http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/arts/music/met-asks-stars-to-share-fiscal-pain-.html 2014-11-13 00:33:44 Met Asks Stars to Share Fiscal Pain The Metropolitan Opera is asking its soloists, including some of its best-known stars, to voluntarily reduce their pay by as much as 7 percent to match the salary cuts other performers agreed to. === The The Met’s general manager, “I hope you will join your colleagues in helping the Met stay strong in the coming seasons,” Mr. Gelb wrote in the letter, which is being sent to singers, conductors, directors, designers and choreographers. “However, whatever you ultimately decide, the decision is entirely yours to make.” He added, “I want to assure you that whatever your decision it will have no bearing whatsoever on your future work at the Met, since all casting decisions will be made solely on the basis of our artistic judgment.” The voluntary cuts, which are being sought from the remainder of the current season through 2017-18, are the latest effort by the Met to reduce its costs at a time when its box office has been After contentious labor talks last summer, In recent seasons, the top fee an artist could make at the Met has been $17,000 a performance; with a 7 percent reduction, that would come to $15,810. The Met asked artists voluntarily to reduce their fees a few seasons ago during the recession. Mr. Gelb said in an interview that while that earlier request had met with “some success,” he believed that the current request would get a more sympathetic hearing, now that the Met’s unionized workers have agreed to cuts, and the company’s fiscal challenges are more widely known. “It’s an attempt to enlist the participation of the entire Met artistic community in our efforts to cut costs,” he said. In past decades, stars have agreed to accept less pay to help the Met. The tenor Enrico Caruso, a huge box office draw and the company’s biggest star in the early 20th century, voluntarily capped his Met fee at $2,500 a performance, which was less than he could have earned at some other houses. (Of course, his fees would be worth many times that in today’s dollars, and would exceed the top fees paid today.) And during