The Met's ‘Sputniks' Fall to Earth for a Summer Cleaning

New York Times

01-08-2025

Good morning. It's Friday. Today we'll find out why the chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera House are at their lowest right now. We'll also get details on Mayor Eric Adams's veto of a bill to decriminalize penalties for street vendors.
'This is the big event,' Randy Sautner said, standing in the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House.
Sautner, the crew chief in charge of electrical maintenance at the Met, was not waiting to see the curtain to go up on 'Turandot' or 'Don Giovanni.' He was about to give the go-ahead for seven spiky chandeliers to come down from the ceiling — a production in its own right, with more than a dozen stagehands in supporting roles. Here's a synopsis:
Act I: The stagehands lowered the chandeliers, maneuvered them onto little carts and lashed the carts where they could not roll off. One scene took place on the roof of the Met, where three stagehands stood in a hatchlike opening, operating the winch that sent the chandeliers down. A recitative over two-way radios involved phrases like 'ready to roll' and 'nice and slow.'
Act II: In the lobby after a coffee break, a Windex-and-water solution came out and the stagehands began cleaning the chandeliers. The nearly 400 bulbs have to be changed. The same goes for another set of chandeliers nearby, the ones that climb 65 feet toward the ceiling as the house lights dim before each performance.
Act III: The chandeliers will go back to their usual places, ready for the Met's fall season, which opens on Sept. 21 with Mason Bates's 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.'
For an operagoer, it's jarring to see the chandeliers in the lobby so low. It's even more jarring to see them in the auditorium where a tall person in the row in front of you would be, blocking your view of the action on the stage.
The chandeliers are wood-and-metal spheres that have been called 'sputniks' ever since the Met opened in 1966. Legend has it that a prototype was constructed with toothpicks and a potato. On that first opening night, with their sparkly moons and satellites radiating in all directions, they were a signal that the Met had left behind the Gilded Age look of its old home on Broadway and moved into the space age.
They added some modernist whimsy to the formality of the Met. Whether they outshone the audience remains an open question. The socialite Marylou Whitney wore a tiara with 1,900 diamonds and 75 rubies that night. The cosmetics mogul Estee Lauder arrived in a gold-and-diamond crown that one article said was 'suitable for Queen Elizabeth II.'
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