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This year we traveled to Tulsa, Natchez, and Indianola, IA. I was fortunate to join [Brian Kellow] in Natchez for his talk entitled "Song at Twilight: Music and the World of Eudora Welty." We, along with 150 other guests, made up of Met and Natchez Opera Festival Guild members, were graciously hosted by the Natchez Opera and the Pilgrimage Garden Club at Stanton Hall, a historic antebellum mansion. We were also delighted to attend NOF's opening-night performance of The Merry Widow.
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Since my report to you last year, everyone's world has changed dramatically in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11. Because New York was trapped in the unfolding events, the shock and turmoil were felt more keenly. All of this has had a direct effect on our cultural institutions, and the Met is no exception. As tourism to New York City dwindled, box-office figures reflected the lack of visitors to Lincoln Center. By the end of the season, the Met was facing a significant deficit, and it became imperative to turn to the Met family for additional support.
Because the Guild was founded during the Depression, another difficult time for the Met, we had only to recall our history to respond to this necessity. Our chairman, Tom Hubbard, and I proposed to the Guild Board a special "recession" gift to the Met of $1 million, which was approved unanimously. In some respects, this was our own example of the sense of community that has prevailed in our city since last September.
Some time before this, we began to think about our own sense of community as an organization and planned to reach out to our membership in ways that would make us more vital and responsive to you. Jane L. Poole, our director of external relations, and Brian Kellow, features editor of OPERA NEWS, whose "On the Beat" column has been a popular component of the magazine since 1998, designed a program called "On the Beat Live!" We enlist regional opera companies and festivals to partner us for an informal talk by Kellow, to which we can invite Guild members and OPERA NEWS subscribers; the cooperating company is encouraged to invite its support-organization members and directors.
This year we traveled to Tulsa, Natchez, and Indianola, IA. I was fortunate to join Kellow in Natchez for his talk entitled "Song at Twilight: Music and the World of Eudora Welty." We, along with 150 other guests, made up of Met and Natchez Opera Festival Guild members, were graciously hosted by the Natchez Opera and the Pilgrimage Garden Club at Stanton Hall, a historic antebellum mansion. We were also delighted to attend NOF's opening-night performance of The Merry Widow. Throughout a round of tours, luncheons, receptions, concerts and dinners, we experienced the best of Southern hospitality and left Natchez feeling we had been immersed in its wonderful history and heritage. We are planning more events for the 2002-03 season and ask you to let us know if you would like us to visit your area.
Plans are also under way to arrange special events in the New York area. This spring, we held meetings with small groups of Guild members, who expressed their desire for more gettogethers as an additional benefit of Guild membership. Please know that we take all your suggestions seriously and are trying to make your experience as a Guild member more enjoyable and rewarding. We are working together to achieve this goal, with Guild vice president Patricia Sullivan heading our joint-- membership committee.
Every department at the Guild is taking steps to expand all our programs to reach more people and cultivate a wider audience for opera and the Met. David Dik, our education director, seems especially adept and visionary in creating new programs for students of all ages. The Guild's education programs reached students and teachers in 1,400 schools this year, including 300 in New York City. One of Diles new programs - Choral Music Initiative, developed for Vivendi, the media and communications company - trains conservatory students who have an interest in becoming teachers.
Our merchandising operation has developed two discount programs - the Members' Discount Club, which offers, via ads in OPERA NEWS, reduced prices on selected CDs from January through August; and the Bravo Club, which provides in-store savings for loyal Opera Shop customers, more than 800 of whom have joined. We developed several new exclusive CDs this past year "Met Stars Sing Puccini," "Joined in Song," "Met Stars Sing Operetta," "Growing Up With Broadway," "Talking About Opera" on Don Carlo, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Idomeneo. In addition to this proprietary merchandise, a new expanded edition of Annals of the Metropolitan Opera on CD-ROM, which contains the chronology and tables for the Met's history from 1883 through 2000, was released. Paul Gruber, executive director of program development, oversees all these projects.
Another of Gruber's special projects is the Annual Guild Luncheon, which was held on April 25 in honor of Carlo Bergonzi, on the forty-fifth anniversary of his Met debut. He was warmly greeted by twenty-eight of his Met colleagues, several of whom - Martina Arroyo, Anna Moffo, Leo Nucci, Roberta Peters, Paul Plishka, Renata Scotto - paid spoken tribute to him. The afternoon was crowned with a stunning performance of "Ah! mes amis," from Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment, by the captivating young Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez. We owe special thanks to our corporate sponsors, the Bank of New York, and our three chairmen, Jim Marcus, Anna Moffo and Catia Chapin.
Our second special event took place on June 13 at Christie's. This was the ninth year of the Guild Benefit Auction, a popular occasion for many of the Young Associate members of the Met patron program. Once again we were beguiled by the array of luxury items, from jewels to trips, assembled by our creative director of special events, Lucinda Frame. In addition to our generous hosts, Christie's Rockefeller Center, we owe special thanks to our corporate sponsors, Graff Jewelers and Orient Express Trains & Cruises. Our chairmen for the evening were Wheelock Whitney, Maisie Houghton, Beth Tunick and Kate Gubelman, with Tantivy Gubelman and Kelly McNamara serving as our junior chairs.
At OPERA NEWS, we have been pleased with your enthusiastic response to our increased coverage of the national and international world of opera. Our May 2002 issue spotlighted opera in Italy, and next May we focus on opera in Austria; in September we featured Los Angeles Opera's new principal conductor, Kent Nagano, who was interviewed by executive editor E Paul Driscoll, and in July we plan to cover opera on the West Coast in more depth. Many of you seem to appreciate reading about all the exciting events taking place all over the world. Of course, as in the past, we will continue to focus on the Met and the ChevronTexaco Broadcast season.
At our annual meeting on May 7, our revered chairman, Thomas J. Hubbard, announced his retirement after a seventeen-year term of office. He served on the board for twenty-eight years, demonstrating an unusual ability to lead and never failing to ask provocative questions. All the members of our board and staff celebrate his rare qualities of strength, dignity, wisdom and kindness. He is succeeded by the chairman of our executive committee, Winthrop Rutherfurd, Jr., who, I know, will transfer to his new role the same vitality and enthusiasm he displayed in his former post. I look forward to working with him, as we move the Guild ahead in its many endeavors. Also on May 7, John Ross, recently retired from Deutsche Bank and a former advisory director of the Metropolitan Opera, was elected to the Guild board of directors.
Throughout all our activities this year we have felt a renewed sense of mission. I count myself fortunate and proud to be working with the Guild now, when art is a national necessity. We have all felt a revived appreciation for this irreplaceable art form.
Everyone involved in strengthening our organization has worked with a sense of urgency. Our treasurer, Elizabeth Smith, is ably directing the work of our strategicplanning initiative, and managing director Rudolph Rauch, as always, leads us with skill, wit and fierce intelligence. We look forward to welcoming as many of you as possible to the Met this year. We trust that you, too, feel we must support opera in these difficult times.
Copyright Metropolitan Opera Guild, Incorporated Nov 2002