I’ve been watching the Metropolitan Opera’s situation for a while.
The status of the organization is personal to me.
I love New York and those huge cultural institutions.
When I moved to New York City, I bought memberships and subscriptions to all of the major cultural institutions I could afford at the time.
I sucked the culture up.
What is coming out of the Metropolitan Opera now is concerning:
- Staff lay offs
- Executive pay cuts
- Production delays
- Rumors of the sale of the famous Chagall murals
- Naming rights to the theatre
The headlines write themselves:
- “Met Opera in Crisis.”
- “Arts Organization Struggles in Post-Pandemic World.”
- “Delay Sparks Cuts.:
These stories are concerning.
These stories are persistent.
They are also shallow.
Because these headlines focus on the immediate situation.
All of these stories have a common theme: they are shallow, focusing on the symptoms of the Met Opera’s challenges.
Layoffs. Saudi deal. Artist revolts. Pay cuts.
These are symptoms of a larger disease.
But not the easy ones such as funding issues, the decline of the arts, or the risks of foreign money.
It is all of these things, but none of them.
The Met Opera’s crisis is rooted in strategy…or the lack of one.
Without the board, leadership, and commentators understanding that, nothing will change.
In fact, things will likely get worse.
The Root Cause: Strategic Drift
The Met Opera has been drifting for years.
Like a lot of organizations, pre-COVID, there were concerns. Sustainability. Audience Development. Finances.
Then COVID hit. An existential event.
Some organizations survived by recreating their experiences, offering value in new ways, and returning to their mission and strategy to see them through the crisis.
Others, fell victim to panic, short term bridge financing, and chasing “opportunity” wherever it appeared.
The Met is no different.
For years, the Met has been adrift.
What the organization suffers from is a common strategic issue called Strategic Drift.
This is a slow, creeping, misalignment of ambitions, actions, and purpose that steal time, money, and energy from an organization.
There are two paths I see organizations take when they enter a Strategic Drift.
One with an active response. One with a passive response that feels energetic.
Path One: A complete rethinking of the strategy and direction. Leadership recognizes the need for a new course that is focused, actionable, and true to their mission.
Path Two: Incremental adjustments. Small changes as the world shifts around them. But no clear direction.
In the second path, no single decision looks catastrophic. No single moment screams, “Here’s where everything went wrong.”
But the organization falters.
Gradually.
Then, all at once.
Peter Gelb has been the Met’s General Manager since 2006.
Twenty years.
When the board extended Gelb’s contract in 2019, two and a half years early, Gelb explained his tenure like this:
Stability.
That seems like something every organization needs to achieve its goals.
But…is what we are seeing at the Met really stability?
The endowment has been drawn down from $217 million to $97.5 million since 2022.
This is risky.
Arts executives call this move “unorthodox and risky.”
I think they are being polite.
What this means is that the organization is trading long-term security for short-term relief.
Ticket sales are back to 72% of pre-pandemic levels.
Which seems like “recovery” until you see that the audiences are younger but feels less like recovery when you see that they are also paying less for their tickets with no apparent strategy to convert this new audience to sustainable supporters.
And, then there’s Carmen.
In 2024, the creative team behind a new production asked for their names to be removed from the program.
The director.
The set designer.
The costume director.
The whole creative team.
Why?
Without consulting the creative team, the production was stripped down.
Citing financial constraints.
No heads up.
No warning.
Set designer, Michael Levine was emphatic, “Now, of course, I don’t trust the Met.”
This isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet.
This hits at the heart of what any institution exists on: trust.
Once you start undermining that with your audience, your performers, and your staff…it is nearly impossible to regain.
This isn’t sustainability.
This is Strategic Drift.
When you don’t have a clear strategy, every decision becomes reactive.
Every solution is putting out the latest fire.
Over time, the entire place is on fire, and you don’t have any way of putting them out.
The most seductive mirage is often money.
It looks like a solution. Feels like the answer. Promises momentum. The next check will solve EVERYTHING!
Enter the Saudi deal.
The Money Mirage
When you lack strategy, your organization drifts.
This regularly leads to economic challenges.
You end up chasing money. Any money.
You never ask what it really costs.
In September 2025, the Met announced a blockbuster deal: $200 million over eight years to perform in Riyadh each winter.
Peter Gelb called it a lifeline. He said it would cover a “substantial portion” of the Met’s needs through 2032. That it would allow the company to stop going back to its endowment.
When critics raised concerns about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, Gelb had an answer:
“All the democratic governments that I know of are engaged in business with Saudi Arabia. I have to put the survival of the Met first.”
Survival. That’s the justification.
Money matters and the costs are no concern because everyone else is doing it.
Four months later…the mirage vanished.
“I understand the Saudis have had to recalibrate their budgets because of their own economic concerns,” Gelb told the New York Times in January 2026. “I’ve been assured that it’s going to go forward. But we have been waiting for some time.”
All these negative cuts to the Met’s brand for…waiting, hoping that the deal would come through.
Meanwhile, layoffs. Pay cuts. Production delays.
Any reasonable person would have to ask the question, Is the Saudi money ever coming?
With the deal delayed, the Met turned to other mirages.
Selling the naming rights to its historic theater. Leasing the house to pop musicals.
Even considering selling the two massive Chagall murals that have graced the Grand Tier since 1966.
Of course there is a catch: the murals must stay in place. The buyer gets a plaque.
Gelb calls this “being as entrepreneurial as possible.”
I call it a bad trade: your identity for cash that offers temporary relief.
The Connection Mirage
The Money Mirage promises survival. But what happens when you’ve sold the things that made you worth saving?
You start believing that people will show up anyway…because they always have before.
This is The Connection Mirage. The belief that your relationships with the artists, audiences, sponsors, and donors is stronger than they are.
You take loyalty for granted.
You tell yourself that trust is earned once. Never needing to be maintained or earned again.
The Met is learning otherwise.
Artists
In 2024, the Met prepared a new production of Carmen. Big names. Big expectations.
Then cuts came.
Citing financial strain, the Met stripped down the staging.
New sets?
Too expensive.
A planned Jaguar on stage?
No.
The creative team wasn’t consulted. They were informed.
Their response: every single one demanded their names be removed from the program.
Set designer Michael Levine put it bluntly: “Now, of course, I don’t trust the Met.”
Think about that. The artists that create the art — the reason the Met exists — are publicly saying they don’t trust the institution.
Gelb’s defense? It was really “an economic decision.” Saved a few hundred thousand dollars.
That’s the language of an organization that has forgotten that artists aren’t cost centers. They are value creators. They are the product.
Lose their trust, and what do you have?
Audience
The numbers tell a similar story.
Ticket sales are at 72% of pre-pandemic levels. On the surface, that feels like recovering. People are coming back.
But revenue is down.
Why?
Audiences are younger, paying less. Discounted tickets. Lower average price. A new generation in the seats, but at a steep markdown.
Getting younger audiences into the opera is a huge win.
Gaining them through discounted tickets sets is a mental anchor for the value of the experience. One that undermines the perceived value and isn’t sustainable for the Met.
Which leads to the question: What’s the plan to turn discount attendees into sustainable supporters?
The Met doesn’t seem to have one.
You get bodies in the seats, but no loyalty. A lower perception of value. Transactions, not relationships.
A younger crowd taught to expect discounts with no pathway to lifelong fandom.
That’s not connection. That’s renting an audience.
Donors
Even the people who write big checks are drifting away.
A Met employee told the New York Post:
“Nine [wealthy] families keep the Met alive in New York City…Maybe 30 years ago in New York City, there were a lot of people that had that kind of capacity. And the Met was an institution they wanted to give their money to, and it meant something. It had social capital. Those people are dying off.”
The donor base is dying off.
Worse, there is no visible strategy to replace them.
After years of relationships being secondary, people notice. Funders notice. They stop feeling cared about. They stop feeling needed.
So, they stop giving.
Unseen Costs
The Met’s financial statements won’t show you what’s really being lost:
- Artists who won’t trust the next production manager.
- Young audience members who drift away when the discounts stop.
- Donors who redirect their giving to organizations that make them feel seen.
You can’t put a number on trust. You only see its absence when the next crisis hits and there is no one left to call for help.
The Connection Mirage promises that relationships will take care of themselves.
Because they always have.
That’s wrong.
They won’t.
Trust isn’t an entitlement. It is an asset.
Just like the endowment, the Met has been drawing it down for years.
The Identity Mirage
The Money Mirage promises survival through cash.
The Connection Mirage promises loyalty without investment.
The Identity Mirage is the most dangerous of all.
This is the belief where you trick yourself into believing you are the same organization you’ve always been. That the brand remains intact, no matter what you sell or who you sell out.
The Met is knee deep in this mirage.
Numbers Don’t Lie
The 2026-27 season will feature 17 productions. The fewest since the Met moved to Lincoln Center in 1966.
Three operas account for 40% of scheduled performances: Tosca, La Boheme, Aida.
Wow!
Let me reframe that for you.
The largest performing arts organization in America, with a $330 million budget, is leaning on three titles for almost half its performances!
That’s not curation.
That’s not stability.
That’s not planning for the long term.
That’s retreat.
That’s giving up.
That’s throwing your arms in the air, saying, “It is what it is.”
When you don’t know what stories to tell, you fall back on the hits.
Over and over and over.
What Does “The Met” Even Mean?
Look at recent choices:
- A company that is willing to perform in Riyadh each winter, taking money from a regime that its own artists and audience may be uncomfortable with.
- A theater hanging a “for sale” sign for the highest corporate bidder.
- An institution that wants to sell its Chagall murals as long as the new owner will leave them hanging in the same place.
- A landlord that leases its stage to pop musicals when the opera isn’t playing.
Alone, each one of these ideas can be defended as pragmatic.
“Entrepreneurial,” to use Gelb’s idea.
Together, they raise the only question that matters:
What is the Met?
A cultural pillar? A rental hall? A global touring company? A brand willing to take sponsorships? A museum that happens to have an opera?
The answer appears to be “yes” to everything.
Which is really a symbol of an institution with no clear direction.
The Leadership Question
Peter Gelb has been the Met’s General Manager since 2006. Twenty years.
When the board extended his contract in 2019, Gelb explained what the long tenure would allow:
“It gives me the freedom to execute future planning,” he said, “and also I think will provide a level of stability for the company…that ideas that are being discussed will actually be implemented.”
Stability. Long-term planning. From ideas to actions.
That was 2019.
Seven years of “stability” has produced:
- An endowment drained from $217 million to $97.5 million.
- A dying donor base with no replacement plan.
- Artists who publicly say they don’t trust the institution.
- A season with the fewest productions in 60 years.
- A brand considering a sale of its name, its art, and its soul.
What happened to big projects? The idea of a lobby expansion? Modern subtitling?
Peter Gelb plans to retire in 2030. 24 years as leader.
Long tenures aren’t necessarily bad. Some leaders grow and evolve with their institutions.
But long tenures carry risk. The drift becomes invisible because you are drifting with it.
The drift is the air you breathe.
Decisions that were temporary become permanent.
The organization adapts to you, not the other way around. And the creative friction of opposing forces is lost.
When “future planning” produces retreat, “stability” looks like liquidation, and the big ideas being discussed never arrive, you have to ask:
What is really going on here?
What does success look like? Why do we exist? What future are we fighting for?
Without clarity, you don’t have strategy. Only drift.
What Every Leader Can Learn from the Met
If you are outside the arts world, you might think: “This is sad. But does it apply to me?”
Yes.
Yes, it absolutely does.
The Met’s story is playing out in every industry. The specifics might change. But that pattern doesn’t.
Revenue is not a strategy.
The Saudi deal. The naming rights. The pop concerts. Each was a “solution.” Each one was really a tactic with no strategic focus: a grab at cash without a plan for anything outside of getting the money.
Every organization faces this temptation.
Easy revenue. Shiny partnerships. A deal that will “solve all our problems.”
But if you don’t know what you are building, no amount of money will help you find true success.
Your brand: everything counts.
The Met can’t claim to be a beacon of artistic integrity while gutting artists’ work to save a couple hundred thousand dollars. It can’t claim to be a cultural pillar while selling its name and its art.
Your brand isn’t what you say in mission statements. It’s what you do, over and over.
Your brand is the accumulation of every interaction you have with your audience. Your brand is every action you take, small or large.
Your brand’s strength builds up slowly. But one bad decision or one negative story can tear it down in a snap.
The Met’s actions have taught artists not to trust them. Taught audiences to wait for discounts. Taught donors to look elsewhere.
This isn’t a PR problem.
This is a brand problem that can’t be fixed with a press release or an ad campaign.
Stakeholder relationships are assets.
Relationships don’t show up on a balance sheet. You don’t depreciate them on your tax form.
But they are real.
When you draw them down, you may not notice they have been depleted until the next crisis comes and no one is there to help.
The Met alienated its artists. The Met confused its audience. The Met let its donors drift away.
Each action might have felt like a small decision at the time.
Until the organization was isolated and alone.
Strategic drift is slow, then sudden.
No single decision led to the Met’s challenges.
No single moment screams, “This is where it all went wrong.”
That’s how drift works. Small adjustments. Little compromises. “Reasonable” responses to unreasonable pressures.
One day you look up and the institution you were leading is gone. Instead, you see something you don’t recognize. Something you don’t want.
And you can’t remember when it slipped away.
This is the lesson of the Met. Not for them, for you.
Strategic Drift doesn’t announce itself. It happens. Slowly. Then all at once.
The challenge isn’t fixing it but noticing it before it’s too late.
The Audience Is Still Waiting
The three mirages tell a story.
The Money Mirage promised survival through cash. Saudi deals. Naming rights. Art sales.
But the cash either didn’t come, or it came with costs that don’t show up on a balance sheet.
Sometimes, both.
The Connection Mirage promised loyalty without investment. Artists would trust you. Audiences would continue to show up. Donors would keep giving.
But when trust is broken, it doesn’t heal on its own.
The Identity Mirage promised the brand would stay strong. No matter what was sold. No matter who was alienated. No matter how many times you told the same three stories.
But a brand is the sum of all of your actions, not just the good ones.
The Met’s actions have changed the Met’s brand to something unrecognizable to the institution it says it wants to be.
None of this was inevitable.
The pandemic wasn’t the cause. Just a good excuse.
The Saudi delay wasn’t the cause. Just a quick fix gone awry.
The changing audience wasn’t the cause. Just a symbol of drift.
The cause was years of Strategic Drift.
Years of treating symptoms instead of creating strategy. Years of incremental decisions that felt like progress. Reasonable in isolation. Catastrophic in accumulation.
The Met isn’t alone in this.
Every organization that confuses activity with progress, that chases revenue without looking at the price, that takes relationships for granted…all of them are staring at some version of this story.
The good thing about the drift:
You can stop it.
Not with another deal. Not with more cuts. Not with the next magic idea.
With clarity.
Focus.
A real answer to the question no at the Met seems to be asking:
What are we building? Who is it for? Why do we matter?
Without those answers, the Met will keep chasing mirages. The Met will keep selling pieces of itself. Keep telling itself that survival is the same as thriving.
The audience is there.
The artists are there.
The donors that haven’t drifted away are still there.
They are waiting. Not for a press release. Not for a deal. Not for another round of cuts disguised as pragmatism.
They’re waiting for someone to remember what the Met is supposed to be.
They are waiting to feel the emotional connection that drew them to the Met, opera, or the arts.
They are waiting for leadership that knows the difference between strategy and tactics.
They are waiting for an institution that is worth their attention, their commitment.
They are waiting for an institution worth coming to, worth fighting for.
The question for me isn’t whether the Met can survive.
A version of the Met can limp along for decades.
The question is whether the Met can figure out what it’s surviving for.