"When I took over, the Met was on a declining slope toward extermination," says Peter Gelb, who took charge as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in August 2006. Attendance figures were falling and patronage was dwindling, even as running costs and competition for the cultural dollar were on the rise. But perhaps the biggest problem of all was the product itself: opera has an eminently elitist image. And the 125-year-old Met was the stuffiest of the musical temples for the rich.
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