Met Opera Donor Purchases 500K in 'Dr. Atomic' Orchestra Seats to Reduce Ticket Price for Patrons

Thanks to the generosity of one of its board members, the Metropolitan Opera announced today that a number of prime orchestra seats, usually $175 - $220, will be available for $30 for all nine performances of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic.  Agnes Varis, a managing director of the Met board, and her husband Karl Leichtman, have purchased $500,000 worth of some of the best orchestra seats for Doctor Atomic, so that they can be redistributed at this lower price. Dr. Varis and Mr. Leichtman already are the new production sponsors of Doctor Atomic, John Adams’s opera about the invention of the atomic bomb, which opens at the Met on October 13.  Dr. Varis and Mr. Leichtman also are the funders of the Met’s successful Rush Ticket program, which provides $100 orchestra seats for $20 on Monday through Thursday evenings during the course of the entire season.

 “Doctor Atomic has tremendous relevance today, and I feel that we should make it available to as many people as possible,” Dr. Varis said. “It’s important for the Met to put on significant contemporary works that are accessible to everyone. One of the ways to do this is to expand our Rush Ticket program so that more people can come and enjoy Doctor Atomic from the greatest seats at the Met.”

Met General Manager Peter Gelb said, “Dr.Varis and Mr. Leichtman are interested in the democratization of art, and they put their ideas into strong action. The Met is very lucky to have them as our supporters.”

The special Doctor Atomic Rush Ticket program will offer an additional minimum of 200 seats for each of the nine performances of Doctor Atomic, with several of the performances offering twice that number.  The seats will be prime center orchestra tickets sold for $30 each. Regular Rush Tickets will also be available for qualifying performances.

Due to the larger number of Rush Tickets, all Doctor Atomic Rush Tickets will be available at the Box Office, as follows:

·        12 noon day of performance for weekdays

·        10 a.m. day of performance for matinees (October 18 and November 8)

·        2 p.m. day of performance for Saturday evenings (October 25 and November 1)

For all operas other than Doctor Atomic, Rush Tickets will continue to go on sale two hours before curtain time on the day of the performance (weekdays only, not available on weekends), as before.

As is the case with the full season Rush Ticket program, 50 of the new Doctor Atomic prime seat Rush Tickets will be reserved for senior citizens. All senior citizen Rush Tickets go on sale at noon the day of the performance via telephone and on the Met web site, www.metopera.org, with the exception of the Doctor Atomic matinee performances, which will go on sale at 10 a.m.

Dr. Varis and Mr. Leichtman were the funders of last season’s groundbreaking production of Satyagraha, and they have also paid for a special outdoor marketing campaign to promote the Doctor Atomic performances. Their donations have been essential to many of the Met’s  efforts to reach new audiences, such as: free Open Houses they have sponsored for three seasons (including this season’s Doctor Atomic student dress rehearsal, and Open Houses for La Damnation de Faust and La Sonnambula); the recent Verdi Requiem in memory of Luciano Pavarotti, underwritten by Dr. Varis and Mr. Leichtman, and free of charge to the public; and, especially, the Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Rush Ticket program, now in its third season.  They also endow the annual Beverly Sills Artist Award.

 
About Doctor Atomic

Doctor Atomic, about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb, is the first opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams to be presented by the Metropolitan Opera. The piece is set in New Mexico in the summer of 1945, as scientists, led by Oppenheimer, and the military prepare to test the first nuclear bomb, events that will radically change the course and fabric of history.  The new production, starring Gerald Finley in the title role, will open at the Met on Monday, October 13, at 8:00 p.m.  When the opera premiered in San Francisco in October of 2005, The Guardian said, “Adams’s ecstatically lyrical writing and the music’s visionary eloquence make this a modern masterpiece.” The New York Times later wrote that Doctor Atomic was “the most complex and inventive of Mr. Adams’s works, an engrossing operatic drama.”

Penny Woolcock, an award-winning British TV and film director who worked with Adams on the 2003 film of his opera The Death of Klinghoffer, is making both her Met and her opera-directing debut with this new production. Doctor Atomic will be conducted by Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic’s music director designate, also in his Met debut. The production will be seen live in movie theaters around the world on November 8 as part of The Met: Live in HD, the highly successful series of performance transmissions.

 
About the Met

Under the leadership of General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director James Levine, the Met has a series of bold initiatives underway that are designed to broaden its audience and revitalize the company’s repertory.  The Met has made a commitment to presenting modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, with highly theatrical productions featuring the greatest opera stars in the world.

The Metropolitan Opera’s 2008-09 season pays tribute to the company’s extraordinary history on the occasion of its 125th anniversary, while also emphasizing the Met’s renewed commitment to advancing the art form. The season features six new productions, 18 revivals, the final performances of Otto Schenk’s production of Wagner’s Ring cycle conducted by Levine, and two gala celebrations; the galas include the season-opening performance featuring Renée Fleming as well as a 125th anniversary celebration on March 15.  New productions include the company premiere of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic as well as the Met’s first staged production of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust since 1906, Massenet’s Thaïs, Puccini’s La Rondine, Verdi’s Il Trovatore, and Bellini’s La Sonnambula.  Future seasons include new presentations of John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (2009-10) and Thomas Adès’s The Tempest (2011-12).

Building on its 77-year-old radio broadcast history – currently heard over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network – the Met now uses advanced media distribution platforms and state-of-the-art technology to attract new audiences and reach millions of opera fans around the world.

The Met: Live in HD series reached more than 935,000 people in the 2007-08 season, more than the number of people who saw performances in the opera house.  These performances began airing on PBS in March 2008, and eight of these HD performances are now available on DVD, on the EMI and Universal labels.  In the 2008-09 season, the HD series expands to feature 11 live transmissions, starting with the Met’s Opening Night Gala and spanning the entire season. The HD productions are seen this season in over 850 theaters in 28 countries around the world. Five new productions are featured, including the Met premiere of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic. The Opening Night transmission was seen in the Americas only; the remaining ten high-definition productions are shown live worldwide on Saturdays through May 9 with encores scheduled at various times.

Live in HD in Schools, the Met’s new program offering free opera transmissions to New York City schools in partnership with the New York City Department of Education and the Metropolitan Opera Guild, reached more than 7,000 public school students and teachers during the 2007-08 season. This season, Live in HD in Schools expands to reach schools in 18 cities and communities nationwide.

Continuing its innovative use of electronic media to reach a global audience, the Metropolitan Opera introduces Met Player, a new subscription service that will make its extensive video and audio catalog of full-length performances available to the public for the first time online, and in exceptional, state-of-the-art quality. Beginning on October 22, 2008, 120 historic audio recordings and 50 full-length opera videos will be available during the first month of the new service, including over a dozen of the company’s acclaimed The Met: Live in HD transmissions, known for their extraordinary sound and picture quality.  New content, including HD productions and archival broadcasts, will be added monthly.

Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS channel 78 is a subscription-based audio service broadcasting both live and rare recorded historical performances.  In addition to providing audio recordings through the new Met on Rhapsody on-demand service, the Met also presents free live audio streaming of performances on its website once every week during the opera season with support from RealNetworks®.

The company’s groundbreaking commissioning program in partnership with New York’s Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), provides renowned composers and playwrights with the resources to create and develop new works at the Met and at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater.  The Met’s partnership with LCT is part of the company’s larger initiative to commission new operas from contemporary composers, present modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, and provide a venue for artists to nurture their work.

The Met has launched several audience development initiatives such as the company’s Open House Dress Rehearsals, which are free and open to the public; two are planned for the 2008-09 season with dates to be announced.  Just prior to beginning the current season, the Met presented a free performance of the Verdi Requiem on September 18, in tribute to the late Luciano Pavarotti.  Other company initiatives include the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met which exhibits contemporary visual art; the immensely successful Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Rush Ticket program which provides deeply discounted orchestra seats two hours before curtain time; and an annual Holiday Series presentation for families.  This season’s special Holiday Presentation is Julie Taymor’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, an abridged, English-language version of the opera which is given four special matinee performances and one holiday evening performance as a way for families to celebrate the holiday season.