Last Look at the Old Met by Judith Clancy

by Judith S. Clancy

"Tell me, Harry, what's the consensus in your cell block on saving the Old Met?" That line spoken in Whitney Darrow, Jr.'s New Yorker cartoon by a prison-visiting wife indicated the feeling generated as scheduled demolition of the 83-year-old Metropolitan Opera House drew near. It's hard for the generations of opera lovers born since to realize the emotional impact when the Save-the-Old-Met drive failed to halt that demolition. Among those who reacted was Judith Clancy. As a small girl living in a New York tenament her love of music and the dance had been nurtured from the Family Circle high up in the Met. She returned to New York before the demolition to make these drawings, the last of which was finished as the lights went down for the final performance in the house. Her book--drawings and text--is a personal last portrait of that house by a talented artist who dreamed there as a child, studied there as a dancer, learned there to love ballet and then the opera and who was courted there.

Hardcover

First published September 15, 1969