The Met’s Summer HD Festival of free outdoor opera screenings on Lincoln Center Plaza was still on. “The Merry Widow” was a “full house” screening that Saturday evening.
Later, seeking more information about the screenings, I read that people reserve the best seats by putting clothes, shopping bags or even papers with their names on early in the morning of the event, sometimes days in advance! They come, they grab and they go – only to appear again just before the screening to claim possession of their chosen seat. Meanwhile, people who arrive a – reasonable – couple of hours before the start have to seat wherever they can find a ”non-reserved” chair.
Complaints to the organizers have thus far been met with indifference and a generic response like ”seats are offered on the first-come first-served basis”. But shouldn’t there be a rule to define ”first-come” and narrow it down to – at least – a few hours ahead, on the same day of an event? Or, if the free screenings continue in the future, there’ll be more and more such ”reservations” each year.
September 3rd, 2016
The Humble Fabulist 