Met Cuts Ticket Prices Following Box Office Slump

The Metropolitan Opera is cutting ticket prices by an average of about 10 percent next season, when music director James Levine returns from a spine injury that led to a two-year absence.

New stagings include Johann Strauss II's "Die Fledermaus," Borodin's "Prince Igor" and Massanet's "Werther." There will be new-to-the-Met productions of Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin," Nico Muhly's "Two Boys" and Verdi's "Falstaff' that already have debuted in Europe.

An intended new staging of Bellini's "I Puritani" was scrapped in favor of a revival.

The Met said Tuesday more than 2,000 of its 3,800 seats will have lower prices next season and its average ticket price will drop from $174 to $156. There will be a minimum 15 percent discount for evening subscriptions and 10 percent for Saturday matinees.

"I think we're slightly overpriced. I think we were perhaps too ambitious in our pricing for this season," Met General Manager Peter Gelb said.

Gelb said the Met projects it will sell 80 percent of available tickets this season, down 2-3 percent from last season. The company increased prices for 2012-13 by an average of 4.2 percent for subscriptions and 7.6 percent for individual tickets.

Part of the decrease in ticket sales may be attributable to the Met's successful simulcasts to movie theaters.

"Although we have expanded the paying audience for the Met through the HD transmissions, we've also cannibalized a little bit our local audience in the opera house," Gelb said.

Levine, sidelined since May 2011, will lead revivals of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" starting Sept. 24 and Berg's "Wozzeck" beginning March 6, the company said Tuesday, and a new-to-the-Met staging of Verdi's "Falstaff" (Dec. 6) that appeared at London's Royal Opera in 2012 and Milan's Teatro alla Scala this year.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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