I attended the Young Associates Preview Party at the Metropolitan Opera a few weeks ago - I am not a Young Associate but I get their emails for their events open to non-members, it happened to be an evening I'd be in town, it would feature singers from the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and I've always enjoyed more events with up-and-coming singers than big stars (a reason why I've enjoyed Opera Philadelphia so much in recent years), so I thought, why not.
In the end I have mixed feelings about the preview party. As a party, it was great, with excellent food, open bar and no less than Peter Gelb giving introductory remarks before two young singers alternated singing a few arias. The party didn't really preview anything, since no mention was made (at least that I can recall) about the upcoming season. The ambiance music before the musical program was a cross between club music and elevator music - not opera. The event, apparently heavily advertised to non-opera young New Yorkers, drew crowds more interested in the food than in the music. Of the two singers, the one who sang easy crowd-pleasers drew loud appreciative whistles, while her colleague, who raised the bar by singing difficult pieces (such as the equivalent of The Little Mermaid in Czech, whose name eludes me, and yes she sang in Czech), drew polite but lukewarm applause by an audience who clearly had little clue how good she was. Her name is Clarissa Lyons, and she was truly phenomenal. Remember that name!
The most amusing moment at the party came when I realized that I was the only woman in pants. This was an early-evening "party", from 7pm to 9pm if I recall correctly, and every other woman was in skirts or dress and stilettos (some had come with their stilettos in their purse and argued with the security guard when he didn't let them in early into the opera house to take off their flats and put their pretty shoes on). My pants were nice, mind you - appropriate for a business party or a night at the opera - but, well, they were not a dress. In addition, I was wearing heeled booties rather than stilettos, a long tunic and an unusually long scarf, which also did not seem to be something the crowd of young wealthy New Yorkers was used to seeing in this context, although I liked that my outfit was both sophisticated and unconventional. I've never been someone who liked abiding by other people's ideas of what I'm supposed to wear, what can I say. I'll respect the spirit of the rules (dress up for the party) but not the norm (wear a socialite's outfit). And I have a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, but after the looks I got that evening, I've never felt I've done something more pioneering than wearing pants at the Met's Young Associates Preview Party. I'm not sure how I'm going to top that! Maybe next year I should bring a book.
So I have mixed feelings because I'm not sure how this event furthered the Metropolitan Opera's long-term goal of drawing more youngish people to opera. It was a great party, and the Met got plenty of business cards from people who entered a raffle with several over-the-top prizes (I don't think they had anything to do with the Met itself, but consisted of goods donated by the sponsors), and thus the contact information of many potential attendees to send emails to. But nothing happened at the party that would really make people want to buy a ticket for a forthcoming opera. (Using the event to gather names of potential attendees to one of the "Fridays Under 40" cocktails+performances is a good idea but once you have seen the sort of crowd attracted by the preview party, you might think twice about going to the "Under 40" event, if you love opera.)
I suppose that people don't need to attend opera to give to the Met (the real goal of the party might be to cultivate future potential donors rather than attendees) but hoping to achieve that goal without promoting the season does seem curious to me. There were small brochures about the season on a table and that was about it. No video of highlights, no handout about what - if anything - made the season special and a must-attend. The names of the Lindemann artists weren't even provided in writing anywhere, so that I had to walk up Lyons afterward and ask her to repeat her name for me because it was so obvious she is enormously talented and has a wonderful career ahead of her. But, plenty of alcohol and plenty of food. And the opportunity to stand six feet away from Peter Gelb, which at least is something.
I'll leave you with a 60-second video of this season's highlights that I found on the MetOpera YouTube channel. Enjoy - and buy tickets!
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