A breach in security permitted two protesters to leap onstage during a performance of “Carmen” at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night, the Met said, bringing the show to a chaotic, if momentary, halt.
The Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said in an interview on Saturday that one of two guards assigned to sit at each end of the front row of the orchestra — specifically to guard against such episodes — had not been at his post. That allowed the two protesters to walk on a narrow ledge along the wall of the left side of the orchestra pit and make their way on to the stage.
Gelb did not give a reason for the guard’s absence. It took 15 minutes for the protesters to be removed from the building and for the show to resume.
The protesters were part of a group of four people — two shouting from the stage and two more from the orchestra — who used their platform to denounce David Koch, the billionaire industrialist, climate-change skeptic and funder of right-wing initiatives who died in 2019. The theater next to the opera house in Lincoln Center is named after Koch, who was a major benefactor of the arts.
Gelb said the security guard, who had been assigned to sit on the far left of the front row, had been suspended pending further investigation. The New York City Police Department on Friday arrested three of the protesters and accused them of misdemeanors after the Met said it wanted to press charges. The fourth protester left the hall and escaped arrest, Gelb said.
“Going forward, we will make every effort to ensure that our stage is never breached again,” Gelb wrote in an email to the opera company and orchestra members on Saturday morning. “We want everyone at the Met, whether performing or attending, to feel safe and comfortable inside the opera house.”
Audience members described a scene of chaos and confusion that unfurled during one of the most crowded onstage moments of the opera.
When one of the protesters scrambled onstage and started dancing, some in attendance thought the activity was part of the production — until a stage manager appeared from one side of the stage and pulled him off.
“Not everyone realized it was a protester,” Gelb said in the interview. “He was just dancing onstage.”
As soon as the first protester was removed, a second made his way onstage. That person was also removed by Met personnel.
As the curtain came down, the action shifted to the seats, where two more demonstrators stood up and began to shout about Koch and Project 2025, the plan funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation that provided a blueprint to the Trump administration to dismantle large swaths of the federal government. A barrage of boos and shouts of “Loser!” from audience members drowned out those protesters. Amid the uproar, one of the demonstrators left through an exit.
“As he walked out, he yelled, ‘You know I’m right!’” said Shane Droogan, 27, a data engineer who said he was sitting in Row S during the performance. “This was right next to my row and seriously frightened my date.”
“The speaker was babbling and not giving a very coherent message,” Droogan said. “The one who got onstage had a crude cardboard sign and was dancing to the choreography, so the lettering wasn’t very readable.”
Even in death, Koch, with his close ties to the political right, has been a polarizing figure for many New Yorkers. His name looms over the David H. Koch Theater, home to the New York City Ballet. The venue is next to the Metropolitan Opera House on the Lincoln Center plaza.
“They may have been in the wrong theater,” Gelb said.
The security protocol that failed on Friday was put in place in 2015, after a protester jumped onstage during a performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” that featured the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko. The protester held up a sign denouncing the policies of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Netrebko and the conductor that evening, Valery Gergiev, are outspoken supporters of Putin. Both have since been barred by Gelb from the Met stage.
The situation at the Met seemed different on Saturday afternoon. Normally, security officers sit inconspicuously in their seats during performances. But as the Met presented “Arabella,” the 1933 opera by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a uniformed guard stood at one edge of the stage, casting his eyes across the audience.
Adam Nagourney is a Times reporter covering cultural, government and political stories in New York and California.
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