The nation’s largest performing arts organization, shut by the coronavirus pandemic, sends a chilling signal that American cultural life is still far from resuming.

By Michael Cooper

“ Grand opera is in some ways uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic: It is so expensive to produce that it is financially difficult to sustainably perform to reduced-capacity audiences, and it attracts older people, who are among the most vulnerable to the virus. (The average age of Met operagoers was 57 last season.) But the broader question — when will it be safe to hold large-scale indoor performances again in the United States, which has been much less successful at curbing the spread of the coronavirus than many of the nations in Europe where theaters are gingerly beginning to reopen — is being asked throughout the arts world.

It seems unlikely that indoor events with anywhere near regular capacity will be possible until after the wide distribution of a vaccine, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease expert, said this month that it would likely be more than a year before people could feel comfortable returning to theaters without masks…

The Met, whose budget of roughly $300 million in a normal season makes it the biggest performing arts organization in the nation, is taking a series of steps to try to ensure its survival and adapt to a changed world… And the Met will work to increase the diversity of its offerings. While “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” was originally planned for a later season, Mr. Gelb decided that with calls for racial justice resonating through the nation and the music world, it should be given pride of place next year: opening night of the Met’s comeback season. “