Peter Gelb
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Peter Gelb is the General Manager Elect of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Early life
Gelb is the son of Arthur Gelb, onetime Managing Editor of the New York Times. He began his Metropolitan Opera career as a part-time usher while in high school. At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, he worked in the media department of the company. There, he produced telecasts of opera performances.Gelb worked as manager of Vladimir Horowitz at end of Horowitz's career.
Career at Sony Classical
Before he was tapped to become General Manager of the Met, Gelb was the head of Sony Classical Records. While at Sony Classical, Gelb pursued a controversial strategy of emphasizing crossover music over mainstream classical repertoire. [link] Example include cellist Yo Yo Ma, who was encouraged to record country music, and Charlotte Church. [link]. He was also criticized for failing to make available much of the huge library of great classical performances Sony inherited from the Columbia Records catalog. He is quoted as saying that he would "rather lose a million on a movie score than make $10,000 on a small shit" (referring to mainstream classical releases, which tend to make small amounts of money year after year) and "I know what good music is, I just don’t want to record it." [link].When Gelb was replaced by Gilbert Hetherwick as the head of the newly-merged Sony BMG Masterworks in 2005, Hetherwick said that "I think that making records that are basically pop records and calling them classical is in some ways surrendering" [link], remarks that were widely perceived as criticism of Gelb.
Manager of Metropolitan Opera
Gelb is scheduled to replace outgoing General Manager Joseph Volpe in August 2006. In statements of his intentions, he has empahsised that, even after 35 years as music director of the Met, James Levine will be welcome to continue "for as long as he wants". Gelb has also asserted the importance of his combining the roles of financial and general management with that of being overall creative director. He plans to stage more productions each year but perhaps, in an era of computer-generated visual effects, not to need to have "tons of scenery" built and retained for each new production. These are among other plans for drawing in new (and younger) audiences without deterring the older opera lovers, the wealth and patronage of some of whom sustains the most lavishly privately-financed opera house in the world.External links
- [appointment to the Met]
- [Gelb on Future of Classical Recordings]
- [Norman Lebrecht on Gelb's appointment at the Met]
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