If the mayor is of one party, the opera administrator must be of another and the artistic director of another.

The opera administrators differed as to the effect of the referendum.

James Meena (born 1951) is an American conductor and opera administrator.

One English opera administrator speaks of them as "a force outside human ability."

Even members of an opera company were called out to help take it apart by hand, one retired opera administrator recently recalled.

Other opera administrators see the future of "Nixon in China" in much the same way.

And it is entirely possible that American opera will speak more clearly to a new generation, like the opera administrators responsible for putting it on.

"You can have your pick of wonderful Paminas," a European opera administrator told me recently.

By May 2007, her blog was receiving 250 visitors a day, including opera administrators, critics and fellow singers.

Other opera-house managers, in the clubby world of opera administrators, might complain that the Met was starting a price war.