Last week, Joseph Volpe announced that he was stepping down as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His departure will end a remarkable 42-year association with the Met. “Improbably, that association took a Flatbush-born high school graduate with no advanced education, no musical training and scant feeling for opera from an entry-level job as an apprentice carpenter to the general manager’s office in 1990. It is sometimes said of a hands-on chief executive who has worked his way to the top that he knows every nail in the place. This is really true of Mr. Volpe, who hammered quite a few nails into the place himself.”