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NEW YORK (AP) — Soprano Anna Netrebko withdrew from her future engagements at the Metropolitan Opera, costing the company one of its top singers and best box-office draws. “It is a great artistic loss for the Met and for opera,” Met General Manager Peter Gelb said in a statement Thursday. “Anna is one of the greatest singers in Met history, but with Putin killing innocent victims in Ukraine, there was no way forward.”

Legendary Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine molested an Illinois teenager from the time he was 15 years old, sexual abuse that lasted for years and led the alleged victim to the brink of suicide, according to a police report obtained by The Post. The alleged victim came forward to the Lake Forest, Ill. Police Department in October 2016 to detail the molestation, including times when Levine would masturbate in front of him and kiss his p*n*s, according to the report. The alleged victim informed a former Met Opera board member of the alleged abuse in 2016 and she alerted the...

An audience member at the Metropolitan Opera threw a white powdery substance into the orchestra pit on Saturday during an intermission of the afternoon performance of Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell,” officials said, prompting the company to cancel the rest of the show and that night’s performance of “L’Italiana in Algeri” while the police investigated.

At the Metropolitan Opera’s first performance of John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer” on Monday night, men and women in evening attire walked through a maze of police barricades, while protesters shouted “Shame!” and “Terror is not art!” One demonstrator held aloft a white handkerchief splattered with red. Others, in wheelchairs set up for the occasion, lined Columbus Avenue. Political figures, including former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, joined a rally, several hundred strong at Lincoln Center, to denounce an opera that has become the object of a charged debate about art, anti-Semitism and politics. But after months of escalating protests,...

Mozart’s lighthearted opera The Abduction from the Seraglio does not call for a prostitute’s nipples to be sliced off and presented to the lead soprano. Nor does it include masturbation, urination as foreplay, or forced oral sex. Europe’s new breed of opera directors, however, know better than Mozart what an opera should contain. So not only does the Abduction at Berlin’s Komische Oper feature the aforementioned activities; it also replaces Mozart’s graceful ending with a Quentin Tarantino–esque bloodbath and the promise of future perversion. Welcome to Regietheater (German for “director’s theater”), the style of opera direction now prevalent in Europe....

March 12, 2006 Injury Will Sideline Metropolitan Opera's Director for Weeks By DANIEL J. WAKIN James Levine, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, needs shoulder surgery and has been forced to pull out of the rest of the season, the Met said yesterday, a sharp blow that sent it scrambling for replacements. Mr. Levine, who also leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra, fell onstage at Symphony Hall in Boston on March 1 and tore the rotator cuff of his right shoulder. He is expected to have surgery to repair it on March 20. That is the opening night of a...

NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Opera announced Thursday [September 8] that the Pennsylvania-based home builder Toll Brothers will be the new corporate sponsor for its Saturday live radio broadcasts, an institution since 1931. The broadcasts were thrown into jeopardy in 2003 when sponsor ChevronTexaco announced it was withdrawing its support. Last season's broadcasts were sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation and the Vincent A. Stabile Foundation, which Volpe said would continue to provide support. The broadcasts cost about $6 million a season. Volpe did not say what part of the bill would be paid by Toll Brothers. A fund started by...

<p>May 10, 2002 -- Luciano Pavarotti has confided he is "unlikely" to perform at his much-touted farewell New York opera tomorrow - triggering fears of a Pava-riot at the Met.</p> <p>Aficionados paid up to $1,875 a ticket to see the legendary Pavarotti perform "Tosca" after the Metropolitan Opera dramatically inflated prices on the understanding it would be his final staged opera here.</p>