Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, Mr. Volpe, the son of a clothing manufacturer and a schoolteacher, came to the Met at age 24 to work backstage. and rose steadily, from stagehand to master carpenter to technical director to assistant manager, and ultimately to GM.
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Thanks to Tony Vecchione
MET CHIEF TO STEP DOWN AFTER LONG OPERATIC CAREER

New York Times
By Robin Pogrebin
February 10, 2004

Joseph Volpe, who worked his way up from apprentice carpenter to become general manager and in many ways the public face of the Metropolitan Opera, says he will retire in August 2006, capping more than 40 colorful years with the company.

Mr. Volpe, 64, informed the Met's full board of his decision yesterday and said he would announce it officially today.

Mr. Volpe granted an interview on Saturday about his decision on the condition that the news not be made public until he had notified the board. He said he had been preparing to step down for some time. The workload and the demands of attending at least four performances a week had become taxing, he said.

"This is a young man's job," he said. "I live a block away; I'm here night and day. The job is the focus of your life. No matter where you are, there's always some problem."

Over 14 years, Mr. Volpe's leadership of the Met has often been as operatic as its stage productions. He dismissed the soprano Kathleen Battle in 1994, citing "unprofessional actions." He pulled out of Lincoln Center's ambitious redevelopment project in 2001, announcing that the Met would proceed with renovations on its own, then rejoined the effort two months later after he was given a larger say. He introduced electronic subtitles on the backs of seats. He pursued wealthy donors like Alberto Vilar, and he earned a reputation for using hard-driving tactics with unions over contracts.

With Mr. Volpe's decision to retire, the top posts at two major performing arts institutions in New York are left open, given the death last month of Robert J. Harth, the artistic and executive director at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Volpe is announcing his departure at a time when the Met has struggled with $10 million deficits for two years in a row. The Met has also clashed with Lincoln Center again, this time over a major redesign of the center's main artery, on West 65th Street.

But Mr. Volpe said his decision to retire had nothing to do with the opera's recent financial struggles or his disagreements over the redevelopment. Indeed, he said that before he left he expected the 65th Street plans to be resolved by the organizations involved, including the New York Philharmonic and the Juilliard School. "Frankly," he said, "we have not been collaborating well."

Asked why he would wait until 2006 to leave, Mr. Volpe said he had agreed to complete the Met's negotiations with its union employees — including chorus members, stagehands and orchestra — whose contracts expire over the next two years.

Bruce Crawford, the chairman of Lincoln Center and a former general manager of the Met, said yesterday that he was not surprised by Mr. Volpe's decision to retire. "He and I may not agree on some redevelopment issues, but I have nothing but respect for what he's done at the Met," Mr. Crawford said.

Mr. Crawford, who had recommended Mr. Volpe for the post, said the job would not be easy to fill. "This is the biggest opera theater in the world," he said. "It's a large budget and a very complicated operation." The Met's search for a successor is expected to be international.

Mr. Volpe said there was no obvious successor. "I have not been grooming one," he said. "Maybe it can't be a one-man band. With what I do, maybe it should be split up into two different areas. Of course, with my personality, that doesn't work."

The Met has been very much a one-man band under Mr. Volpe, recognizable by his scraggly beard and big eyeglasses. He has had a strong hand in the Met's programming choices, collaborating closely with the artistic director, James Levine. He said he was proud of his accomplishments, having overseen 65 new productions as well as 19 Met premieres.

Since 2002, Mr. Volpe has cut the Met's budget to $193 million from $200 million by reducing expenses. He said that for the first time in recent history, the Met would not raise prices next season.

Mr. Volpe also inaugurated consumer-friendly services like automated ticket sales, varied subscription packages and a more liberal ticket exchange policy.

More recently, Mr. Volpe introduced the opera's first midseason break, which is to start with the 2004-05 schedule and will allow the Met to suspend performances during the typically fallow winter months and extend them into the more profitable spring.

"Something changed — it could be 9/11, could be the economy, could be home entertainment, DVD's," Mr. Volpe said. "We need to give patrons more. People are going out less, and their other concern is money."

Even as he has earned respect for his maverick approach, Mr. Volpe has also become famous for his temper. In a posthumously published diary, "The Honorable Beast" (Routledge, 1993), John Dexter, the Met's director of productions until 1981, wrote: "It's silly to go on playing Trotsky to Volpe's Stalin."

The director Franco Zeffirelli, who had periodically battled Mr. Volpe over set designs, described him in 1995 as: "gentle and powerful, loyal, compassionate and often horrendous."

Mr. Volpe said he simply had high standards. "If people work with me on a day-to-day basis, they find me very easy," he said. "That's not to say I'm not demanding and I don't stand up for what I believe in."

Some have called Mr. Volpe's opposition to aspects of Lincoln Center's redevelopment obstructionist; he — along with Beverly Sills, Lincoln Center's former chairwoman and now chairwoman of the Met — successfully opposed the idea of building a Frank Gehry-designed glass dome over the plaza and a proposal to construct a new theater for the New York City Opera in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center.

Mr. Volpe said he believed the center needed to be refurbished, but not radically. "It's personal in addition to business," he said. "I live in the neighborhood. I'm a Westsider."

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, Mr. Volpe, the son of a clothing manufacturer and a schoolteacher, came to the Met at age 24 to work backstage. Opera quickly worked its way under his skin. "The more you're around it, the more you love it," he said. What followed was a steady rise, from stagehand to master carpenter to technical director to assistant manager — always, Mr. Volpe said, with an unwavering eye on the prize.

"Little by little, I built up this expertise," he said, "so by the time I became assistant manager, I was already running the theater."

Mr. Volpe was not an obvious candidate for the job of general manager, given the aristocratic tradition established by Sir Rudolph Bing, one of his early predecessors; in fact, the Met board initially rejected the idea of appointing him and chose Hugh Southern instead, a former administrator at the National Endowment for the Arts, who lasted a mere seven months before being dismissed for what the board considered poor management.

Nevertheless, the board's subsequent vote for Mr. Volpe — who took office in 1990 — was not unanimous; some trustees were concerned that he was not refined enough for the job. To be sure, Mr. Volpe was initially more comfortable in coveralls than in a tuxedo. But he quickly grew into the stature of the role.

Mr. Volpe said he looked forward to enjoying the opera as a spectator. And while he plans to spend more time on his sailboat, he said, he does not expect to simply lie on a beach and be happy. "I wouldn't survive; I couldn't breathe," he said. "I need challenges. I want to face problems and deal with them."

In particular, Mr. Volpe said, he would like to devote his energies to a cause like improving New York City's schools.

The Lincoln Center redevelopment could also be among his pursuits. "I would love for the board to say to me, `Joe, Why don't you, as a volunteer, stay involved with the redevelopment?' " he said. "I would do that for no money."

Met Chief to Step Down After Operatic Career
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/arts/music/
10VOLP.html?ex=1077421253&ei=1&en=46d97dcdbf3edf91