nephew: go into the trades. Of course, $500K/yr in NYC is still subsistence level living.
AT: Stagehands don’t have to commute during rush hours so maybe they can take their $500,000+ incomes and live in New Jersey?
Why aren’t liberals outraged about the Metropolitan Opera striking a deal with Saudi Arabia? This is a country that openly suppresses LGBTQ rights and women’s rights, to name just a few. Yet somehow, our liberal friends seem perfectly fine with the Met performing there!
George, a little secret I wanted to share with you (please keep it on the down low?). We Leftists don’t care about LGBTQ rights and women’s rights, blacks in general (or many others groups) per se. What we care about is getting elected and reelected. And, we’ve learned over decades that the best way to do that is to virtue signal, push legislation that benefits them with free social services, and demonize our opponents (all Hitler-like). Very few of the hoi polloi who listen to our elected officials and vote for us even know there is a Metropolitan Opera. Comprende?
NYU Abu Dhabi is another great example. They’re Queers for Palestine in Manhattan and as soon as they get off the plane in the desert they abandon their twin passions (protesting in favor of the noble Gazans is illegal in Abu Dhabi, as are trips to the bathhouse).