Peter Gelb: Why Does
Everyone Hate Him?

Before the arguments, before the opinions, before the politics — the numbers. Every figure from public filings and published reporting.

Peter Gelb has been the General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera since August 1, 2006. In that time, the Met has gone from the undisputed center of the opera world to a company selling one-third of its seats empty, raiding its own endowment, carrying junk-rated debt, and preparing to sell the paintings off its walls.

His salary for the fiscal year ending July 2024: $2,237,377. The Met's operating deficit in the same period: $47 million.

The Met Opera: Live in HD was Peter Gelb's best idea. Launched in 2006, it broadcast Met performances to 2,200 cinema screens in over 70 countries. At its peak, it drew over 400,000 viewers per broadcast and was a “very significant source of net profit.”

Today the audience is approximately 200,000 — half of what it was. Revenue has dropped over $10 million from pre-pandemic levels. Instead of generating profit, the broadcasts now break even.

Gelb himself used the word “cannibalization” to describe what happened: the HD broadcasts reduced ticket sales at Lincoln Center. He created a revenue stream that ate his own live audience. Then he lost the cinema audience too.

He built the most innovative distribution platform in opera history. Then he watched it decay. The cinema industry declined post-COVID — but Gelb had two decades to diversify distribution. Instead, the Met's digital strategy remained tethered to a dying medium: movie theaters.

In 2010, Gelb debuted a new production of Wagner's Ring cycle directed by Robert Lepage. The centerpiece was “The Machine” — a 45-ton mechanical set of rotating planks that was supposed to transform for each scene.

The Machine broke. Repeatedly. During performances. In front of paying audiences.

The cost: reportedly $16-20 million. The critical reception: devastating. The audience response: they didn't come. The production became the symbol of Gelb's era — expensive, technically ambitious, critically panned, and empty.

The budget increase tells the story. Under Gelb, the Met's total budget grew by nearly 50% to $327 million — while labor costs stayed flat. The money went to productions like the Lepage Ring. The musicians who make the music saw none of it.

Gelb's strategy for reviving the Met: commission new operas. Contemporary works by living composers. A bold bet that the Met could lead the art form into the future.

The 2024-25 season opened with “Grounded” by Jeanine Tesori — a Met-commissioned opera about a female Air Force pilot. It had already received a dismal world premiere at Washington National Opera. Despite thorough revision, the Met run sold 50% of seats — the worst performer of all ten operas presented in the season's first half.

Gelb's response: the critics had an “agenda.”

City Journal called it “The Met's Big Bet on Contemporary Opera Looks Like a Loser.” VAN Magazine documented “The problem with Peter Gelb's commissioning spree.” The audiences voted with empty seats.

In February 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Peter Gelb gave soprano Anna Netrebko an ultimatum: publicly denounce Vladimir Putin, or be fired from the Metropolitan Opera.

Netrebko — widely considered the most popular opera singer in the world — had called for peace. She had not endorsed the invasion. She was an Austrian citizen of Russian origin. Gelb fired her on March 3, 2022. Days after the invasion.

Here is what Gelb did not do with the same speed:

In February 2023, arbitrator Howard Edelman ruled that the Met violated its union's collective bargaining agreement when it cancelled Netrebko's contracts. She was awarded $209,103. The Met had fought the claim through every stage of arbitration and lost.

In August 2023, Netrebko sued Gelb and the Met for $360,000 — alleging national origin discrimination, defamation, breach of contract, and emotional distress. A federal judge dismissed three of the four claims. The remaining claim — gender discrimination — is proceeding to trial. The argument: the Met treated male artists with Putin connections more favorably than it treated Netrebko.

The double standard is now a matter of court record.

Jonas Kaufmann is one of the most celebrated tenors alive. He announced he will not return to the Metropolitan Opera.

His reason was not about himself. It was about the musicians.

The biggest tenor in the world did not leave because of a contract dispute. He did not leave because of scheduling. He left because of principle. He watched Peter Gelb furlough the musicians with $0 pay for 17 months, demand 30% permanent cuts, lock out the stagehands, and threaten non-union labor — and he decided he could not perform for that institution anymore.

When your star tenor leaves because of how you treated the people in the pit, the problem is not the tenor.

James Levine was the Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera for 40 years, from 1976 to 2016. More than any other person in the institution's modern history, he was credited with restoring the Met's artistic reputation — building the orchestra into one of the great ensembles on earth, premiering works by Philip Glass, John Corigliano, and John Harbison, and guiding the house through the Wagner, Verdi, and Mozart repertoires that became its defining sound.

Then came the allegations.

On December 3, 2017, following public accusations from four men of sexual abuse dating back decades, Peter Gelb suspended Levine. On March 12, 2018, after an internal investigation, the Met fired him — citing “credible evidence” of “sexually abusive and harassing conduct.”

Three days later — March 15, 2018 — Levine sued the Met for $5.8 million, alleging breach of contract and defamation. The Met countersued. The case dragged through discovery for 17 months.

In August 2019, the Met settled. It paid James Levine $3.5 million — an institution that had publicly accused a man of sexual abuse wrote him a multi-million-dollar check to make the lawsuit go away.

Levine died on March 9, 2021, at the age of 77.

What remains of Levine's 40-year legacy is the orchestra pit itself. The Met Orchestra he built is still, by general critical consensus, the finest opera orchestra in the world. Under Gelb's administration, those musicians went 17 consecutive months without pay during COVID, were asked to accept 30% permanent cuts, and watched their principal conductor abandon the house in protest.

The Met paid $3.5 million to settle with a fired Music Director. It paid its actual musicians $0.

The pattern did not begin with Netrebko. It did not begin with Kaufmann. It did not begin with Levine.

It began on December 10, 2006 — Peter Gelb's opening Aida, in his first season as General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera.

French-Sicilian tenor Roberto Alagna was singing Radamès. Midway through “Celeste Aida,” a section of the audience booed. Alagna stopped singing. He walked off the stage, past the conductor, and out of the wings. Understudy Antonello Palombi took over mid-act, pulled from the dressing room and hurled onto the stage in jeans and a black shirt while the orchestra played on.

Gelb and Alagna mutually cancelled the rest of his contracted performances. Alagna did not return to the Met stage for approximately 13 years.

A pattern emerges. Under Peter Gelb, the biggest names in opera have been removed, banned, or driven away from the Metropolitan Opera:

Levine. Alagna. Netrebko. Eyvazov. Kaufmann. Domingo. DiDonato. Dessay. Gheorghiu. Gergiev. Opera News. The list of people and institutions that Peter Gelb has fired, banned, silenced, or driven away reads like the all-star roster of twenty-first-century opera itself.

Reports hold that artists who clash with Gelb — “no matter how famous or how great a box office draw” — are cast out. The Met under Gelb is an institution where the general manager outlasts everyone. Twenty years. Everyone else is replaceable.

Gelb's signature strategy was commissioning new operas and staging lavish new productions. The idea was to make the Met feel vital, contemporary, relevant. The results:

Not every new production failed. Fire Shut Up in My Bones was a genuine breakthrough — the first opera by a Black composer at the Met. But even its revival drew only 65% attendance. The pattern is consistent: Gelb commissions expensive new works that critics either pan or audiences don't attend — and often both.

Meanwhile, the operas that do fill the house — Puccini, Verdi, Mozart, the standard repertoire — receive fewer performances to make room for the new commissions that don't sell.

The Metropolitan Opera is the largest opera house in the world — 3,800 seats. It should be the greatest. Under Peter Gelb, it is not even close.

The Vienna Staatsoper produces 50-60 operas in over 350 performances per year — at near-full capacity. The Hungarian State Opera will produce 56 operas next season. The Mariinsky under Gergiev presented 181 productions with 269 performances in a single season.

The Metropolitan Opera under Peter Gelb: 17 productions. The lowest in 60 years. At the largest opera house in the world.

Yes, the American model lacks state funding. Yes, the Met depends on private donations and ticket sales. But the Met's budget is $327 million — more than the Vienna Staatsoper, which produces three times as many operas. The money is there. The management is not.

We have covered this in detail in our investigation into Yannick Nézet-Séguin's silence. The summary:

In 2012, Opera News — the industry's leading publication, published by the Met Opera Guild since 1936 — ran a harsh review of the Met's Götterdämmerung and a damning column about Gelb's tenure.

Gelb's response: he banned Opera News from reviewing Met productions.

The outcry was immediate. By the end of the same day, Gelb reversed course: “I think I made a mistake.”

But the instinct was revealed. When criticized, Gelb's first impulse was to silence the critic.

He also personally pressured WQXR — New York's classical radio station — to delete a blog post by critic Olivia Giovetti that criticized the Lepage Ring cycle. WQXR, which receives Met sponsorship and broadcasts Saturday matinees, complied. The post was deleted.

In 2023, Gelb abolished both Opera News and the Metropolitan Opera Guild entirely. An 87-year-old publication — the bible of the opera world — killed.

The critics he could not kill still write. A sample of the journalists and outlets that have documented and criticized Gelb's tenure in the public record:

He killed one publication. The critical record against him is distributed across a generation of journalists at America's most respected outlets. You cannot silence that.

In September 2025, Gelb announced a deal that was supposed to save the Met: $200 million over 8 years from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in exchange for an annual winter residency at the Royal Diriyah Opera House in Riyadh.

The deal is now “in limbo.” Saudi Arabia is scaling back arts spending. The $200 million that Gelb built his financial plans around has not materialized.

The consequences were immediate: layoffs of 22 employees, salary cuts for top executives, postponement of a new production, and the consideration of selling the Chagall murals and naming rights.

Gelb bet the Met's financial future on a single deal with a foreign government. When the deal stalled, the Met had no backup plan. Because there was no backup plan. There was only Peter Gelb's next big idea.

In March 2025, Gelb proudly announced a $15 million gift from Matthew Christopher Pietras.

In May 2025, when the Met attempted to transfer $10 million, the bank flagged it as fraudulent.

Pietras was a con artist. The gift was fake. The Met had already dipped into its endowment based on the expected donation.

The General Manager of the most important opera house in America — a man paid $2.2 million per year to manage the institution — was deceived by a fake millionaire. The due diligence that should have preceded a $15 million announcement either did not happen or failed catastrophically.

Marc Chagall painted two monumental murals for the Metropolitan Opera in 1966: The Triumph of Music and The Sources of Music. They are among the most recognizable works of public art in New York City. Sotheby's has appraised them at $55 million.

Peter Gelb is considering selling them. The buyer would have to leave them in place. They would receive a plaque.

He is also considering selling the naming rights to the Metropolitan Opera House itself. The most iconic opera house in the Western hemisphere — a name that has meant something for 141 years — could become the “[Sponsor] Metropolitan Opera House.”

This is what 20 years of Peter Gelb looks like: selling the paintings off the walls and the name off the building.

The Met's endowment was approximately $340 million. Gelb withdrew $70 million in 2023-2024 and another $50 million in 2025. Total: $120 million — more than a third of the entire fund.

An endowment exists to sustain an institution in perpetuity. It is the financial bedrock — the guarantee that the Met will exist for the next generation. Gelb has spent a third of it to cover operating losses during his tenure.

In March 2026, Moody's cut the Met's credit rating to Caa1 — deep junk territory, one step above near-default.

Total outstanding debt: $183 million. Endowment after raids: approximately $220 million. The Met owes nearly as much as it has saved. A single bad year could push it to the edge.

For context: Caa1 is the rating given to organizations in danger of default. It is the kind of rating associated with distressed companies, not with the most iconic cultural institution in America.

Peter Gelb's total compensation in FY2024 was $2,237,377. Here is what that money could alternatively fund at the Metropolitan Opera:

Over his 20-year tenure, Gelb has been paid approximately $35-40 million in total compensation. That is more than the $30 million Ann Ziff donated. It is a third of the endowment he raided. It is the cost of the Chagall murals he is considering selling.

He has been paid the price of the murals to preside over their sale.

For context — what Gelb's $2.2M salary looks like against his peers at comparable American performing arts institutions, all figures from IRS Form 990 filings (FY2024):

Peter Gelb earns 30% more than the next-highest-paid peer (the NY Phil's Deborah Borda), and runs the only institution on the list rated junk by Moody's. He earns nearly 3x what the CEO of the Cleveland Orchestra — a financially healthy institution with an intact endowment — takes home. Every other leader on this list runs an institution with investment-grade credit, a stable or growing endowment, and artists who are not currently suing them.

On September 16, 2019, The Boston Globe published an editorial. Its headline:

That was seven years ago. He is still there. So is she. So are they.

The answer is Ann Ziff. The chairman of the Met's board has personally donated over $30 million to the institution. She has kept Gelb in place through every crisis, every deficit, every failure. The board's structure has been described as “sclerotic — unable to reach agreement on anything.”

Gelb's survival has been attributed not to his success but to “his own jungle skills and mostly his board's structure.” He survives because the board cannot fire him — not because the Met is thriving.

He has announced he will retire when his contract ends in 2030. Four more years. After 24 years total.

Joseph Volpe ran the Metropolitan Opera from 1990 to 2006. He spent 42 years at the institution — starting from the bottom and rising through the ranks. He was the first head of the Met to advance from within.

Volpe kept labor peace for two decades. Gelb locked out the stagehands and left the musicians unpaid for 17 months. Volpe left the endowment intact. Gelb raided a third of it. Volpe premiered 22 new works and maintained the standard repertoire. Gelb commissioned new works that sold 50-62% of seats while cutting Puccini and Verdi.

Volpe came from within the Met. He understood it. Gelb came from the record industry. He understood marketing. The difference is visible in every number.

Peter Gelb's answer to declining revenue was to raise prices. Ticket prices at the Met soared to $300, $400, $500 and more for decent seats. Premium orchestra seats reached as high as $2,317. The Met became a luxury product in a city where the median household income is $75,000.

The result was predictable. Long-time subscribers balked and refused to buy as many tickets. Working-class opera patrons — the people who had filled the cheap seats for generations — saw their ticket prices double or triple. They stopped coming.

Gelb's response to the empty seats: desperate discounting. Rush tickets at $25 including taxes and fees. The 2023-24 season realized only 64% of its full-price box office potential. The following season: 60%.

He priced out the middle class, then discounted to fill the seats they left behind. The revenue from a $25 rush ticket is a fraction of what the same seat would have generated from a subscriber paying face value. He traded loyal $150 subscribers for desperate $25 walk-ups — and still couldn't fill the house.

The pricing strategy tells the entire story of Gelb's Met in miniature: a bold idea ($500 premium seats for the wealthy), followed by the predictable consequence (the middle class leaves), followed by a panicked correction ($25 rush tickets), followed by the realization that none of it works (60% of potential revenue, 72% capacity, junk credit).

Subscriptions are the bedrock of any performing arts organization. They represent committed, loyal audience members who buy in advance, provide predictable revenue, and return year after year. They are the foundation.

Under Gelb, the Met's subscription base collapsed from 45% of ticket sales to 15%. The average subscriber is now 70 years old. The loyal audience that sustained the Met for generations is dying — literally — and Gelb has not built a replacement.

His strategy was to attract younger, more diverse audiences with contemporary programming. The data shows it failed: Grounded at 50%, El Niño at 58%, the “anti-racist” initiative that alienated cultural traditionalists without attracting new audiences in sufficient numbers to fill the gap.

He lost the old audience. He did not win a new one. And the seats sit empty.

In September 2017, Slippedisc reported that approximately 50 Met Opera staff members were fired in a single day. Most were non-union employees. Many had not received a pay raise in eight years.

The cuts were attributed to $20 million in savings needed after a fundraising shortfall. The staff learned their fate the same way most Gelb decisions arrive — suddenly, without consultation, and without alternatives.

Gelb himself acknowledged in 2016 that Met staff were “not realistically compensated.” He said this while earning approximately $2 million per year.

The pattern is consistent. When the Met faces a financial problem — and under Gelb, it always faces a financial problem — the solution is never to reduce his compensation, rethink his programming strategy, or question the productions that don't sell. The solution is to fire staff, cut musicians, raid the endowment, and sell the art.

In November 2024, Peter Gelb published an editorial in The New York Times about his vision for making opera new again. Slippedisc's headline: “Peter Gelb: How I, I, I saved the Met.”

The editorial made no mention of the $47 million deficit. No mention of the junk credit rating. No mention of the endowment raids. No mention of the halved cinema audience. No mention of the 60-year season low. No mention of the artists who left or were fired. No mention of the fake millionaire. No mention of the Chagall murals being put up for sale.

Peter Gelb wrote about saving the Met while the Met was being sold for parts.

Before the Met, Peter Gelb was president of Sony Classical Records. He was good at it. He expanded the label into film soundtracks — Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Titanic, The Red Violin — all Academy Award winners. He maintained Broadway cast recordings and a classical catalogue. He commissioned new music from a record label — something no other label had attempted.

Before Sony, he managed Vladimir Horowitz's comeback, including his historic return to Russia in 1986. He ran the BSO's 1979 China tour at age 26. He produced “The Metropolitan Opera Presents” telecasts for six years.

His background is impressive. It is also entirely in media, marketing, and recording — not in running a performing arts institution. He had never managed an opera house. He had never negotiated a union contract. He had never programmed a season. He had never run a building with 3,800 seats, a chorus, an orchestra, a ballet, and a backstage crew of hundreds.

Joseph Volpe spent 42 years inside the Met before becoming GM. He knew every hallway, every union steward, every stage door. Gelb arrived from the record industry with a vision for media innovation — HD broadcasts, digital distribution, cinematic marketing. The vision was brilliant. The execution of everything else was not.

Anna Netrebko once sold 114% of capacity for a Met recital. She was among the only opera singers on earth who could, by herself, fill the house and then some.

Gelb banned her. The Met now sells 72% of capacity and is considering selling the Chagall murals.

The financial cost of the Netrebko ban has never been calculated publicly, but the circumstantial evidence is obvious. The Met lost its single biggest box office draw at the exact moment it could least afford to lose anyone. The seasons since her departure have seen attendance decline, deficits grow, and the endowment collapse.

Netrebko and her management have stated publicly that she will return to the Metropolitan Opera only after the departure of Peter Gelb.

Read it from top to bottom. A career that started with 88 sold-out performances and ended with Moody's near-default ratings and paintings being sold off the walls. Every year, something failed. Every year, Gelb survived. Every year, the Met got smaller.

Peter Gelb will retire in 2030. No succession plan has been announced. No search committee has been formed. No candidates have been publicly discussed.

The next general manager will inherit:

That is the Met Opera in 2030. That is what Peter Gelb will hand over after 24 years and an estimated $40+ million in personal compensation.

The next general manager will not inherit an opera company. They will inherit a rescue operation.

Why does everyone hate Peter Gelb?

Because the data is public. Because the 990s are searchable. Because the endowment withdrawals are documented. Because the Moody's downgrade is a matter of record. Because the arbitrator ruled against him. Because the gender discrimination case is proceeding to trial. Because Opera News is dead. Because Jonas Kaufmann told the world why he left. Because the Chagall murals are being appraised. Because the naming rights are being shopped. Because the Saudi deal is in limbo. Because a fake millionaire fooled the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera.

And because after all of it — after $120 million in endowment raids and a junk credit rating and a 60-year season low and the biggest soprano fired and the biggest tenor walking away and an 87-year publication killed — he published a New York Times editorial about how he saved the Met.

Peter Gelb will retire in 2030. The question is not whether he should go. The question is whether there will be a Metropolitan Opera left to hand over.

The endowment has lost a third. The credit is junk. The season is at a 60-year low. The murals are for sale. The name is for sale. The biggest artists are gone. The cinema audience is halved. The Saudi deal is stalled. The fake millionaire got in the door.

Four more years. $2.2 million a year. And the clock is ticking on what is left.

Peter Gelb should be fired in disgrace.

Not because we say so. Because he does.

Every piece of evidence against Peter Gelb comes from his own hand — his own signature, his own camera-ready quotes, his own 990 filings, his own op-eds, his own ban lists, his own fraudulent donor, his own 45-ton Machine that broke during Götterdämmerung, his own Saudi partnership that did not arrive, his own 17 months of $0 pay for the musicians who built the only thing anyone still loves about the Met.

The case against him does not need to be made. He has been making it for twenty years.

James Levine spent 40 years building the Metropolitan Opera's artistic reputation. Peter Gelb has spent 20 years doing the opposite. The Met inherited the greatest opera orchestra in the world, an endowment intact, a subscriber base at 45%, a 400,000-strong HD cinema audience, and an 87-year publication. Gelb leaves — or will leave, in 2030 — a junk-rated institution selling its murals, shopping its naming rights, missing its biggest stars, operating the smallest season in 60 years, with one-third of its seats empty.

Anyone can see this. Everyone can. The board cannot.

That is the final indictment. Not that Peter Gelb failed — institutions fail. But that the institution he runs cannot recognize failure when failure stares back at it from a Moody's report, a 990 filing, a half-empty auditorium, an arbitrator's ruling, and an 87-year publication he killed.

He should be fired. In disgrace. For what he did. What he said. What he signed. What he wrote. What he cancelled. What he raided. What he broke. What he bought. What he hid. What he sold.

The evidence does not require us. It is in his own hand.