Ringing in its 125th anniversary season, the Metropolitan
Opera is known world-wide as the premier venue for the world's greatest voices
and as the vibrant home for the most talented artists of our day. The most
widely heard opera company in the world, the Met was founded in 1883. The first
Metropolitan Opera House was built on Broadway and 39th Street by a group of
wealthy businessmen; decades later, the Met joined with other institutions to
form the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and a new home became
possible. The new, state-of-the-art facilities opened at Lincoln Center in
1966, where dozens of U.S. and world premieres have since been staged by the
most imaginative directors in the industry, among them Puccini's La Fanciulla del West and
Philip Glass's The Voyage.
Today, ticket holders total 800,000 per season, but millions
more experience the Met through radio and video broadcasts. The Met now
transmits operas live in high definition to movie theaters around the world, taking
advantage of new media to broaden the reach of a centuries-old art form. The
Metropolitan Opera House continues to stage more than two hundred performances
each season.
In celebration of its 125 years, the Met has polished the
interior of the opera house, renovated its gift shop, and organized a series of
special performances. The anniversary was also commemorated with a series of
six Moleskine notebooks, used as company gifts and made available for purchase
for Met Opera fans. Three pocket-sized books (a sketchbook, ruled notebook and
music notebook) and three large books (a sketchbook, ruled notebook and memo
pockets) were specially designed with the Met's signature curtain as
inspiration. The curtain pattern is blind debossed on each cover, and the
paperbands feature various photographs of it. An explanation of the object's
history is silkscreened inside: "the Met's famed gold curtain, woven in
pure silk by Scalamandré, echoes the design of the Met proscenium, and has over
the years become one of the most recognizable design elements of the opera
house."
