Metropolitan Opera Slashes Actors' Pay If They Wear Bras Instead Of Performing Topless

NEW YORK CITY — Less skin means less cash for some performers at the Metropolitan Opera this season. The storied company is paying seven actresses who wear a bra and panties about half as much as others who instead wear pasties and thongs in its revival of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," which opened Sept. 26.

Six of the women are paid $448 per show to appear nearly nude in half of the nine performances, but get just $235 to wear a little more clothing in the remaining shows, according to people familiar with the production.

This is despite the fact that they wore the more modest costume in the past without any difference in pay.

The salary discrepancy came from the opera's general manager, Peter Gelb, in a bid to save money in a time of financial instability, said Deborah Allton-Maher, the associate executive director for the American Guild of Musical Artists that represents most Met performers, including one of the impacted actresses.

"It was quite humiliating and very upsetting for these women," Allton-Maher said.

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The women wear the costumes while playing Venetian prostitutes in the third act of the nearly four-hour opera, also known as "The Tales of Hoffmann." The story follows a German poet through a trio of troubled love affairs. The last performance is on Oct. 28.

The Met first revealed the arrangement to The Wall Street Journal. Tim McKeough, a Met spokesman, told the paper that three of the seven women each night wear pasties — small stickers covering their nipples —while the other four wear more clothing. The move will save "several thousand dollars" over the course of the season, the Journal reported.

McKeough told Patch he declined to comment beyond the contents of that article.

Six of the women wear the pasties for either four or five of the performances and the bras for the rest, one person familiar with the production said. Those who do only four shows in pasties wore them for the final dress rehearsal, the person said. The seventh performer, who is on the Met's staff, decided not to wear the pasties at all.

The Met initially wanted to pay the actresses about $128 to wear the lingerie costumes — giving them a roughly 72 percent pay cut for half the shows, two people familiar with the production said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The Met didn't tell the women of the arrangement until a few weeks before rehearsals and didn't reveal what the lower-cost costume was until after rehearsals began, the people said. The performers pushed for the higher $235 rate as a compromise, which the Met's management did not approve until the night before the show opened, the people said.

The nearly-nude performers can be seen in the video above starting at 34 seconds.

The seven women are among a group of performers known as supernumeraries who don't have speaking or singing parts but sometimes interact closely with the stars of the show. The six who aren't on the Met's staff are not covered by the Met's labor contract with AGMA, though all are members of either that union or its sister union, the Actors Equity Association.

It's typical for performers to get paid differently when their roles have unique demands, such as nudity or acrobatics, Allton-Maher said. But the pay for these roles didn't change in 2009 and 2015, when the women wore the bras-and-panties costume for performances that were broadcast in movie theaters across the country.

"There is a basis for an argument there that, well, you paid it before, and you paid it twice before — not just once, but twice," Allton-Maher said. "You've established a precedent where just changing from pasties to a bra does not qualify for changing a fee based on nudity."

No matter what costume they're wearing, the women perform complex movements in four-inch heels that follow opera music sung in French, one person familiar with the production said.

"The pay cut suggests that the value of the actresses' work is negligible, and the only thing that makes it valuable is the nudity," that person said.

The ordeal comes amid financial struggles at the Met Opera, the nation's largest performing arts organization, as it prepares to negotiate new contracts with its labor unions next year. It ended eight of the 10 years from 2006 to 2015 with a budget deficit, according to its most recent annual report.

Management offered buyouts to 21 administrative employees as the season opened last month after closing the last fiscal year with another small deficit, The New York Times reported. Managers have also cut the number of rehearsals and costume spending to save money, Allton-Maher said.

"Where there is the ability to cut corners, they're cutting them," Allton-Maher said.

Lead image via Pixabay