In the face of mounting economic pressures, the Metropolitan Opera Guild has announced that it will begin to “scale back its operations” in the upcoming months. Its monthly publication Opera News will cease as a stand-alone magazine from November after its Chairman and President stated that the magazine is “no longer economically viable to continue in [its] current form”.

The Metropolitan Opera House. Photo © Ajay Suresh/ Wikimedia Commons

Opera News, which was first published in 1936, will instead be made available as an inclusion of the British-based Opera magazine. Other victims of the Guild’s cutback, revealed on Tuesday, include the annual Opera News Awards and the jobs of 20 staffers.

Opera News has a print circulation of 32,000 and a digital audience of 11,000. The Guild’s members, numbering approximately 28,000, receive the magazine as a perk, with 9,000 external paid subscriptions.

The...