METAMORPHOSIS.

At the bottom of one of the Metropolitan Opera's winding staircases, you can find a medium-sized wall plaque in honor of the arts patron Otto H. Kahn, who, decades ago, tried to change this grandest of opera houses into a more modern place. Once ubiquitous and now mostly forgotten, Kahn brought the Ballets Russes to America, backed modernist poetry in The Little Review, showed up in Cole Porter lyrics, and inspired aspects of "Citizen Kane." He long served as the chairman of the Met board, and never tired of offering up new ideas for the company's future. He hoped to build a new theatre on a site below Columbus Circle, and had Joseph Urban draw up plans for a Bayreuth-style amphitheatre where even the cheapest seats would have good views. He spoke of commissioning provocative modern works and of attracting new audiences through education programs, radio broadcasts, and outdoor concerts. A pop-music enthusiast, he invited Jerome Kern and George Gershwin to write jazz-themed operas for the house. Inevitably, the old-money families on the Met board insured that most of these plans came to naught. Urban's theatre was never built. Kern and Gershwin did write their jazz grand operas--"Show Boat" and "Porgy and Bess"--but they played on Broadway. Sundry new works came and went, generally unwanted.

This summer, Peter Gelb took over from Joseph Volpe as the general manager of the Met, and the spirit of Otto Kahn is moving in the air. For time out of mind, the Met has been a stately and secretive place, impenetrable yet strangely predictable, where stars have sung in plush productions of standard operas to the accompaniment of minimum publicity. Gelb transformed the company's public facade in a matter of weeks. Live broadcasts have started up on satellite radio, and digital relays are planned for movie theatres around the country. Slick posters have appeared on the subways. Witty banter is showing up in the program books and on the Web site. The opening-night gala, traditionally the preserve of high society, could be viewed on jumbo screens in Lincoln Center Plaza and in Times Square, replete with a red-carpet spectacle involving Sean Connery, Susan Sarandon, Lou Reed, David Bowie, and an "Entertainment Tonight"-style interviewer. At the center of the hoopla was a sumptuous production of "Madama Butterfly," by the film director Anthony Minghella. Among veteran operagoers, there was a certain amount of head-shaking, but everyone knew why this was happening. Met attendance has been declining, the result of a post-9/11 slump, an aging audience, and deep-seated institutional complacency.

Gelb's metamorphosis of the Met is a fascinating sleight of hand, because nothing new is happening onstage. Minghella's "Butterfly" was Gelb's only addition to the season that Volpe had already planned, and it originated last fall at the English National Opera. What we are witnessing is a virtuoso repackaging. The consequences of Gelb's future plans--he has announced collaborations with new directors, several commissions of new operas, ventures into music theatre--won't be known until 2009 or 2010. There are reasons to be skeptical. Celebrity worship will get the Met only so far; people aren't going to pay premium prices to sit near Jude Law, stimulating as that experience may be. Even if Gelb's ideas are uniformly brilliant, they may draw fire from conservatives, who, these days, tend to be found not only on the governing board, as in Kahn's time, but in the unions. Yet the speed with which Gelb has accomplished his early goals is impressive. The old behemoth is suddenly shrugging off dated rituals, throwing together complex deals with the unions and the media, flying by night in high style. For the duration of the gala, there was no more fabulous place on earth, which is as it should be.

Minghella's "Butterfly" bodes well for the progress of Gelb's taste. It offers several of the most piercingly beautiful images I've seen in an opera house. Brilliantly costumed women rise in a long line at the back of the stage, their peacock colors shining against a turquoise sky, their ...