Curtains for the Met?

The rhetoric was familiar. "We don't like the word strike," said Max Arons, president of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. "We prefer to say 'withdraw our services.' " However one cared to put it, the lines were drawn last week for a possibly fateful labor struggle at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Since he was appointed executive director a year ago, Anthony A. Bliss, 62, has been negotiating with the 14 artistic and craft unions at the Met over new contracts. All have been performing since the summer under contract extensions that expire on New Year's Day. The musicians now say they will not agree to another extension but will withdraw their services.

Perhaps the truest measure of the dilemma is that one can so readily sympathize with both sides. The Met, headed for another $9 or $10 million deficit this year, is in its worst financial trouble ever. Bliss, a Wall Street lawyer and president of the Met board from 1956 to 1967, was chosen as executive director to lead the company out of that morass. He has made it clear that his way will involve considerable retrenchment.

He cannot, of course, cut his work force by 10% or more, as New York City has done. A major orchestra operates at full strength or not at all. Bliss's latest proposal called for seven weeks' less work and a two-year contract offering no raise in salary the first year and a 5% increase the second year. With that offer, Local 802 began thinking strike.

The musicians' shock is understandable, and not all of it has to do with the rising cost of living. The Met orchestra is an excellent, overworked ensemble that is highly conscious of its standing. A cut in annual income would be a humiliation that no comparable orchestra has yet had to accept. Worse, recent contract settlements in Detroit, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., gained musicians pay raises of $95 over three years, although the first two were achieved only after costly strikes. The current weekly minimum salary for Met musicians is $385, about the same as at the New York Philharmonic. But with the proposed 44-week year, a Met player would make $3,000 less a year.

When Bliss says, "Frankly, we don't have enough to offer the union members what they feel is essential," he is understating the case. In fact, the musicians do not dispute him. Both sides agree that outside help is the only true, long-range solution to the Met's problems. A six-month New York repertory season with four or five new productions presents vast problems. But most of the Met's ills are not that different from those of other opera houses--just bigger. The Met spends more per year ($3.8 million) on the maintenance of the house than the Seattle Opera does on everything. The Met has been able to raise 5% of its $27.6 million annual budget from governmental sources and another 26% from individuals, corporations and foundations, but this is still not enough. Says Bliss: "We are trying to survive the critical few years ahead in order to build more corporate and government support."

Strike a Blow. Survive is the key word. The irony is that the Met is selling tickets this season at an encouraging clip. Subscriptions are up from 55% to 61% of the house, and nightly capacity is 95% (10% more than a year ago). A new marketing campaign seems largely responsible. Since last spring, Met ads have called on prospective patrons to "strike a blow for civilization." This fall the company introduced the Met Sampler--minisubscriptions aimed at the 35-and-under crowd, offering orchestra tickets to three operas, free librettos and a backstage tour, all for $30.

A strike would not only destroy that community gain but make it difficult for the Met to negotiate for the future artistic excellence it badly needs. The season so far has been at best mediocre, in part because top conductors and singers have wearied of the Met's haphazard planning in recent years.

Obviously, neither management nor the unions would enjoy a strike. But both sides seem to feel that a darkened Met would dramatize the dilemma to the advantage of each. They are assuming, of course, that somehow, somewhere, help will be found. These days, that is a dangerous assumption.

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