A bigger glass lobby stretching into Lincoln Center’s plaza. Operas on Sunday. And perhaps, following the lead of its neighboring theaters recently renamed for David Geffen and David H. Koch, slapping another wealthy donor’s name on the storied Metropolitan Opera House.

修建一个延伸至林肯中心(Lincoln Center)广场的更大的玻璃大堂。周日也安排歌剧演出。也许会效仿周围的剧院——它们最近分别以戴维·格芬(David Geffen)和戴维·H·科克(David H. Koch)命名——把另一位富有捐款人的名字刻在历史悠久的大都会歌剧院(Metropolitan Opera House)的墙上。

These ideas, disclosed by Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, in an interview as he prepared to begin his 10th season at the helm of the company, suggest a renewed focus on drawing new audiences and raising desperately needed money for the opera, where attendance has struggled. If Mr. Gelb’s first decade was notable for technological innovations that broadened the Met’s reach outward — his popular “Live in HD” simulcasts of operas at cinemas reached 2.6 million people last season — much of what he would like to do in the coming seasons looks inward.

大都会歌剧院的总经理彼得·盖尔布(Peter Gelb)在采访中透露了上述想法。他即将开始第十季对该剧院的掌管。他说，他将把重点转向吸引新观众，为歌剧院筹集急需的资金。剧院此前的上座率不够理想。如果说盖尔布在大都会歌剧院第一个十年最重要的贡献是技术革新，扩大歌剧院外部的影响范围——上一季，他组织了Live in HD活动，同时在多家影院播放歌剧，很受欢迎，有260万观众观看了演出——那么，未来几季他主要想做的事有关于内部。

“The last thing that we can do is sit idly by,” Mr. Gelb said during the interview in his office. “We have to keep poking the tires and looking at new ways of approaching the art itself in the form of new productions and commissions, and also looking at the physical plant of the Met, and how we perform. We’re looking at everything.”

“我们最不该无所事事，”盖尔布在自己的办公室接受采访时说，“我们必须不断检查，寻找展示艺术的新方法，推出新剧目或委托作品，同时察看大都会歌剧院的设施和效益。我们在察看一切。”

After several years of serious fiscal challenges, the Met’s recent cost-cutting — including from its artists and its workers, who agreed to their first pay cuts in decades last year after a series of bitter labor negotiations — is beginning to bear fruit. The company ended last season with a surplus of $1 million, according to preliminary financial results released on Wednesday; that was a marked improvement from the prior season, when it ran a $22 million deficit, its most serious in decades. And Mr. Gelb said that the Met had raised the first $100 million of a five-year, $600 million fund-raising drive aimed at doubling its endowment, supporting operations and paying for new capital projects, including the hoped-for renovation and expansion of its lobby.

经过几年严重的财务危机后，大都会歌剧院近期节省开支的举措初见成效。去年，经过一系列痛苦的劳资谈判，艺术家和工作人员几十年来首次同意降低工资。据周三（9月9日）公布的初步财务报告，上一季该剧院获得了100万美元的盈余。与之前一季相比，这是极大的进步。之前一季，它亏损了2200万美元，是几十年来亏损最严重的一季。盖尔布说，大都会歌剧院筹集到了第一个一亿美元的捐款。这是目标为六亿美元的五年筹款计划的第一步，意在使资助额翻倍，以支持运营，支付新的资金项目，包括期望中的对大堂的整修和扩展。

But there was worrisome news on the attendance front: The Met said it had earned only 69 percent of its potential box-office revenue last season, down from 73.2 percent the previous season. That is one reason Mr. Gelb said he would like to add at least some performances on Sundays, initially on a trial basis. Met officials believe it would be the first time they have presented fully staged operas on Sundays. Other major opera houses and Broadway theaters hold Sunday performances, and Mr. Gelb said that the Met had seen its Friday and Saturday productions outsell weeknights in recent years as audience habits have changed.

但是在上座率方面有一些令人担忧的消息：大都会歌剧院称，上一季，它仅获得潜在票房收入的69%，比之前一季的73.2%有所下降。所以，盖尔布说他想在周日先试验性地增加一些演出。大都会歌剧院的官员们说，这将是他们首次在周日推出完整的歌剧。其他主要的歌剧院和百老汇的剧院都在周日安排演出。盖尔布说，大都会歌剧院发现，近些年，周五和周六的演出比平常的演出更卖座，因为观众的习惯改变了。

“If you’re going to experience a three-hour, three-and-a-half-hour opera and want to have dinner, you need time,” Mr. Gelb said. “A Sunday performance would be something that would make a lot of sense.”

“如果你想观看一场三小时或三个半小时的歌剧，还想用个晚餐，你需要时间，”盖尔布说，“周日安排演出会是十分合理的做法。”

Significant hurdles remain for many of Mr. Gelb’s plans. Adding Sunday performances would require the agreement of the Met’s work force and its powerful unions, whose relationships with Mr. Gelb were badly strained during last year’s labor talks, and whose members already work punishing schedules during the opera season. Expanding the Met’s lobby into the Lincoln Center plaza would require successful fund-raising as well as the approval of the center’s administration and, possibly, the city. And traditionalists may shudder at the idea of a new name for the opera house, known for more than a century as the Metropolitan Opera — an internationally recognized classic along the lines of the Teatro alla Scala, the Royal Opera House or, closer to home, Yankee Stadium.

盖尔布的很多计划都面临着巨大的障碍。周日增加演出必须获得歌剧院工作人员和强大的工会的同意。在去年的劳资谈判中，他们和盖尔布的关系变得非常紧张。此外，工作人员的在演出季的日程已经非常艰苦。把大都会歌剧院的大堂延伸至林肯中心广场需要成功筹款，并获得林肯中心管理层甚至纽约市政府的同意。保守主义者可能不敢给歌剧院重新命名。大都会歌剧院这个名字已经存在一个多世纪了，是国际知名的经典剧院，与斯卡拉歌剧院(Teatro alla Scala)、英国皇家歌剧院(Royal Opera House)或纽约本地的洋基体育场(Yankee Stadium)齐名。

Mr. Gelb said that the Met needs to do these things, and more, to ensure that it can continue to thrive. One of his ideas — inspired in part by last season’s new production of “Pagliacci,” which featured a troupe of traveling vaudevillians — is to create an opera truck to bring small-scale, staged performances with a small orchestra to communities around New York. He has been working on the project, tentatively called “MET2GO,” with the Dutch director Lotte de Beer, who has an organization, Operafront, which does similar work in the Netherlands. Mr. Gelb, who is working to raise money for the project, hopes to have a traveling version of Verdi’s “La Traviata” ready by June 2016 or 2017.

盖尔布说，大都会歌剧院需要做这些事以及更多的事情，来确保它能继续繁荣。他的另一个想法是创立歌剧卡车，在纽约的各个社区巡回演出仅需小管弦乐队的小规模剧目。这个想法部分来自上一季的新剧《丑角》(Pagliacci)，它讲述的是一个巡演杂耍剧团的故事。另外，他在与荷兰导演洛特·德·比尔(Lotte de Beer)策划一个暂时称为MET2GO的项目。比尔在荷兰有个名叫Operafront的组织，从事类似的活动。盖尔布正在给这个项目筹款，他希望在2016年6月或2017年之前推出威尔第(Verdi)《茶花女》(La Traviata)的巡演版。

“The Met can never be accessible enough,” he said.

“大都会歌剧院应该尽可能地让观众容易接近，”他说。

Toward that end, he said, he wanted to make the Met more welcoming by expanding and renovating its cramped lobby — which the building’s architect, Wallace K. Harrison, was forced to scale back to save money half a century ago. “What was left was this very tight fit between the front doors of the Met and the entranceway, so in a period of 30 to 45 minutes before a performance you have this mob scene of people trying to get into the opera house,” Mr. Gelb said. “Which is good — at least people are trying to get in.”

最后，他说，他想通过扩展和整修狭小的大堂来让歌剧院更受欢迎。半个世纪前，为了节省成本，这幢建筑的设计师华莱士·K·哈里森(Wallace K. Harrison)不得不按比例缩小了大堂。“结果，大都会歌剧院的前门和入口之间变得非常狭小，在演出开始前的30至45分钟时间里，你会看到这里挤满了想进入歌剧院的人，”盖尔布说，“这也是好事——至少人们想进去。”

The Met has engaged Levien & Company, a project management firm that has worked on other successful theater renovations in the city, to study how it might be able to build a low glass enclosure running the width of the Met and extending 30 or 40 feet into the Lincoln Center plaza. That addition would add several thousand square feet of space that would allow the Met to redesign its box-office area, gift shop and art gallery and to possibly add a cafe.

Levien & Company项目管理公司曾成功完成纽约市的一些剧院整修项目。大都会歌剧院正在跟这家公司商量如何修建一个与歌剧院等宽、长三四十英尺的矮玻璃幕墙，延伸至林肯中心广场。这样就能增加几千平方英尺的空间，可以重新设计售票处、礼品店和画廊，甚至还可能加个咖啡厅。

Jed Bernstein, the president of Lincoln Center, said that it would be premature to discuss the project. But, he said, “In general, I believe that things that are good for the Met are good for Lincoln Center.”

林肯中心的总裁杰德·伯恩斯坦(Jed Bernstein)说，现在讨论这个项目有点早。不过他说，“总的来说，我认为，对大都会歌剧院有益的事肯定也有益于林肯中心。”

“Conceptually, is it a good idea for the Met to try to come up with creative and interesting new ways to engage with their audience?” he asked. “Absolutely. Would we want to support them in that? Absolutely.

“从理论上讲，大都会歌剧院努力寻找有创意、有趣的新方法，来吸引观众，这难道不是好事吗？”他问道，“绝对是好事。我们愿意支持它吗？绝对愿意。”

“Does it make sense to do a specific thing, like do a glass extension to the Met? I don’t know, because we haven’t seen any idea of really what that would mean, or what that would look like, or any of those things.”

“至于某个具体的项目是否合理——比如给大都会歌剧院加个玻璃幕墙——那就我不太确定，因为我们不确切知道那意味着什么，也不知道它看起来会是什么样子，什么都不知道。”

Capital projects are often more attractive to potential donors than equally needed campaigns to, say, increase endowments. The Met’s endowment fell dangerously low in recent years as the company withdrew money to help pay for its high annual operating costs. Those costs are now falling.

对潜在捐款人来说，资金项目往往比同样急需的筹款活动更吸引人。近些年，大都会歌剧院的捐款额大幅下降，因为它用部分捐款来支付高昂的运营成本。目前运营成本正在下降。

All told, the Met spent $310 million last season, down from $316 million the season before and $327 million two seasons ago. This year its budget calls for it to spend less than $300 million for the first time since 2010. Its endowment was valued at $266 million at the end of July, according to Mr. Gelb, but that figure does not include $19 million in pledged donations. The Met, which was drawing more than 8 percent of its endowment annually a few years back, has been steadily reducing that amount, from 6.5 percent in 2014 to 6 percent last season and this season; it plans to phase down to 5 percent by 2018.

总的来说，上一季，大都会歌剧院的运营成本为3.1亿美元，与之前一季的3.16亿美元和上上季的3.27亿美元相比有所下降。今年，按照预算，成本必须控制在三亿美元以下，这是2010年以来首次设定这么低的预算。据盖尔布说，至7月底，它获得的捐款额为2.66亿美元，不过这个数字不包括1900万美元的抵押捐款。几年前，大都会歌剧院每年提取的额度超过捐款总额的8%，目前正在逐步减少这个比例，从2014年的6.5%降至上一季和这一季的6%；它计划到2018年逐步降至5%。

Mr. Gelb said that as the fund-raising campaign proceeded, the Met would consider offering naming rights to the theater as a whole if a large enough donation were made. “We’re looking for a significant gift — a major gift that could somehow be associated with this front-of-house renovation and perhaps even the naming of the building,” he said.

盖尔布说，随着筹款活动的进行，如果出现巨额捐款，大都会歌剧院将考虑给予整座剧院的冠名权。“我们在寻找一份重要礼物，一份足以支付前门整修的巨额捐款，捐款人可能获得这幢大楼的冠名权，”他说。

Asked how large a gift would be required, he demurred. But he noted that the Met is larger and better known than its next-door neighbors — which were renamed for Mr. Koch and Mr. Geffen after they each donated $100 million.

当被问及捐款额要达到多少时，他没有回答。不过他指出，大都会歌剧院比它的邻居们更大、更出名。它的两位邻居在分别得到科克和格芬的一亿美元捐款后，以两位捐款人命名。