The Only Union in the Room

On May 26, 2021, the American Guild of Musical Artists asked its members at the Metropolitan Opera to ratify a four-year contract. The result looked decisive: 334 in favor, 124 opposed.^[2]

Then came the breakdown. Of the 124 no votes, 113 came from one group — the soloists.^[2] The guest singers. The artists hired production by production, billed as stars, broadcast to cinemas, photographed in the season brochure, and then released back into the uncertainty of the next engagement. Among soloists who voted, the contract failed. Among everyone else, it passed.

That split is the story. Not because one contract explains American opera, but because one vote exposed a structure usually hidden behind the language of solidarity: AGMA represents both the artists with continuing jobs and the artists who arrive with no guarantee of ever being asked back. When those interests diverge, the more numerous group wins. In 2021, the soloists lost. This article is about why that was not an accident, and what could be done about it — not a case that AGMA is corrupt or incompetent, which the evidence does not support, but that its structure leaves the artists with the least security exposed exactly when it matters most.

What the ballot was about

The 2021 agreement reduced per-performance soloist fees on a sliding scale, from six percent on fees under $6,000 to 12.65 percent at the top.^[3] An engagement in the $14,000-and-up bracket was subject to the 12.65 percent reduction — about $1,770 on a $14,000 fee. The reductions were temporary; under the agreement's terms they did not apply to per-performance contracts beyond the 2024–25 season, sunsetting on July 31, 2025.^[3]

In the same agreement was a sentence about health insurance. Its binding language provides that "per performance soloists working for the Met for a period encompassing four weeks or more shall be entitled to elect to divert a portion of their total compensation, on a pre-tax basis (if permissible), to cover the cost of AGMA Plan A for an individual."^[3]

Read it carefully. Not "the employer will contribute." The soloist may divert — redirect a slice of their own fee, the fee just cut, to buy their own coverage. And only past four weeks at the house in a year. A soloist engaged for fewer than four weeks does not reach even that option: for that engagement, the agreement provides no Met-funded coverage mechanism at all.

Two kinds of member

AGMA represents two economically different classes of worker under one roof, and the difference is the whole story.

Company-employed artists — the permanent chorus, staff performers, stage managers — are employees. They hold continuing contracts, draw employer-funded health coverage above modest thresholds, and have wages protected across a season. When they need the union against management, they need it against an employer they will face again next year.

Per-performance soloists are not on staff. They are artists engaged production by production, each booking its own negotiation, the fees arriving in lumps rather than paychecks, with no guarantee of a next one and no employer health plan behind them. When they need the union, it is usually after the engagement has ended, often over a sum too small to make a fight rational.

Both pay into the same treasury. Both vote in the same ratification ballots. But one class brings far more bodies to a vote, and the other carries far more risk. When their interests diverge at the table — and on fees and health coverage in 2021 they diverged completely — the arithmetic has an answer.

The benefit that was retired

For years AGMA's second health benefit, Plan B, was the answer a company could point to for artists who never reached Plan A's thresholds. It is no longer that answer. AGMA closed Plan B to new members in January 2018; the fund's own materials now call it a "Reimbursement Plan" and state that it "is no longer open for new members to elect into."^[4] It can reimburse some out-of-pocket costs; it is not insurance, and for newer artists it is not available at all.

What happened to the employer money once tied to it is its own quiet story. At least some agreements redirected those contributions into the AGMA Retirement Plan. The Wolf Trap Opera contract says so plainly: "because the ACA no longer makes the Health Plan B a viable…option, these contributions are now being made to the AGMA Retirement Fund."^[5] The money still moves through a bargained structure. It no longer operates as employer-provided health insurance for the artist.

For the soloist who does not clear the bar for primary coverage, that leaves little in between. And the newest contracts have not closed the gap. AGMA's public summaries of its recent agreements show real gains — Los Angeles Opera's four-year deal, ratified in May 2026, raises pay and lifts the principal retirement contribution from $75 to $80 a performance; San Francisco Opera's two-year deal adds sick leave for weekly soloists; Houston's five-year deal increases principal health-and-retirement contributions.^[6][7][8] None of them, on its face, shows a structural fix for the short-engagement soloist who works across companies but clears the employer-plan threshold at none of them.

What a grievance actually gets you

Suppose a soloist believes a company broke the contract — a withheld fee, a breached cancellation term. The remedy depends on where they are, and the architecture varies more than the union's critics, or this article's earlier drafts, assumed.

At Washington National Opera, the grievance machinery is union-centered: a grievance is "communicated by AGMA to MANAGEMENT or by MANAGEMENT to AGMA," and if it is not resolved, "either party can refer the grievance to final and binding arbitration" — where "either party" means the union or the company, not the artist.^[9] A soloist who cannot persuade an AGMA staff representative to act has no contractual path to arbitration of their own.

But that is not universal. At Detroit Opera, every individual artist agreement is deemed to contain an arbitration clause, and "all arbitrations between the COMPANY and any ARTIST" are provided for directly; Houston Grand Opera's agreement is built the same way.^[9] At those houses the artist does have a contractual path that does not require the union to carry it.

So the precise point is not that an individual artist can never act. It is that the ordinary enforcement machinery is union-centered, expensive, time-sensitive, and difficult for a short-engagement artist to use after the job is over — and that where the artist must rely on the union to pursue the claim, the union decides which claims are worth its resources. For a salaried chorister with a continuing relationship to the house, that design is defensible. For a guest soloist owed a few thousand dollars and already in another city, it can be the difference between a remedy and a write-off.

The two contracts, side by side

One membership, two very different deals under the same ballot:

• Vote power (Met, 2021): the salaried categories carried the contract; the roughly 200 voting soloists could be — and were — outvoted.
• Health coverage: salaried members receive employer-funded coverage above modest thresholds; a per-performance soloist gets only the right to divert their own fee, and only after four weeks at one house.
• Work continuity: a season-to-season relationship, versus a production-by-production engagement.
• Enforcement leverage: the salaried member still works there next year; the guest soloist is usually gone before a grievance could resolve.
• What the contract protects: for one, a stable job; for the other, the terms of the next individual engagement.

The building

In September 2020, public-radio reporting revealed that AGMA had committed to buy a Manhattan headquarters — a deal originally contracted at roughly $9.4 million, by the account of the journalists who broke it, or close to two-thirds of the union's net assets, then about $15 million.^[10] The membership learned of it from the press. AGMA's National Executive Director at the time, Leonard Egert, said any allegations of financial mismanagement were "wildly off the mark," and the purchase was later renegotiated for fewer square feet at a lower price.^[10]

Whether it was a sound investment is not the governance question. AGMA's net assets have, in fact, held roughly steady since — about $15.8 million in its most recent public filing — so the alarm that the union was spending itself toward insolvency was overdrawn.^[11] The question is who decided. A commitment on the order of the union's net worth, made without putting it to the members whose dues built that net worth, says something about who the institution understands its principals to be.

The people who run it

AGMA's members pay for their representation through a published dues structure: $100 in basic annual dues plus working dues of two percent of AGMA-covered income, capped at $2,000 a year.^[12] What those dues buy is governed by a structure worth naming plainly: members vote for elected officers who serve unpaid, while the day-to-day bargaining and administration are handled by paid professional staff who do not stand for a member vote. That is not unusual in labor organizations. It matters here because the sharpest conflict at AGMA is not between the union and an employer — it is internal, between categories of the same membership, decided by people the most exposed category does not elect.

The settlement that was meant to stay quiet

The sharpest test of whom the institution serves came in 2020, out of the Plácido Domingo affair. AGMA, several of whose members had described misconduct by the star tenor, was reported to have negotiated toward a roughly $500,000 settlement with him — a fine and a public apology in exchange for the union's findings not being disclosed. Samuel Schultz, a baritone and an elected AGMA vice president, called it "a quid pro quo — silence in exchange for money."^[13]

Schultz had confirmed to reporters that he was a source for the investigation. He then resigned his office, unable, he wrote, to reform from within what he called "an immovable institution."^[13] AGMA disputes the characterization; it has said the proposed fine was not secret and would have funded legal costs and anti-harassment work.^[14] Both belong in the record. The Domingo episode remains relevant not as settled proof of anything, but because it shows how AGMA handles conflicts involving powerful members, internal confidentiality, and public accountability.

Why you can't easily leave

A member who concludes the union does not serve them runs into Article XX of the AFL-CIO Constitution, which bars any affiliate from organizing or representing workers where another affiliate already holds an established bargaining relationship, and makes itself "the sole and exclusive method" for resolving such disputes.^[15] AGMA holds that relationship at nearly every major American opera house.

As a practical matter, that leaves no rival union an individual soloist can simply choose instead. The formal exits exist but are difficult: petition to decertify the union at an entire company, a collective act the union will oppose; an independent (non-AFL-CIO) union or a new bargaining structure, slow and unlikely; or, in a right-to-work state such as Texas, decline membership while still taking the contract's terms. The limits on exit are strongest in the markets where AGMA work is most valuable — New York, Washington, D.C., much of the East Coast — and weakest where it is least. The point is practical monopoly, not metaphysical impossibility.

What the record shows, and what it doesn't

If soloists were routinely failed by union-centered enforcement, one place it might surface is the National Labor Relations Board's docket of charges naming AGMA. That record is thin. Three such charges are findable since 2015 — one around the Dallas Black Dance Theatre dispute, one by Central City Opera, one by the Met in 2014 — and all three were withdrawn before any ruling.^[16] None is a member's duty-of-fair-representation case that AGMA lost.

That absence cuts two ways, and honesty requires naming both. It may mean members are served well enough that few bring charges. It may also mean the duty-of-fair-representation bar is so high, and the expense so great, that a soloist owed a few thousand dollars never files. The docket cannot decide between those readings. What it can establish is the structure that produces them.

The counterpoint, taken seriously

AGMA wins for its members, and the record shows it. In December 2024 the NLRB's Fort Worth region announced a settlement of roughly $565,000 against Dallas Black Dance Theatre, covering thirteen dancers who had been fired or had offers rescinded.^[17] It is a real result — and an unfinished one: a year later those dancers and AGMA still had no collective bargaining agreement and were reported to be in talks, even as a peer company, Texas Ballet Theater, reached its own first AGMA contract.^[18]

The union has also answered some of the specific criticisms in this article. The 2025 Met agreement closed a gap the 2021 deal had left open, guaranteeing a per-performance cover full fee if bypassed at the last minute for an outside principal.^[19] AGMA launched a contract-summary site so opera soloists can see, company by company, what they bargained, and created a Solo Principal Artists Caucus to give soloists a standing voice.^[21] And Andrew Stenson, the elected soloists' vice president, credits the union plainly: "AGMA came through for us during the pandemic."^[22] These are true, and they belong here. They make the structural critique more credible, not less.

What reform would look like

The point of this account is not to indict a union but to name a design problem — and design problems have design solutions. Three would address what the 2021 vote exposed, none of them requiring anyone to abandon AGMA.

Separate soloist approval for provisions that materially affect soloists. A contract term that materially reduces principal-soloist compensation, or changes soloist health, retirement, or enforcement rights, could require either majority approval from the affected soloists or a written explanation from the Board of why it is necessary for the unit as a whole. AGMA already recognizes soloists as a distinct group through its Solo Principal Artists Caucus; this would give that recognition teeth, and prevent the exact 2021 outcome — a soloist majority overridden on terms aimed at soloists.

A portable, employer-funded soloist benefit bank. The deepest problem is that a soloist may work substantial amounts across many companies and still qualify for meaningful coverage at none, because eligibility resets at each employer. Every AGMA opera agreement could instead direct a per-service or percentage-of-fee employer contribution into a portable benefit account, credited across all signatory employers and usable for health premiums, marketplace or COBRA coverage, or qualified medical costs. The singer's career is portable; the benefit should be too.

An expedited soloist enforcement track. For claims too small to justify a full institutional fight but too large for the artist to absorb — a late fee, a cancellation dispute, a cover payment — AGMA could create a fast track with short deadlines, a written decision requirement, a soloist ombudsperson, and a low-cost arbitration or mediation option the artist can pursue with the union's support or, if the union declines, with its notice and non-opposition. None of this requires abandoning the union. It requires recognizing that a one-production singer and a full-season chorister do not experience the same contract the same way.

The negotiation ahead

The test is about to run again. The Met's one-year agreement with AGMA — 2.5 percent in permanent raises plus a temporary 2.5 percent tied to a $5 million line-item AGMA helped secure in the New York State budget — expires on July 31, 2026.^[19][20] As of this writing, no successor has been publicly announced; AGMA itself framed the one-year deal as the runway to "a more expansive negotiation" to follow.^[19]

It opens against a backdrop no negotiator can ignore. A $200 million Saudi partnership the Met had pursued collapsed in the spring of 2026, leaving the company to close a roughly $30 million shortfall by the end of July, having already laid off staff and deepened executive pay cuts.^[23] A house in that condition arrives at the table seeking concessions, and the same membership arithmetic that settled 2021 will be there to settle 2026. The soloists will again be outnumbered by the salaried. Whatever the room decides, it will be, for them, the only room there is.

What the institutions say

This article will be updated with any response from the Metropolitan Opera or the American Guild of Musical Artists to its specific claims — the voting structure, soloist health coverage, grievance access, and the 2026 negotiations.

How this was reported

This account draws on primary documents: the Metropolitan Opera–AGMA 2021–2025 agreement and AGMA's ratification materials; the Washington National Opera, Detroit Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and Wolf Trap Opera collective bargaining agreements; AGMA's published dues schedule and health-fund plan descriptions; the AFL-CIO Constitution; AGMA's own summaries of its 2025–2026 agreements; National Labor Relations Board case records; the union's IRS filings via ProPublica; and contemporaneous reporting on the Domingo settlement, the headquarters purchase, and the Met's 2026 finances. AGMA's specific federal labor-filing line items were not independently re-verified for this version and are not relied upon here. Where contract language is quoted, it is quoted verbatim from the agreement cited.

1. [2]OperaWire, “AGMA Ratifies New Collective Bargaining Contract With Metropolitan Opera Despite Major Soloist Dissent”↗
2. [3]Metropolitan Opera–AGMA Agreement 2021–2025 (Health Care §17; per-performance soloist fee-reduction schedule §26)
3. [4]AGMA Retirement & Health Fund, “Reimbursement Plan (formerly Plan B)”↗
4. [5]Wolf Trap Opera–AGMA Collective Bargaining Agreement 2023–2026↗
5. [6]AGMA, “AGMA Ratifies Four-Year Agreement with Los Angeles Opera”↗
6. [7]AGMA, “Highlights from AGMA's New Two-Year Agreement with San Francisco Opera”↗
7. [8]AGMA, “AGMA Ratifies 5-Year Agreement with Houston Grand Opera”↗
8. [9]AGMA Collective Bargaining Agreements — Washington National Opera 2022–2025 (Art. XL: union-vs-management grievance), “all arbitrations between the COMPANY and any ARTIST”↗
9. [10]GPB/NPR (Anastasia Tsioulcas), “Whistleblowers Allege Culture Of Secrecy, Protection Of Powerful At Singers' Union”↗
10. [11]ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer↗
11. [12]AGMA, “Union Dues”↗
12. [13]NPR (Anastasia Tsioulcas), “Union Official Resigns Over Domingo Investigation, Confirms He Gave Media Information”↗
13. [14]AGMA, “AGMA Corrects Misleading Statements Relating to Proposed Settlement”↗
14. [15]AFL-CIO Constitution↗
15. [16]National Labor Relations Board case records↗
16. [17]NLRB Region 16 (Fort Worth)↗
17. [18]KERA News, “5 Things to Know About the Labor Disputes at Dallas Black Dance Theatre”↗
18. [19]AGMA, “Highlights from AGMA's New One-Year Agreement with the Met”↗
19. [20]Associated Press (via ABC News), “Met singers' union gets 5% increase partly funded by $5M appropriation from New York state”↗
20. [21]AGMA, “AGMA Launches Contract Summary Webpage for AGMA Opera Soloists”↗
21. [22]AGMA, “Get to Know AGMA's New Soloists Vice President Andrew Stenson”↗
22. [23]CBS New York, “Metropolitan Opera's funding agreement with Saudi Arabia falls through, Met officials say”↗