Metropolitan Opera Guild to Streamline Operations, Citing "Economic Headwinds"

The independent organization, which has been running since 1935, will be enfolded into the Metropolitan Opera to preserve some of its operations

The Metropolitan Opera Guild — a not-for-profit organization that is independent of the Metropolitan Opera — recently announced that in response to economic difficulties, it will scale back its operations. Some of the Guild's offerings will cease entirely, while others will be absorbed into the Metropolitan Opera so that they can be preserved.

The Guild's largest educational operation, a dress rehearsal program that brings 12,000 schoolchildren to see performances at the Met each year, will be absorbed by the Met itself to continue this important work in perpetuity.

In addition, responsibility for the Guild's monthly magazine, Opera News, will be passed over to the UK-based Opera magazine from December 2023.

Many of the Guild's other offerings, such as the annual fall luncheon and its spring Opera News Awards, will cease completely, and the organization as a whole will be enfolded into the Metropolitan Opera.

Twenty jobs at the Guild are on the chopping block, and these employees will be offered severance packages — though it is hoped that some of them will be afforded equivalent jobs at the Met.

“Ever since its formation by Mrs. August Belmont in 1935, the Metropolitan Opera Guild has served the cause of American opera and the Met," said Winthrop Rutherfurd, Jr. and Richard J. Miller, Jr., the Guild’s Chairman and President.

"We’re very proud of the Guild’s long record as an educator and supporter of opera in this country. We greatly appreciate the valuable efforts of our employees over the years, but it is no longer economically viable for us to continue in our current form."

"While this chapter of the Guild is coming to a close, we’re happy that Opera News will continue as an independent voice, albeit in a different format under the editorial leadership of Opera magazine, and we’re pleased that the Guild name will live on with our longstanding student dress-rehearsal program, which has introduced generations of school children to our art form."