NEW YORK CITY — Less skin means less cash for some performers at the Metropolitan Opera this season. The storied company is paying seven actresses who wear a bra and panties about half as much as others who instead wear pasties and thongs in its revival of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," which opened Sept. 26.

Six of the women are paid $448 per show to appear nearly nude in half of the nine performances, but get just $235 to wear a little more clothing in the remaining shows, according to people familiar with the production. This is despite the fact that they wore the more modest costume in the past without any difference in pay.

The salary discrepancy came from the opera's general manager, Peter Gelb, in a bid to save money in a time of financial instability, said Deborah Allton-Maher, the associate executive director for the American Guild of Musical Artists that represents most Met performers, including one of the impacted actresses. "It was quite humiliating and very upsetting for these women," Allton-Maher said.

(For more on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.) The woman wearing the costume on the right is paid $448 to perform in "Les Contes d'Hoffman," while the woman on the left gets just $235. (Photo used with permission) The women wear the costumes while playing Venetian prostitutes in the third act of the nearly four-hour opera, also known as "The Tales of Hoffmann." The story follows a German poet through a trio of troubled love affairs. The last performance is on Oct. 28.



The Met first revealed the arrangement to The Wall Street Journal. Tim McKeough, a Met spokesman, told the paper that three of the seven women each night wear pasties — small stickers covering their nipples —while the other four wear more clothing. The move will save "several thousand dollars" over the course of the season, the Journal reported.

McKeough told Patch he declined to comment beyond the contents of that article.

Six of the women wear the pasties for either four or five of the performances and the bras for the rest, one person familiar with the production said. Those who do only four shows in pasties wore them for the final dress rehearsal, the person said. The seventh performer, who is on the Met's staff, decided not to wear the pasties at all. The Met initially wanted to pay the actresses about $128 to wear the lingerie costumes — giving them a roughly 72 percent pay cut for half the shows, two people familiar with the production said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

