It’s “not that the company engages unusual directors, but that it doesn’t let them actually do what they’re good at. Peter Gelb seems to me to have the same micromanaging side that Joe Volpe did: the side that would see something unusual in a new production, get nervous about it, and try to rein it in. As a result, the work of directors who are quite good in other fields is, at the Met, muted or just plain bad.”