Peter Gelb

Career

Early career

While in high school, Gelb began his association with the Metropolitan Opera as an usher. At age 17, Gelb began his career in classical music as an office boy to impresario Sol Hurok.

Gelb managed the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 1979 China tour. The following year Gelb became Vladimir Horowitz's manager. Gelb assisted the pianist in the revival of his performing career, and managed his return to Russia in 1986.

In 1982, Gelb founded, and was president of, CAMI Video, a division of Columbia Artists Management. In this capacity, for six years he was executive producer of "The Metropolitan Opera Presents", the Met's series of televised opera broadcasts. Gelb produced 25 televised productions for the Met.

Sony Classical

Gelb was president of Sony Classical Records from 1995 to 2006. Gelb pursued a strategy of emphasizing crossover music over mainstream classical repertoire. Examples include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who was encouraged to record Americana, including an album with fiddler and composer Mark O'Connor and double-bassist and composer Edgar Meyer, Appalachia Waltz; electronic composer Vangelis, who recorded the choral symphony Mythodea; and Charlotte Church, a pop artist who started her career as a classical singer.

Metropolitan Opera

Gelb became the 16th General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, taking over from Joseph Volpe, on August 1, 2006. He launched his tenure with several new productions, including Madama Butterfly directed by Anthony Minghella; The Barber of Seville by Bartlett Sher; and Tan Dun's new opera The First Emperor directed by Zhang Yimou.

Gelb launched a number of new ventures for the Met, such as taking advantage of new media technology to distribute Met performances to a wider global audience. This became The Met: Live in HD series, the Met becoming the first performing arts company to offer live high-definition broadcasts of its operas to cinemas and other performing arts centers in many countries of the world. The series gained both a Peabody and an Emmy Award. Several digitally recorded performances were later offered on public television stations and released on DVDs for purchase.

During his tenure at the Met, Gelb has spearheaded the production of contemporary works, including the staging of two of John Adams's operas, Doctor Atomic and Nixon in China, with a third Adams opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, premiering in October 2014. His other ideas have included an annual "family-oriented" presentation at Christmas time, and collaborations with Lincoln Center Theater to develop new musical works with musicians such as Wynton Marsalis, Rachel Portman, and Rufus Wainwright. In January 2007 Gelb announced a commission for a new opera from Osvaldo Golijov, tentatively scheduled for the 2010-11 season. However, following the death in 2008 of Anthony Minghella who was to have written the libretto, the premiere was postponed to 2018.

Gelb, whose contract was extended in November 2019 until 2027, has taken measures to increase ticket sales, suspending performances in February when sales are slowest, extending the season until June, and adding Sunday matinees. The Met also instituted Fridays under 40, a program offering discounted tickets to younger audience members.

The Met also raised the number of new productions, including those of recent operas and works written for the Met. In 2021-22, in collaboration with Met Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin, he programmed three contemporary works and seven new productions in 2022-23.

Gelb has also diversified casts and staff at the Met. Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which opened the 2021-22 season, was the first work on the Met stage by a Black composer and featured the Met’s first Black director, Camille A. Brown (who co-directed with James Robinson). X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X by Anthony Davis will receive a new production in the fall of 2023. Mr. Gelb also named three composers of color to its commissioning program: Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery, and Joel Thomson. In 2021, he appointed Marcia Sells as the Met’s first chief diversity officer. Five women conductors took the podium in 2021-22, the most ever in a Met season.

Metropolitan Opera and the pandemic

In 2020, while live performances were on hiatus due to the pandemic, Gelb organized the start of Nightly Met Opera Streams, free online presentations of archival performances. The program lasted 16 months, with over 20 million views.

In July 2020, The Met launched the Met Stars Live in Concert initiative, a pay-per-view service.

Metropolitan Opera and Ukraine

Under Mr. Gelb’s leadership, the Metropolitan Opera acted to express solidarity with Ukraine over the Russian invasion. Within days of the attack, the Met Opera and chorus sang the Ukrainian national anthem ahead of a regularly scheduled performance. Two weeks later, the Met organized a benefit concert on behalf of Ukraine. Mr. Gelb, in cooperation with the Polish National Opera, organized the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, which was made up of Ukrainian musicians inside and outside of the country.

The orchestra, led by Mr. Gelb’s wife, the conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, toured during the summer of 2022, traveling to 12 cities in Europe and the United States as an expression of support for Ukraine and to raise money for its people. The Met continues to present Russian works and engage Russian singers, performing Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” in the spring of 2022 and Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” in the fall of 2023.