Peter Gelb

Who are your favorite New Yorkers?
Peter Gelb: People who love opera, including the members of my family.

What’s the biggest thing that’s happened to the city in the past 13 years?
Peter Gelb: Obviously besides 9/11, it’s the revival of various neighborhoods, particularly lower Manhattan and Times Square, what’s going on in Harlem and that Dumbo area under the Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg, various parts of Queens.

What’s your favorite place or thing in New York?
Peter Gelb: A romantic walk across Central Park after a snowfall.

What’s your personal favorite moment in New York? Where were you, and what was happening?
Peter Gelb: This may sound corny, but it’s very New York: Both of my children were born in New York Hospital, and I was there for both their births. And, I would say, if there was a spot where I knew I was falling in love, it was on the plaza at Lincoln Center, when I spied my wife-to-be leaving Juilliard.

What’s the future of New York? What are your hopes, and what needs to happen?
Peter Gelb: I don’t have a good answer for that. Basically, it’s great if it doesn’t get blown up by terrorists or there isn’t an economic disaster, or global warming doesn’t raise the Hudson River. My hope is that New Yorkers think on a grand scale, like they did when the modern New York was being imagined. Somebody pointed out to me that the Brooklyn Bridge and the old Met both began around the same time, and you think about those kinds of amazing achievements; it would be wonderful if that kind of innovative, imaginative thinking is applied to the New York of the future.

All I can think of now is the new Freedom Tower being potentially mired for the next 11 years in bureaucratic red tape.
Peter Gelb: You know, the Empire State Building was built in one year. When you think about how you can’t get a bathroom remodeled in a year, that’s pretty amazing.

If you could have a drink with anyone else on this list, who would it be?
Peter Gelb: Joe Torre.

What does Time Out mean to you?
Peter Gelb: It’s an invaluable guide to entertainment. It helps inform audiences… about the Met. [Laughs] And other great cultural offerings.

Complete the sentence: New York is…
Peter Gelb: …the most exciting, romantic, greatest city in the world.

We hear a lot lately about New York being on the verge of becoming the opera capital of the world. What makes this city so friendly to opera?
Peter Gelb: Without sounding too boastful, I think it has to do with the combined impact of all of the artistic and public actions that we’ve been taking to make opera available to the largest possible audience without artistic compromise. And certainly, our transmissions into movie theaters—between 28 and 30 countries around the world are carrying our live transmissions. So that has returned the Met to its former standing as the leader of opera around the world.

Next: Dick Zigun >

The New York 40: