If all goes according to plan, the Metropolitan Opera will celebrate a milestone on Saturday night: reaching a long-planned midwinter break without having to cancel a single performance, even as the pandemic wreaked havoc backstage.
When the Omicron variant spread through the city in December and January, the virus turned the Met’s operations upside down, with at least 400 singers, orchestra players, stagehands, costume designers, dancers, actors and other employees testing positive, according to a snapshot of the cases provided by the Met on Friday.
But there are encouraging signs that in the opera house, as in the city, the recent rise has peaked and the number of cases is again falling dramatically.
During the first week of January, as things reached new heights in New York, more than 100 Met employees tested positive, including six solo singers and five members of the children’s choir. Last week, the total number of positive cases among the Met’s large workforce had fallen to 22, about the same number as early December, and there are eight positive tests so far this week.
Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, said that during Omicron’s worst days, he feared that the company would run out of staff and be unable to perform. But the Met’s strict safety protocols, including vaccine and mask mandates and regular testing, provided some assurance, he said, that no one would become seriously ill.
“I knew that if we could just keep bringing in reserves and get people back to work once they got out of the quarantine period, we could continue to perform,” Gelb said. “Our struggle to keep the Met going in the face of Covid became a unifying force for the entire company as we battled a common enemy.”
The Met never missed a downbeat or a curtain, even when the Omicron variant wreaked havoc in the performing arts — resulting in the cancellation of dozens of Broadway shows, concerts, and dance performances.
The virus has taken its toll on the rise in the performing arts this winter.
On Broadway, only 62 percent of seats were occupied in the week ending January 9; in the comparable week in January before the pandemic, 94 percent of the seats were occupied. Last week, after many of the weakest shows closed and others slashed their prices, 75 percent of all seats were taken, but the total box office bonus was lower.
At the Met, which had 77 percent of seats taken the week of Dec. 18, attendance dropped rapidly as the virus hit, reaching a low of 44 percent in mid-January, before rising again.
Now The Met, the largest performing arts organization in the United States, has some time to get through the next phase of the pandemic: it’s about to take a long-planned hiatus from performances for much of February before it kicks off. returns on February. 28 with a new production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos.”
The company decided to initiate a mid-season as early as 2018, long before the coronavirus hit. The idea was to stop performing in the middle of winter, when sales are generally weakest, and to add more performances in late spring, pushing the end of the opera season to early June from May. The first midwinter break would start in the 2020-21 season – the season that was lost due to the corona virus.
Now — as the recent surge in cases has left performing arts organizations with alarmingly low turnout — the Met has nearly a month off.
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“It’s serendipitous,” Gelb said of the intermission, adding that although there would only be one performance in February, rehearsals would continue offstage.
Donations have increased during the crisis. Since last summer, the Met’s patrons have provided $110 million in emergency gifts — more than half in the past two months alone.
The number of coronavirus cases began to climb at the Met in mid-December. The company responded by tightening its safety protocols, requiring employees to take PCR tests three times a week and requiring singers to wear face masks even at dress rehearsals.
The spike in cases forced a series of last-minute replacements, including replacing star singers in productions of “Rigoletto” and “Cinderella.” The Met staff said the huge network of performers was an asset, but the rush to get them ready for showtime can be stressful.
“It’s been like an Olympics,” said Gillian Smith, director of actors and dancers at the Met. “Knowing we don’t want to cancel and knowing people are coming and wanting to see a show helps build the kind of spirit we need to keep going.”
Gelb said he was hopeful about the rest of the season, that the number of cases would continue to fall and that the public would feel comfortable returning. As cases drop across the region, he expects older audience members to return in greater numbers, alongside younger fans who showed up in the fall and winter.
“I’m very optimistic about the second half of the season,” he said, “not only to maintain our impeccable record of performances going forward, but also to have the house full of people.”