Opera Fans Furious Over Long Lines at the Met

Subscribers to the Metropolitan Opera are up in arms over changes to the ticket exchange policy that contributed to massive lines at the box office yesterday. The Times reports that because of ongoing construction, many subscribers were forced to queue up in the bowels of the Lincoln Center and wait as long as five hours to switch their tickets, which they used to be able to do over the phone. Chairs were brought out for the elderly and infirm, but opera fanatics like Wanda Flickinger of Bronxville, N.Y. -- a subscriber for over 40 years -- were not placated: "This is an insult, what we are being put through today." Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, shrugged off the long lines on the Met's surge in popularity, telling the Times, "It’s kind of a growing pain that we are experiencing."