The Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, Peter Gelb, “played down the recent Chagall deal,” in which the opera house put up its two iconic murals as collateral for an existing loan. “‘We have no intention of giving up the Chagalls,’ he said. ‘We don’t think it’s a major event.'” In another financial maneuver, the Met is requesting “an across-the-board 10 percent pay cut from its singers next season.”