US-focused Opera News, to cease publication in November after 87 years
Opera News will print its final issue in November and be incorporated into Britain-based Opera magazine
NEW YORK — Opera News, an 87-year-old publication focused on the Metropolitan Opera and spotlighting the art form in the U.S., will print its final issue in November and be incorporated into Britain-based Opera magazine.
The Met announced Tuesday that the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a separate company formed in 1935 by Eleanor Belmont to aid the opera house, will scale back operations and become a supporting organization of the Met. The opera company will take over the education program that allows about 12,000 school children each year to attend dress rehearsals.
Opera News has a 43,000 circulation, including 32,000 in print and 11,000 digital. It is distributed to 28,000 Guild members and has an additional 9,000 paid subscribers. After publishing biweekly during the opera season since 1940, Opera News added monthly summer editions in 1972 and switched to a year-round monthly schedule in 2008.
“It really is the result of several years of declining economic fortunes,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said. “What they’re suffering is what many non-profits have been suffering, which is a situation where the earned revenues and donations are not enough to keep up with the expenses.”
Eleanor Belmont, a philanthropist married to financier August Belmont Jr., founded the guild to increase public support for the Met at a time the company's finances were struggling during the Great Depression.
The guild had revenue of $3.2 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, a drop from $4 million in the prior year. That was down from $11.9 million in the year ending June 30, 2019, the last before the coronavirus pandemic.
The Met
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