Met Opera attendance dropped in spring as tourism fell, coinciding with immigration crackdown

People appear in Josie Robertson Plaza in front of The Metropolitan Opera house at Lincoln Center in New York on March 12, 2020. . (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)

NEW YORK — Metropolitan Opera season attendance dropped slightly following the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that coincided with a decrease in tourists to New York.

The Met sold 72% of capacity, matching 2023-24 and down from its 75% projection.

“We were on track to continue to improve,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said Friday. “We were disappointed by the sales in the last two months of the season — our projections were much higher and I attribute the fact that we didn’t achieve our sales goals to a significant drop in tourism."

New York City Tourism & Conventions last month reduced its 2025 international visitor projection by 17%, the Met said.

International buyers accounted for 11% of sales, down from the Met’s projection of 16% and from about 20% before the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s unfortunate, but this is the times in which we live,” Gelb said.

The Met said factoring ticket discounts, it realized 60% of potential income, down from 64% in 2023-24 but up from 57% in 2022–23.

“We were able to sell an equal amount of tickets the last year, but there were more discounted tickets,” Gelb said. “This really was the result of the last two months of the season.”

There were 76,000 new ticket buyers, a drop from 85,000 in 2023-24, and the average age of single ticket buyers was 44, the same as in the previous season and a drop from 50 before the pandemic. Subscriptions accounted for just 7% of ticket sales, down from 12-15% before the pandemic,

Gelb said economic uncertainty impacted sales for next season.

“The stock market jumping up and down made people feel insecure,” he said. “In one week we saw an enormous decline in our advance for next season. Then it picked up again.”

Met music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin earned $2,045,038 in the year end last July 31, up from $1,307,583, in the previous fiscal year, according to the company’s tax return released Friday. Gelb earned $1,395,216, roughly the same as his $1,379,032 in 2022-23,and he also accrued $798,205 listed as retirement or deferred compensation.

Assets declined by about $40 million to $467 million, primarily because of an endowment draw following the pandemic.

Among individual productions last season, the highest percentage of tickets sold were for the English-language version of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and a new staging of Verdi’s “Aida,” both at 82%, followed by the company premiere of Jake Heggie’s “Moby-Dick” at 81%

Other new productions included Strauss’ “Salome” (74%), John Adams’ “Antony and Cleopatra” (65%), Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar” (61%) and Jeanine Tesori’s “Grounded” (50%).

The best-selling revivals were Puccini’s “Tosca” (78%), Tchaikovsky’s “Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades)” and Puccini’s La Bohème (77% each), Beethoven’s “Fidelio” and Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” (76% each) and Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” (71%).

Lagging were Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (68%0, Verdi’s “Rigoletto” (64%), Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” and the German-language version of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” (62% each) and Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” (59%).

Ronald Blum, The Associated Press