Met general manager Joseph Volpe announces plan to retire in 2006

Joseph Volpe, who took a stagehand’s job at the Metropolitan Opera four decades ago to learn scenery-making -- hoping to move on to Broadway theater -- announced Tuesday that he intends to retire from the prestigious company he has been with ever since, for the last 14 years as its boss.

Volpe’s public announcement followed a private one to the Met’s board. He gave board members plenty of time to find a successor, saying he will not leave until August 2006.

“What a journey it’s been,” said the Brooklyn-born Volpe, 63, the third-longest tenured general manager in the Met’s 121-year history.

Since taking the company’s helm in 1990, Volpe has made his mark by simultaneously cultivating its elite patrons, keeping peace with its unions and helping modernize its operations, including installing small screens on seat backs so opera-goers can follow English translations of the words being sung onstage.

Volpe also has not been shy about using his status as arguably the most powerful figure at Lincoln Center, whether by helping block a planned $1.5-billion overhaul of the complex that would have included a Frank Gehry-designed atrium, or by taking the stage to upbraid the top tenor of recent decades, Luciano Pavarotti, for bowing out of a performance of “Tosca.”

Even under his strong hand, the Met has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years, from budget deficits in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which hurt the New York tourist trade, to conflicts among Lincoln Center’s various companies.

The Met also needs to find a new sponsor for its Saturday radio broadcasts, though Volpe said there would be “promising news” on that front shortly.

“We’re going through a very difficult time,” he said of the classical arts in general. “Our subscribers are saying the biggest problem they’re having is an economic one. They don’t want to buy subscriptions of seven, eight or nine performances. So they’re all looking for smaller packages.”

But Volpe said that he expects the Met to break even this year and that he decided to stay on an extra season, after initially considering retiring in the summer of 2005, so he could negotiate several expiring union contracts -- including one with the stagehands from whose ranks he rose -- before his successor took over.

Volpe’s desire to retire was not a surprise to Beverly Sills, the celebrated soprano whom he recruited in 2002 to serve as chairwoman of the company.

“One can hardly accuse him of taking the money and running,” Sills said. “He has stayed the course.”

Volpe said only three employees now date, with him, to the pre-Lincoln Center “old house,” on 39th Street, where he worked in the construction shop.

“If the truth be known, I don’t think I was ever a very good carpenter,” he said.