"The opening-night gala for the Metropolitan Opera's new season may be the last place you would expect to find yet another sign that Zohran Mamdani is on a glide path to City Hall. The audience is older, more affluent, and, one can safely speculate, less socialist than most audiences for the performing arts in New York. It is the very definition of well-heeled uptown Manhattan's political and cultural status quo. Yet it turns out that even at the Met - yes, the Met, where Franco Zeffirelli's warhorse productions of La Bohème and Turandot are both in repertory this season - there are New Yorkers clamoring for change."
"Once he finished, an unexpected player popped out of the wings: Chuck Schumer, the most powerful Democrat in Washington and the most durable lion of Democratic politics in New York. Why was he there? Not for the opera. He breezed on- and offstage with the casual affect of someone dropping by before a round of pickleball. He had come to pander to the mishpocheh on the safe turf of the Upper West Side."
At the Metropolitan Opera opening-night gala, an affluent and older audience signaled unexpected political restlessness linked to Zohran Mamdani's rising profile. Peter Gelb delivered a forceful defense of artistic freedom and received a standing ovation. Senator Chuck Schumer followed with similar remarks, but a heckler shouted for action and boos drowned out much of his appearance. The audience reaction targeted the messenger rather than the message, reflecting frustration with established politicians despite agreement on defending artistic freedom. The episode underscored tensions between New York's cultural elite and political figures and suggested appetite for change within traditional institutions.
Read at Intelligencer
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