“Conductor Ingo Metzmacher says he will step down when his contract as general music director in Hamburg expires in 2005 because he is disappointed with the attitude of city officials toward arts and culture… Metzmacher, who heads both the Staatsoper and Staatsorchester in Germany’s second-largest city, told a newspaper that the city was unwilling to make adequate commitments toward the arts. He said that subsidies for the arts have remained stagnant for a decade while expenses have climbed.”