Peter Gelb

Expert on the Business of Art and Managing the Modern Non-Profit

BIG IDEAS

• Rejuvenating a Cultural Icon
  Since Peter Gelb took over as general manager a year and a half ago, the Metropolitan Opera has launched a number of significant changes to revitalize not just the Met but opera and the arts in general. The Met’s various artistic and outreach initiatives have generated excitement far beyond the opera house, stimulating new ideas among people working in many artistic disciplines and businesses, and capturing international headlines. Leaders in many fields have seen what happens when a fairly traditional institution embraces new strategies—including live HD performance transmissions to movie theaters globally; the launch of an around-the-clock Met radio station on Sirius Satellite Radio; the opening of a contemporary art gallery in the opera house; and reduced-price ticket programs—to generate interest and reach new audiences. Before Peter Gelb was hired as general manager, the Met faced declining ticket sales and a marginalized place in contemporary culture. The average age of its audience was increasing each year. In a single season, Gelb was able to reverse the five-year ticket-sale decline and reconnect the Met to the culture at large. Today, the company has assumed a leadership position among performing arts organizations, thanks to creative and groundbreaking public outreach initiatives designed to convey the Met’s exciting onstage happenings to as broad an audience as possible in a dynamic and engaging way.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Peter Gelb’s career has followed a singular arc that began with his teenage years as an usher at the Metropolitan Opera and led to his appointment as General Manager 35 years later. Under Peter’s direction, the Metropolitan Opera has taken a leadership role among opera houses and other arts organizations, not only in the U.S. but around the world, providing a model for other groups with its creative and groundbreaking public outreach initiatives.

Since taking the helm at the Met, Peter has launched initiatives aimed at revitalizing opera and connecting it to a wider audience. One of the most innovative and successful of his initiatives is “Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD,” a series of live performance transmissions shown in high definition in movie theaters across North America, Europe, and Japan. In 2006, Sirius Satellite Radio launched “Metropolitan Opera Radio,” an around-the-clock channel broadcasting four live performances a week as well as historic performances from the Met’s vast radio archive. Peter has also worked to recruit some of the world’s great theater directors to enhance the theatricality of the Met’s productions and complement the extraordinary musical standards established by Music Director James Levine.

Peter’s extensive and varied experience in the field of classical music has prepared him for the considerable challenge of overseeing both the artistic and the administrative aspects of one of the largest performing arts institutions in the world. Previously, Mr. Gelb was president of Sony Classical, one of the largest international classical record labels. He led the company through a period of notable growth and creativity, expanding the focus of recording projects to include best-selling film scores, including the Academy Award-winning scores for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Tan Dun, The Red Violin by John Corigliano, and Titanic by James Horner.

An award-winning producer of films, recordings, radio broadcasts, telecasts, concert events, operas, and festivals, Peter has collaborated with the world’s leading artists. His Emmy Award-winning films include Soldiers of Music: Rostropovich Returns to Russia and Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic, both with Maysles Films. Peter received a Peabody Award for his four-part television series Marsalis on Music (1995), in which jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis introduces young audiences to the full experience of classical music and jazz. In 2001, he co-directed and produced a 90-minute documentary entitled Recording The Producers: A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks, about the making of the hit Broadway show’s cast album. The film was awarded a Grammy in 2002.

Today, Peter shares his message both here and abroad, including at Showa University in Japan, the European Opera Conference in Paris, the Chautauqua Institution, and the American Symphony Orchestra League.