Saturday, August 18, 2007

Buy, buy, buy

It appears that the great Met Opera box office pileup will be tomorrow, though with all full subscribers getting early single-ticket access, the pickings for certain shows may be limited.

One may notice that Gelb has carved out "Premium" sections at every level except Family Circle, where a "Front" section was separated last season. (To be fair, the Family Circle split maintained the old price for Front and lowered the price for other seats.)

For those wondering what exactly "Premium" means (besides a chance to charge more), I believe the following is correct:

LocationSeats
Orchestra PremiumRows A-T, all center section seats and first two seats to left and right thereof [UPDATE: see below]
Center Parterre PremiumAll boxes, first row
Grand Tier PremiumRow A, center two sections
Dress Circle PremiumRow A, center two sections
Balcony PremiumRow A, center two sections

Note that Orchestra Prime has pretty much been gutted, while the effect above Parterre is fairly minimal -- except, I suppose, to those with longtime front-row subscriptions.

UPDATE (8/19): A commenter notes that Orchestra Premium may just cover the eight seats (two per side per aisle) adjacent to each aisle, in the specified rows.

UPDATE 2 (8/20): Maury braved the pileup and offers an evocative account.

2 comments:

  1. Are you sure about the center orchestra pricing? As far as I can tell, it's the same as last season: "premium" seats are the aisle pairs -- 101/102, 11n/11n+1 on the other aisle (where n=5-8 depending on the row), 1/3 and 2/4) -- and the rest of Rows A-T is still "prime" until you get over to the "orchestra balance" seats on the sides. And the pricing is the same as last season, at least downstairs it is.

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  2. You may be right. It wasn't clear to me what "center aisle" was supposed to mean.

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Absolutely no axe-grinding, please.