Peter Gelb, General Manager of The Metropolitan Opera since 2005, spoke to Italian daily La Repubblica in a small interview, "Cosi in 5 anni il Metropolitan ha conquistato i giovani dell'iPod", boasting that in the five years since he's been GM, he's wooed the ~iPod generation~ (lol ok dad) with his shock & awe military-grade strategies that would make Call of Duty 4's code-monkeys proud.
He tells the paper, "Five years ago, the Met's problem was that the public was getting older and was totally diminishing. I had only one solution: to sweep away the the image of eliteness and reconnect the Met with a new the audience via the internet, radio, tv, and cinema."
He went on to stress that he's managed to procure a new audience: kids who had never before stepped foot into the opera house have now become the Met's most frequent and loyal opera fans, continuing: "The ~iPod generation~ [OC reserves her ~irony quotes~ for special occasions] has a different approach to listening to music, and to not keep that in mind would be like suicide."
Then he goes on to talk about his Live in HD series that, frankly, Opera Chic thinks does more harm to opera than help. But Gelb's sort of like your uncool dad who's trying to figure really complicated stuff out, and he made the right enemies in the meantime, and that's a good thing: so, iPod or not, may Zeus help him, as John Banville would say.